“The nearly one million citizens of Westchester County will be able to search the library system catalog, the Internet, and more than 30 subscription-based resources with a single query using” Muse software. – EContent, Jan. 21, via Library News Daily.
The TeleRead take: Excellent. And here are a few more ideas.
How about assuring prominent display of Web links to special local resources–for example, the county’s Healthy Heart Program–when search results pop up? Work on this with Muse if the feature isn’t already there.
Or why not blend in Googlert or the equivalent (“Fill in your email address if you want to receive regular alerts on this topic”)?
Interestingly, Westchester County’s system is run by Maurice (Mitch) Freedman, president of the American Library Association. Nice going on the uber-search wrinkle, Mitch. Perhaps ALA itself will think strategically in another way and come out explicitly for a TeleRead-style approach someday–complete with an ample national digital library fund and user-to-user file sharing of library items (with provisions for fair payments to copyright holders).
E-book get-togethers at ALA gatherings, like this year’s Midwinter Meeting in Philadelphia, are a good start. But in the end they should be just tools toward major goals in the TeleRead vein.
Right now, of course, too many librarians seem worried about their turfs, as opposed to fighting for a truly integrated national plan that would greatly expand the resources available to neighborhood libraries and their users. Yes, as Steve Cohen is laudably documenting, public officials are up to some Stupid Budget Cutting Tricks. But local, state and national politicians might be a little more receptive to the pleas of the library community if its leaders showed more guts and imagination. A TeleRead-style system would be a very cost-effective way to help spread books around and reduce the famous savage inequalities. It would strengthen, not replace, existing libraries–especially in the aftermath of the Supreme Outrage in favor of extended copyright terms. The smaller the public domain, the more need, alas, for TeleRead.
How about it, Mitch? So far you’ve been deaf to uppity nonlibrarians. Hey, take a stand on TeleRead. John Iliff did, and other librarians might speak out if you yourself showed some courage here. As indicated by the your adoption of Muse’s one-search approach, it isn’t as if you’re a Luddite. Now act. What a great way for future generations of librarians to remember you. Time to speak out in Philadelphia?
