[13237] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Library links to chains and Amazon.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michael Rosenthal Well)
Thu Apr 6 20:02:55 2000
Date: Wed, 05 Apr 2000 23:01:56 -0700
From: Michael Rosenthal Well <MichaelR@WELL.COM>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
Reply-To: Michael Rosenthal Well <MichaelR@well.com>
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I am an independent bookseller who has been lurking in this list for several
years, as part of my personal and professional fascination with all of the
ways books get into people's hands. I have learned an enormous amount from
you over the years; and I hope it is not outside the parameters of this
group if I direct to you all a rather broad query.
While researching on the online catalog of the San Francisco Public Library,
I noticed that at the bottom of every search result, there as a link called
"Links to Bookseller Sites." When you click on this link, you get a screen
with five buttons: Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Borders Books, Bookfinder and
abebooks. The latter two do not trouble me, since the pool the resources of
many booksellers, but the first three trouble me very much.
Why is the libary conducting its patrons into shopping malls? If you click
on the amazon site, the first information you see about the book is amazon's
price and how to put it in amazon's shopping cart, while tabs on the top of
the screen invite you to the auction, department, the toys and video games
department, and the lawn and garden department. What does this have to do
with the role of the public library. You might as well be wearing
Bertelsmann buttons on your lapels when you go to work. The library says
they are not affiliated in any way, and I see no reason to doubt this, but
that only somehow makes it seem all the more gratuitous.
Meanwhile, the library is agressively directing potential business away from
local booksellers, to towards mega-operations. Which, and this is very
important, do not collect the sales tax which goes in part to support the
library. I hope I do not sound stident; I am trying to be very concise.
The library may argue that these business links are necessary because their
databases are so valuable, and here is where you come in. Are there
databases out there for libraries, from ipage or bowker or baker&taylor or
whoever, which gives equivalent information about the books (except for the
"reader reviews" ) without the commerical hardsell? Which I can propose that
the library use instead of these commercial databases (or have a button for
every online local independent as well)? And (here's the general part)
what's your reaction to all this?
Michael Rosenthal
(Modern Times Bookstore, San Francisco)
