1) Find the very term I, I mean HE was seeking via a book’s index (or possibly Reader’s Guide)
2) Photocopy that page and that page alone (and then I’d cut the context-less quote out of the photocopy and paste it onto a 3 x 5 card)
3) Consider the source researched and cited

Not only did he… okay, I frequently misrepresent the author’s point of view, I enjoyed misrepresenting the author’s point of view. That was actually one of the only things I liked about the dead-boring research papers I was assigned in high school.

For what it’s worth, at least in theory it’s now far easier for teachers to catch students doing the stuff I did. Back then, they would have had to go to the library and find my sources. Now it’s just a question of pulling up a URL, which is much, much faster. And, while I’ve never heard of a teacher doing this (I’m not saying they don’t, just that I don’t get to interact that closely with teachers), I have noticed that in Usenet discussions and in discussion forums, people have called BS on those folks who try to misrepresent an author, provided the source is available online. I haven’t seen anyone call BS when the source is only available on dead trees.

Not that having electronic resources instantly available is a panacea–I’ve seen the stuff you’ve seen, in which people abuse digital sources–but the old days weren’t any better, at least not as I remember them. Will the future be any better? I think it will.

The missing piece of this process is the context within the larger written work. I’ve seen instances where a patron has done this and in taking the page out of context has completely misrepresented that author’s point of view or argument.

I love the idea of digital books but I worry about the unintended consequences

Instead, WorldCat.org is displaying the ten closest libraries that share their records with WorldCat.

Actually, it’s worse than that.

A library could be a dues-paying member of OCLC for years and years. It could contribute holdings data to OCLC. It could contribute original records. It could participate in interlibrary loan. You could do all of this and your records still wouldn’t show up in the version of Worldcat that the public sees on the open Web. (They would show up in the version that your technical services staff pays to use, however.)

This is because OCLC demands that you subscribe to First Search in order for your records to show up on the public Worldcat. It doesn’t matter if your library doesn’t have the dollars or the need for First Search. No First Search, no public display of your holdings — that’s the rule.

People have complained about this at membership meetings, and OCLC officials just say they gotta pay for Worldcat somehow. Meanwhile lots of unique items at special, school, and small academic libraries show up on Worldcat with few, or no holdings.

One comment, you said about Worldcat:

One of the two major problems with WorldCat.org is what it doesn’t include: the long tail of library records.

At the same time OCLC’s database doesn’t include a lot of uncommon works, it also includes duplicate records of many common ones, making it challenging to find things. Their penchant for mass loading records willy nilly from non-English libraries doesn’t help either.

Bottom line, the database is so big that it is difficult to navigate, even with the interface tools like “faceted” browsing.

I don’t work a reference desk, but my feeling as a “back room” librarian is that OCLC is a great resource for locating “known items” but it’s not the greatest discovery tool out there.

So… what should we be willing to offer these services in exchange for their assistance?

However, I think you hit the nail on the head when you ask “what are we willing to offer these services in exchange for their assistance?”

I live in a town in which everyone is willing to pool their resources for certain purchases. We know we want to have access to a broad range of items, so we agree to buy them collectively and take turns using the goods we purchase, which we generally get at a discount. We realize that, rather than buying these things individually, we can create one enormous budget and buy a lot more stuff. For the most part, we buy books and DVDs and CDs. Operations are centralized through an institution we refer to as the Library.

Libraries are really good at helping other people pool their resources, but we’re terrible at pooling our own. Our various little consortia are great, as long as the alternative is going it alone, but they’re a drop in the bucket when the alternative is a centrally managed institution like Google or OCLC or Amazon. We need to look at how much all libraries are spending on all inventory systems, catalogs, cataloging (including serials), scanning, etc. And then we need to make sensible use of our collective resources. It’s not like we have excess capacity–if anything, we need more catalogers and more programmers. But we need to get rid of all the duplication and waste (also known as vendor markup).

You point out that companies like Costco and Amazon enjoy a very high margin of customer loyalty – do libraries have user loyalty?

Yes.

How does the concept of loyalty play out in the framework of libraries as a public good (excepting that there are libraries that are private)?

There’s this library at a state school in the American Southeast. The folks there think the library can be one of their school’s competitive advantages. That is, they think having a great library can help them recruit students and retain faculty members.

That’s one of my goals for the Collingswood Public Library. I want it to be one of the first things local real estate agents talk about when they’re selling our town to potential residents. And I want it to be a reason that people choose to stay here after they retire.

Are libraries not positioned to be competitive in the current marketplace (or do they even need to be competitive)?

Our neighboring town appears poised to close its library in the next month or so. And we’re three miles away from Philadelphia, which is closing a third of its branches. Of course we need to be more competitive.

It sounds like that what you’re saying is that these services are complementary to the portfolio of other services that libraries provide. So, why shouldn’t libraries harness the work that these services do to promote books and give users the information they seek from books, and leverage these services to point to the additional services that libraries offer (the worldcat.org model or the Open Library model)? Are there any reasons not to move in this direction?

I don’t think there are any legitimate reasons not to work as closely as possible with every service that gives people access to good information. The question is, what are we willing to offer these services in exchange for their assistance?

What can libraries do? The public library where I am employed has used tags from LibraryThing in its online catalog and makes WorldCat available through its website. People usually want the book in hand, however, rather than the consolation of knowing that it’s out there somewhere or that they might like another book similar to the one they asked about.

I think libraries could do more in using freely available digital texts as secondary resources. I’ve shown students Project Gutenberg, for instance, when the last copy of some classic text is checked out. (I see Project Gutenberg is now listed on the Internet Archive as one of its resources.) Google Books and Open Library could and should be used to broaden our available offerings. Librarians fear, perhaps, that texts outside brick-and-mortar libraries are uncontrolled, unauthenticated, and evanescent. But they’re there and they fill a need.