"Surplus Quality"
I'm forwarding some comments from the LIBLICENSE list because I think they're also applicable to the
discussion of next generation catalogs. The comments are from Rick Anderson, Assoc. Dir. For Scholarly
Resources & Collections at the U of Utah, and are reproduced with his permission.
To set the context, a publisher had just complained about the advent of books-on-demand machines like the
Espresso Book Machine. The publisher said "The quality of book production will deteriorate badly if the
Espresso becomes the standard. There goes some of the 'value added' that publishers pride themselves on..."
Rick Anderson responded with the following, using the term "surplus quality" in the subject line of his posting:
"Librarians are going through a similarly wrenching adjustment as we come to terms with the fact that some
of the added value we've prided ourselves on providing for a century no longer seems to be particularly
valued by our own clientele. The elaborate subject headings we spent years perfecting now seem to be
useful only as a source of keywords; we plunk our considerable research expertise down behind service
desks that are rarely approached for anything other than directions to the restroom or help with a
jammed printer; we buy books that are clearly relevant to our institutions' educational missions and are
clearly of very high quality, and no one checks them out. It's a tough time all around.
Our current technological environment has exposed a number of areas in the marketplace where providers
have apparently been selling more "quality" than consumers actually want. To the degree that a book is
needed purely as an information source, readers will care less about print quality; to the degree that
it's desired for extended pleasure reading, they're likely to care more. Musicians and record labels
have echoed (the) cry in regard to sound quality -- in the age of the compressed MP3 download, much of the
music that average consumers listen to is of demonstrably lower sound quality than it would have been on a
CD or even (some would say especially) a vinyl LP. But the consumers' behavior teaches an important
lesson: people don't always want as much quality as providers would like to sell them. Libraries,
publishers, and sound engineers alike need to take that lesson to heart, get over it, and move forward."
Bernie Sloan
(Continue reading)
'
Aaron Dobbs
Systems & Electronic Resources Librarian
and Assistant Professor
Ezra Lehman Memorial Library
Shippensburg Univeristy of Pennsylvania
1871 Old Main
Shippensburg, PA 17257-2200
v: 717.477.1018
f: 717.477.1389
aim: aaronlibrarian
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