RE: Moderating and Administrative Thoughts

[Fred Friend <ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk>]

I agree with Peter's comment about the value of even self-promoting
postings in enabling challenging dialogue to take place. Such postings
should be factual, and that would be how I would distinguish them from
advertising hype. The challenges in the dialogue that can ensue will
probably be both to vendors and to librarians - my observation on
liblicense discussions is that the librarians do not always have justice
on their side - but as an optimist I always hope that the service to
library users will benefit from frank and open discussion.

Fred Friend

At 17:29 01/06/01 EDT, you wrote:
>
>	Still other readers have expressed a concern to me that
>	sometimes the postings on the list are too self-promoting of a
>	given correspondent's commercial business.  This is a harder
>	area for your moderator, though again liblicense-l strives to
>	include as much as possible, even press releases where they
>	appear to serve a useful and informative role.
>
>Many thanks to Ann Okerson for the entirety of this very thoughtful and,
>indeed, decorous, posting. As to the paragraph cited above, we are all
>rational professionals and can thus distinguish between marketing hype (in
>whatever veild forms it appears) and 'real' arguments of merit. At the
>same time, postings which are self-promoting would invite direct
>challenges from other members of this list which is also a great advantage
>since we, the consumers -- or potential consumers -- can generate frank
>and open discussions about the products we are meant to consume. These
>discussions can open paths of exploration of issues which might not
>otherwise exist and which might actually have some effect on the products
>offered to us. In my personal opinion, I feel that we, the members of this
>list, should feel free to challenge (in a positive and constructive way)
>those products with the intent of engaging their designers and creators in
>dialogue with the library community. If such a forum can exist -- and it
>may very well develop some tensions from time to time -- where (to quote
>an old adage) is the bad part??
>
>Peter Picerno