Re: One library or many?

[Samuel Trosow <strosow@uwo.ca>]

Gee Joe, you're right. It would be a HUGE savings! Libraries at each
institution? How silly.

And while cost conscious administrators are at it, there are probably
plenty of personnel savings to be found using such logic. If you only need
one library, maybe you only need one librarian. What a fabulous idea,
think of all of the money that would be saved. It would take the strain
off the serials budget and there'd be less squawking about the high costs
of periodicals then.

And why stop with librarians, why not eliminate the nasty costs of the
professoriate as well?  After all, with all of the marvelous information
technologies at our fingertips, all we need do is caputure each prof's
best lecture, and get their course outlines on something like WebCT. Why
face the nasty prospect of recurring salaries when there could be a
reasonable technological fix?

Certainly we'll need adminstrators to keep thinks running smoothly. And of
course, we'll need to have private information vendors...the
administrators will need to have lunch without someone.

Great ideas Joe, keep'm coming. Only problem is, someday you may be the
only one left on this list!

Sam Trosow
University of Western Ontario

> >To me, it seems obvious that the day when the world's scholarly,
> peer-reviewed literature can easily be stored by each and every library in
> the world -- a wise move to ensure its ready access and preservation - is
> within reach, if indeed it is not here already.
>
> JE:  Why "stored by each and every library"?  If it's on the Internet, you
> only need one library.  That's a huge savings for cash-strapped
> universities.
>
> Joe Esposito