Week 4, Assignment #8 4th Clip (last one)

http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs_display?sub=2787047&site=9382755

"Ars Technica – “If information isn’t online, it may as well not exist. In the latest sign that the world of traditional print has become a world of hurt, the American Chemical Society is reported to be planning to switch to an online-only publishing model for its journals.”"

I am not surprised by this one bit. I have seen our Acquisitions budget shift from print to online. The science librarians want the online version for their patrons more than they want the print version too. What does surprise me is that the online version always seems to cost more. I would think less paper, less postage, less hassle, but that doesn't seem to be the way it works. We spend millions of dollars on electronic journals, so why should the ACS keep doing the print ones? They will probably make more money going this route. Seems like a smart business decision to me.

Week 4, Assignment #8 Second Clip

http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs_display?sub=2787045&site=12846126

Holy cow! Ohio might lose all their libraries completely???? That's insane. I thought things were bad here, where my local library is only open 15 hours a week or whatever, but this just sucks!

Week 4, Assignment #8 First Clip

http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs_display?sub=2787044&site=12846126

This whole thing about how hard it can be to find things on the internet sometimes. A conversation on Twitter at ALA, and how it got archived and now it's hard to find and there was good information in there etc.... well I haven't gotten as far as Twitter yet, but I can see some truth to this. I have heard this kind of comment before too. When you don't own the content, when you aren't hosting the site, etc... you can't control the information. When you have your own website and you post something, it stays put. However, if you put something on Facebook or Twitter, or MySpace or whatever, and then the people who run those services decide to do a reformat or if they go down or whatever, you lose your stuff and have to start all over again etc etc etc. It's something to consider. There are lots of places to put your stuff. Facebook might be popular now, but if something better comes along, or if Facebook does something stupid, then you have to start all over again. Just a thought.