Monday 17 October 2011

Third Thought: Content Enrichment

From a technological standpoint Content Enrichment is the next logical step. The limits of MARC records were the limits of hardware capacity and speed. With these limitations demolished by the capacity of modern servers, a catalogue augmented in the way is able to offer a wider array of features and give better insight into what a resource is about. I would have carted far-fewer books home on the bus during my undergrad if I was able to immediately screen the sources.

The only real issue (I think) is that creates another niche service to which libraries will be forced to subscribe. Book vendors and e-subscription providers now have content enrichment groups for company in the network of groups that charge libraries a premium so that they can, in turn, meet patron expectations. I will not call CE a necessary evil, but it is a necessary trend. Even the academic publishing market has become so inflated that a librarians would be forced to devout large amounts of time and effort to achieving the same result as is being offered by the private and specialized firms. In the long run better service always has a price.

1 comment:

  1. Great post - you bring up an aspect that no one else has (yet); namely, how libraries obtain CE. As you say, it's not feasible for libraries to go on their own in this regard, but it does mean that there's another service libraries will have to contract out for, and possibly on unfavourable terms.

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