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Fri, 23 Feb 1996 09:44:19 EST |
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As a museum administrator, I had blithely assumed that some sort of
shared public access catalog for even narrow sets of collections (for
example botanical collections) could be readily specified and
developed. I was wrong, and wrong to a degree that I had barely
imagined possible. My experience was that museums have vastly
different perceptions of the organizations of their collections; have
vastly different resources, including, but not limited to, expertise
and computer platforms; have vastly different organizational
priorities. Finally, I encountered a startling amount of friction in
the community I was working in among competing platforms and
development efforts.
I think that your idea of a shared OPAC is admirable, but at best, I
would limit it to a smaller subset of types of collections. There are
also many existing efforts toward that end that you need to research
(I think Getty is leading one whole area in the Art Museum world).
Finally, if you are a commercial venture, and hope to make money from
this, I would advise serious market research and an in depth review of
the potential obstacles and competitors.
Eric Siegel
[log in to unmask]
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