-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        Re: Paper vs. Digital maps --"Building a Distributed Library
of Map Images"
Date:   Fri, 06 Mar 2009 13:34:19 -0800
From:   Jon Jablonski <[log in to unmask]>
Organization:   University of Oregon
To:     [log in to unmask]
References:     <[log in to unmask]>



Patrick McGlamery wrote, On 3/6/2009 12:33 PM:

...

> I'd like to think that reacting to an economic system is particularly
> not productive, but it might be.  Would the OAI exist without Google?
> And while it may be good to have a National Digital Library, it would
> also be most excellent to have a National Library.  Maybe.


I've always asked:  would Google exist unless thousands (tens of
thousands?) of librarians hadn't spent the first several years of the
web building pathfinders and posting their bookmark files to their
personal pages (remember then that was all the rage back in 1995?)  I
think this same chicken-and-egg question is valid for OAI, which (from a
cursory search of the literature) appeared in 2000 shortly on the heals
of Google's 1998 launch.

__________________________________________
Jon R. Jablonski                          541-346-3051
Associate Professor
David & Nancy Petrone MAP/GIS Librarian
University of Oregon Libraries