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> would there be any interest in an academic homepage service
for map libraries? it would be cheaper for us to link our
homepage to a service designed to meet our ptron's needs and
pay subscription costs than try to maintain our own
independently at this and hundreds of other utonomous sites.
if a group like WAML would coordinate subscriptions at, say,
$100/yr, and maintain a comprehensive, generic service,
would you subscribe?
would anyone be willing to supply the service with things to
be featured on it?
would you pay a one-time fee for the generic service to
create a unique homepage for your specific collection,
linked to the generic one?
Realise, of course, that you could link to such a service
for free, so it would be established, maintained and
governed by map librarians as a general public service.
alternately, there are stingy control capabilities regarding
access, but the real benefit would be in transferring our
collective overhead to a machine, where possible.
governance would be pure Adam Smith: "those who pay the
piper call the tune."
structure and features would include a repository for
electronic map journals, answers to Frequently Asked
Questions, links to all known web resources--including
commercial map dealers (who might be asked to sunsidize the
service for actual referrals, an activity that's easily
monitored), and anything else we might agree is useful.
LC
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