----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > > 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