Well, I’ve waited 30 hours for this message to show up on publib but it’s not there yet, even though a batch of July 2 messages have arrived. Guess it’s stuck in the great spam filter in the sky so I figured I’d put it on this blog.
The combination of messages about how to support publib on a server that can handle 9000+ subscriber, with adequate space for the large archives, and less downtime and messages that never go out prompted an lot of discussion about options. Hopefully the discussion will continue in person during ALA. Since I won’t be there, I thought I’d share my thoughts via this blog.
When I saw messages Re: Customer Service Survey, coming on the heels of the “what to do about publib” discussion, it struck me that a survey of publib subscribers would be in order. Karen, Robert and others who send messages regularly have explained the issues and (some of) the options, perhaps more will emerge in the face-to-face gathering in Chi-town.
Could Web Junction help with a survey? Or perhaps a yahoo group could be set up specifically to get a poll? Trying to gauge the reactions of 9000+ subscribers from a handful of messages that regular responders have sent out going to be misleading at best.
Personally, I don’t think the NPR/PBS model works. Side by side with the appeals to members, corporate sponsorship has been morphing into something closer to advertiser support for years. Put it all together, locally and nationally — a mind-boggling effort goes into raising funds for public radio and tv. If those fund raising costs could only be funneled into programming, just think what we could see and hear.
Back to publib — periodically we get into disagreements about what’s posted here; add to that potential conflicts among different tiers of subscribers and paid moderators will be necessary, imo.
To be brutally honest, I for one could not/would not pay for a subscription. There’s perhaps one in the 10-12 listservs that I follow that I’d be willing to scrape money together for (living on a fixed income about a decade sooner than I’d planned to retire does not accomodate frills.)
