Google Meets eBay: What Academic Librarians Can Learn from Alternative Information Providers

Google Meets eBay: What Academic Librarians Can Learn from Alternative Information Providers: "Google Meets eBay
What Academic Librarians Can Learn from Alternative Information Providers"

The study is an admirable undertaking, but the "cost" area is fraught with apples to oranges problems. They are costing the Cornell academics with salary and benefits but neglecting to include any overhead expense for the library collection, lights, heat, internet and computing services, online subscriptions, etc. Morever even including all that expense only brings them up to a "cost of goods sold" level which is going to be lower than the wholesale price. Google on the other hand is dealing with an auction market which is, after all, the retail price.

On the other hand you have library personnel who have been selected presumably because of possession of an academic "union card" of one sort or another, with one or two masters degrees, while the Google researchers are selected and padi by the marketplace based on merit or price-product quality alone.