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I can relate. I have fifty Oracle books, if I have even one. Still have twenty or thirty DOS books.
Concepts and ideas are my business. More so than the software that embodies them. So let me solve this problem for you. Or at least try to!!
What I would pay for would have to offer:
- secure online access to "published" materials. It has to be SSL access or better. I am tracked by lots of people any time I set foot on the web. Both people who like me and people who do not like me. Some of these are competitors. I will never willingly announce to my competition which books I am reading, when, or why.
- A better experience than hard copy text reading. A better experience than mailing list or web reference mining.
- A more current and state of the art status than any other media.
- Links to other related info, related books, and perhaps direct contact with authors. Years after the fact, authors have informed me that feedback they received directly or indirectly from me was highly valuable to them. I could have used their feedback to my feedback, years previously.
- More affordable than my current hardbound library investment.
- More usable, more effective than my office library.
So. Lets see where that leaves us:
1) An online service, which I may need to access from anywhere, anytime.
2) Current, updated, state of the art information for all information provided. No aging.
3) Cost effective. Not as stringent as it sounds, since my average monthly cost for books is in the hundreds of dollars a month, all together.
4) Cross-spectrum, cross-publisher, the entire printed universe as a content population.
5) Searchable, cross referenceable, criss-crossable and multi-volume open at the same time able.
6) Related links, with perhaps a real time RSS feed on blogs (with entries as sub items, searchable).
7) Connections to authors and principal investigators (scientists).
8) Taggable. So I can bookmark, annotate, and return as I please.
9) Secure, or relatively so. SSL at least. Maybe better.
Hmmmm. Lets ponder for a moment. If we consider book and blob and email newsletters and xml-dev type lists as database line items or object entries, and think of a pure java access interface (gui, run anywhere) with an xml transport layer (many to many middleware capable), I think we have it.
Problem solved?
Not as hard as what the Library of Congress is busy doing, I think.
Let me know if this helped you, Ok?
Thanks!
Larry
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