Fwd: Free Books from Sams Publishing for your User Group

[Lance Mazon]

  I'm a lurker who has yet to attend a meeting, but even so, perhaps a
previous experience of mine could help out...  A user group I was a member
of had both a software and a book library.  One person was designated as the
Librarian.  Basically, this person was responsible for maintaining the
libraries.  The software library was brought to each monthly meeting, along
with a catalog of all books available.  If somebody wanted a book from the
library, they informed the librarian which book they wanted, and the book
was either brought to the next meeting, or the user could travel to the
librarian's house if the need was urgent.
  This worked out well because the software was easily loaded into a small
vehicle in less then a couple minutes, and the librarian wasn't constantly
lugging the books around.  They kept them in a nice secure place, and
everybody was happy.
  Now the other side of the story: Nobody ever checked out books.
Occasionally somebody would browse the list and request a book be brought to
the next meeting, but, chances are the librarian would forget(which annoyed
the user), or the user wouldn't need the book anymore(which annoyed the
librarian).
  I guess what I'm trying to say is that the idea of an online version of
the books being maintained is probably much more feasible.  Hardcopy books
are great, but usually are needed "now", and the typical user will either go
buy the needed book, or borrow it from a friend or local library rather than
wait for the next meeting to come around.

Lance Mazon
lancem at colubs.com
Senior Programmer - R&D
Columbia Ultimate, Inc.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pdx-pm-list at pm.org [mailto:owner-pdx-pm-list at pm.org]On
> Behalf Of Joe Oppegaard
> Sent: Monday, July 08, 2002 3:09 PM
> To: Ovid
> Cc: pdx-Pm-List at pm.org
> Subject: Re: Fwd: Free Books from Sams Publishing for your User Group
>
>
> On Mon, 8 Jul 2002, Ovid wrote:
>
> > 1.  Establishing a pdx.pm library would be nice, but who would
> be the librarian, and where would
> > the library be kept?
>
> Every month someone could volunteer to hold on to the books until the
> next meeting, and if anyone wanted to use one, whoever was the
> "librarian" that month could setup a place to meet and exchange books.
>
> > 2.  If we don't establish a library (I don't see how it would
> be feasible), who gets the books?  I
> > could just write back to this person and get an armload of free
> books, but that doesn't seem very
> > fair.
>
> I think the solution above would take care of this. Although, maybe it
> should be someone who has been around the meeting at least a few times.
> They also should probably leave some type of contact information
> (besides email) where someone could get a hold of them to pick up the
> books if they couldn't make it to the next meeting or whatever.
>
> > 3.  Is anyone willing to write reviews on the books to post on
> our Web site?
>
> Hard to say, maybe if we saw the titles. I for one would be
> willing to write
> reviews for a free book or two. ;)
>
> > 4.  [insert your own question here, even if you don't answer it]
> 4. Would people be willing to volunteer to hold on to the books and be
> responsible for getting them to people who want them?
>
> I would expect the common way to deal with that would be for whomever
> wants the book to make it as easy as possible for the librarian.
>
> On Mon, 8 Jul 2002, Tom Phoenix wrote:
> > But if (_if_) somebody wants to review these and
> > post the review on the website, then (A) the reviewer should get to keep
> > the reviewed book and (B) we should get at least one other publisher to
> > contribute books. I'm pretty sure that we could get at least two
> > publishers from the set { O'Reilly, Manning, Addison Wesley }
> to match the
> > contribution.
>
> If that happened, it sounds like this could be a pretty worth
> while endevor.
>
> > But it sounds like more trouble than it's worth, unless
> > somebody out there really wants some free books.
>
> Although, this could turn out to be true also.
>
> --
> -Joe Oppegaard
> http://joppegaard.com
>
>
> TIMTOWTDI

TIMTOWTDI