Richard Akerman in Science Library Pad makes a good point (content should be accessible globally) and counterpoint (which I interpret as "content that is produced locally should be hosted locally").
"The network effect means that an active site with a lot of users will attract more users.This is one of the reasons I think initiatives like OCLC WorldCat reviews will have a hard time gaining traction. Hasn't Amazon won the mindshare for book reviews?. . . ."
"On the other hand, if your site is just a list of pointers that say e.g., 'use connotea for bookmarking,' not only are your scientists gaining the benefit of bookmarking in a collaborative space with other scientists.... but they're also taking a risk, as is your organization. Connotea blows up? Good bye local collective organization wisdom."
Already I've been finding myself wanting to write my book reviews on my own site or blog and link from there to Amazon's page for the book in question, rather than (or in addition to) posting the reviews on Amazon's site. Others viewing Amazon's page for the book would still find my review, using a third-party annotation reader such as the W3C's Annotea or the recently-released "Blogger Web Comments for Firefox." Meanwhile, people in my local community could find my review through local indices or local search.
This basic pattern (host locally for search globally) follows naturally from the structure of the web itself. It can be applied not only to bookstores and libraries but to other merchants and service providers, and anyone else who organizes an activity that is "local" geographically or even socially. It could be applied to consumer reviews of products and services purchased from local merchants, who could host the reviews and/or let their customers host their own. Either way, on their own sites, merchants could always add their own replies and suggestions. This demonstration of expertise would draw relational buyers to the store just as surely as would a low price or close proximity.
The remaining portions of the solution are local organizational indexing, proximity-based web search, and (as Richard Akerman suggests) protocols to facilitate aggregation. Libraries and local chambers of commerce already do local indexing. Google Local and now Froogle (since the November introduction of of Google Base) provide proximity-based search, (as do some social networking sites including Friendster). The bases of the required metadata schema probably already exist in a business-to-business (B2B) context. The key will be to integrate the first two elements now and, soon, the third.
Arguably, consumers (and thus producers) benefit more when data is stored and interchanged in standardized formats than when it is stored in standardized repositories. To standardize on interfaces between functions enables competition on a fine scale, because each function can be provided by a "best of breed" provider.
The market thrives when firms can specialize. Our modern competitive telephone network is based on standardized protocols, and thus far, standards (whether as data formats, such as HTML, JPG, and XML; or as interchange protocols, such as FTP, SMTP, POP, and HTTP) have comprised the DNA of each organism in the internet symbiosis. Next-generation standards building on the "semantic web" ideas are likely to be essential to the continued success of the internet and to our networked life.
My bottom line for merchants, or producers in general -- anyone with a product, service, information, or organization to offer -- is this: Write down today what you have to offer and publish that list to the web where it can be searched. Do this now. Over time there will be better ways to do this, and we should expect that any web service will get cheaper. In fact, it was for this reason that I waited two years to launch Nearish.com after conceiving the idea in spring 2003. But as of last month, Google Base is free of cost to you, it does not require any specialized file formats that would lock you into Google's solution, and to create your list requires only a spreadsheet such as Excel. Therefore, how could an online presence get any cheaper, and why should you delay? Go for it!
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