Amazon does it. Now so does OCLC. According to Roy Tennant, as reported on the Free Range Librarian, OCLC has "released the ability for readers to write their own reviews." You can see this in action by searching Worldcat via Yahoo or Google.
That's very nice, but what I REALLY want is the ability to include comments in our online catalogs. How hard could that be? Wouldn't it be helpful to know what your resident expert on Mergers & Acquisitions thinks about the M&A books in your collection? Which ones are his favorites, which ones are useless? Oh, and one more thing. How about the ability to create a bibliography of the highest ranking books on a topic, complete with comments? These features would combine knowledge management and library research, and though relatively simple to implement, could have powerful results.
If only Amazon OR OCLC would start selling library software, maybe then we'd have a chance...
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