Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Is That The Fat Lady I Hear?

In the course of my job, I sign the library up for electronic access to journals and magazines we receive in physical form. To do this, I have to give a an email address, so I give my work email address. Sometimes a magazine think this means that I'm the subscriber, as opposed to the library being the subscriber. This leads the magazine to appeal to me as if I care about the magazine's contents. The worst of these is Opera America. "Read by all the decision makers in the opera industry" - if that doesn't have the keening ring of desperation I don't know what does. They keep importuning me to buy ad space in their magazine. Good business model, folks. If I were a real subscriber, I wouldn't be any more.