Issues in Vendor/Library Relations - Different

摘要

"Is Scotland different from England?" I was reading email on my Blackberry while riding from the Edinburgh airport with an English colleague who had arranged for us to visit some Scottish university libraries. So far Scotland hadn't looked different. The distant hills framed by low clouds and gray sky, the open countryside patched by trees, the petrol station off the highway where we had a snack, everything could have been anywhere in the east Midlands of England, which we'd passed through the day before on the way up. Edinburgh's airport greets the visitor passing out of the arrival gates with a celebration of the grandeurs of this capital city, dramatic photographic panels annotated with brief literary tributes, but we didn't glimpse the city at all while driving away, and the airport itself is an unprepossessing aggregation of gate modules, a structure you could swap with mid-sized airports anywhere.