One way of using central adressbooks is to setup directory assistance.
This works fine for few adressbooks and many (all) users of a domain using it.
The problem is, that this setting is pushed to every Notes User.
If you want to assign many small additional adressbooks, there is the possibility to assign central adressbooks out of different database types (e.g. mail/in, adressbook) to few users by changing the names= entry in notes.ini (e.g. with desktop policies).
The problem is, that if the adressbook source is not available on the specific server, the Client won´t adress or send a mail any more.
Adding a clustermate won´t work (see NTS-I-1969 "Use clusternames as a servername for central adressbooks in Notes.ini entry names =")
The Idea is to implement a new notes.ini feature e.g. additionalnames=, in which a path to one or more additional adressbook source(s) could be delcared. This new setting should not impede or stop the adressing and mailsending faunction, if the specific server is not available.
Furthermore it would be good, if this setting would be clusterable.
As an alternative directory assistance should be able to manage and assign many small adressbook sources to few users, without having an affect to the other users.