I know that you haven’t heard from me for years, and now all of a sudden
I’ve resurfaced. But don’t worry, I only have a few things to say and then
you can go back to your regular programming, just like I will return to
fixing trails and rowing rivers. It’s just that you’re the only audience
who will actually understand what I have to say.
*I have a major confession, an abject apology, and a humble suggestion.*
But first I must set up my key mistake. I will do my best to keep it brief,
but I’m sorry to those of you who may have heard some of this before. I
just want to make sure you all have the relevant background to understand
how I arrived at my key mistake.
I was the lead author with two others for the first book about the Internet
for librarians (we capitalized “internet” back then), and one of the first
dozen or so books about the internet for the layperson *total*. I parlayed
that into a speaking and writing career that took me to a number of
countries around the world. I wrote or edited half-a-dozen books. I was
regarded as somewhat of a library technology leader.
And then, toward the end of my career, I blew it. I made the wrong
decision. Here’s how it happened, and why it matters.
To reduce a lot of years into a small summary, I felt like I was a bit like
Forrest Gump, where I found myself at the center of so much of the major
transition that libraries were experiencing from the mid-80s to the
mid-90s. If you were at a major university you experienced this earlier
than if you were at a public library, simply because universities were
plugged into the Internet earlier than public libraries. But public
libraries totally experienced automating circulation and the card catalog
as well as the CD-ROM library index revolution. And then, the internet.
In my personal trajectory as a library professional, at some point I’d
essentially reached a point in library technology where I’d come to
understand that the biggest obstacle to libraries doing what I felt they
should be capable of doing was the antiquated MARC standard. Of course that
led to my oft-cited “MARC Must Die” Library Journal column, as well as
other takes on that in subsequent years that I won’t bother citing.
So when I felt myself at a professional stalling point I looked around to
where to go next, and given my take on where I thought librarianship should
go, I thought I should pick who had the wherewithal to fix our essential
problem—our library metadata.
That was OCLC. Only OCLC had both the data itself (WorldCat) and the
computing power (a 50-node compute cluster with gigabytes of RAM and a
Hadoop platform for parallel processing) to do what I thought needed to be
done. Using this infrastructure I did a lot of processing of MARC, and
discovered a lot of serious issues, including how difficult it was to know
when a URL would actually lead you to the full-text of an item (this is
essentially impossible in a frightening number of cases).
And I tried. But I didn’t try hard enough, or I couldn’t convince a truly
corporate culture to actually care to do something that didn’t result in a
profit. Or I failed to find a way to do the right thing and still make a
profit. Whatever the reason, I failed. This is my confession.
Also, I just have to say that I went along with the whole “linked data”
thing, because the “keeper of the flame”—the Library of Congress—believed
that should be the next thing. And so OCLC was going along and I played
along as well. But I was not happy with it. I just didn’t feel like I could
oppose it. Partly I was simply unsure. I didn’t know where this new
technology might go. Instinctively, I felt like it was too complicated for
what we needed (frankly I just wanted a much better MARC), but I didn’t
feel positioned well to oppose it. Another failure.
I was let go at the end of August 2018 because I was not suited to put on
events. Well, yeah. It wasn't the reason why I joined OCLC to begin with,
but I take full responsibility for not understanding the job I was
accepting or had become over the years. It’s on me.
I just wish I could have made a better case for OCLC to do what only OCLC
could do. To do the metadata processing of MARC that could have really
brought it truly into the computer age. So this is my abject apology.
I truly wish I had found a way to make a real, lasting difference for
libraries when I saw it in front of my face. I didn’t. I’m sorry.
Please don’t feel sorry for me, or think you need to reassure me about my
impact on you or the profession. I’m really not looking for reassurance or
approval. I just want to set some things straight about my positions on
library metadata, especially given my association with OCLC and the Library
of Congress. And I want to publicly own my mistakes, which seems like the
right thing to do at this point in my life.
If I could end this with one suggestion, it would be for CODE4LIB to take
on designing a revised metadata standard that was actually well-designed
for machine processing. Design something that solves problems without being
a pain in the ass like linked data, and make a real case for it. Set up a
non-profit organization to manage it and change the library world. If
there’s any group of people best positioned to do this, it’s you!
You have my love and respect, even while you may be thinking about what an
idiotic suggestion I just made. And all that's OK.
Roy
Received on Wed Oct 22 2025 - 22:13:34 EDT