Roy, I definitely feel your pain about remorse for not accomplishing as
much reform as I would have liked in the jump to the corporate side of the
library world (although given the focus of your regret, maybe I was more
successful than I thought). You, of all people, have nothing to apologize
for.
I'm going to second Ed, though, and say that "linked data" isn't really the
problem (at least in the context you're describing) as much as RDF is: sort
of like how, a million years ago, we were obsessed with designing our
models so they could be serialized to XML, we ran straight back into the
same trap with RDF. Librarians confusing content with carrier,
who'd-a-thunk-it?
Ultimately, there's value in being able to definitively refer to the same
things: that doesn't mean absolutely everything needs to be its own,
completely decentralized, independent resource, but including identifiers
beats string matching any day. Ed's example is a really good one for
showing this: you can absolutely see something like that being a decent
replacement for MARC because it's completely self-contained, which is why
MARC a) worked b) has stuck around. Imagine a future where we're loading
our reel-to-reel tapes of BIBFRAME json-ld records into our GEAC
mainframes.
I will endorse your call to keep pursuing the evolution of "library data",
though: as we've moved to a primarily full text search ecosystem, we have
to find ways to ensure that resources we've curated don't get drowned out
in the aggregation of the (much larger) universe of content we lease. MARC
(for example) is bringing a knife to a gunfight in the current state of
library technology.
Still, you personally inspired more people than anyone to think about what
should come next.
-Ross.
On Thu, Oct 23, 2025 at 5:23 AM Roy Tennant <roytennant_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> 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 Thu Oct 23 2025 - 11:10:53 EDT