Re: WorldCat Local

Follow the money.  OCLC must have done some market research indicating
somebody was interested in a Local OpenWorldCat product - and you can
bet that somebody in Dublin, OH had given more than a little thought to
a full range of add-on products and services to offer once a library
starts using "Local."

Lets face it, not every library has the in-house technical expertise to
mount their own Endeca, Evergreen or Solr system.  Many libraries like -
and have bought and use - Aquabrowser, to scratch that "next gen" itch.
However, most Aquabrowser browsers users *appear* to small to medium
size libraries.  From the vendor's perspective this may be a good fit,
as the libraries interested in Aquabrowser aren't too demanding - the
databases aren't too big, in-house technical expertise at customer sites
doesn't need to be too vast, and the price must be right.

Here's a thought experiment.  Let the universe of libraries equal 100.
Of that 100, how do numbers break out:

   * Aquabrowser users - 0.5%

   * Endeca users - 0.01%

   * Solr users - 0.001%

   * Evergreen users 0.0001%

   * Well meaning, excited Evergreen wannabees struggling to get a first
build working - 7% (I'm being facetious - <grin> - I will soon be in
this category, I think)

   * Other faceted search tools (commercial, FOSS, science projects) -
1%

   * OCLC Local WorldCat users - ?

   * Uncommitted - 92% and change.

Don't like OCLC or Local OpenWorldCat?  Maybe its time for an
alternative.  Yeah, I know, OCLC just ate the last alternative, RLG, but
is the LibraryLand *really* without alternatives here?  Just how much
does Evergreen scale....

You know the old saw - "Don't get mad, get even?"  Don't worry, take
action.

Mark Andrews, Creighton University

-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Jonathan Rochkind
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2007 9:16 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] WorldCat Local

I worry.  I worry that the way we got in the situation we are in now is
by putting too much responsibility and control in the hands of our
vendors. I previously saw the solution as wresting this control _and
responsibility_ back from the vendors. We need to take responsibility
for _figuring out_ how our tools should work, and we need to have the
_ability_ to make what we figure out happen (or rather, to experiment in
innovation toward that direction).   On the one hand, to do this we
certainly need coordination and collaboration between institutions,
becuase none of us have the resources alone. On the other hand, we need
to 'let a thousand discovery tools bloom' too, in an ecology of
innovation and experimentation, to see what works.

Giving the public catalog to OCLC is not that. With OCLC Local we have
no more power to control what our interface looks like than we ever did.
We are taking no more responsibility for figuring it out than we ever
did.  Choosing OCLC as a catalog 'vendor' feels like just more of the
same---we are still just picking a vendor and letting them do all the
work with no responsibility or control from us. In this case, the vendor
just has a much better tool. For now.  But it's still a kind of vendor
lock-in.

Note that OCLC Local already indexes article content----from OCLC
provided databases only.  I'm not suggesting that this is OCLC's choice,
OCLC would (probably) like to index everyone elses articles too, but
everyone else may or may not be okay with that. The point is, this is
still a vendor we're dealing with. Or at any rate, an entity that has
economic interests an awful lot like a vendor, relationships with other
entities in the market (customers and competitors) an awful lot like a
vendor, and as a result acts an awful lot like a vendor.

Jonathan