While we're on this topic, has the issue of record ownership been
definitively resolved? If (for conversation's sake) I wanted to make my
catalog the basis of a union catalog for a city, county, state, region,
nationally, internationally, is there any reason why I can't do that?
If my neighbor down the street wants to contribute their records to this
effort, can they do that? If the records of one or more libraries
include those created locally, that came from a book jobber, from LC or
another national union catalog, or from OCLC (all mixed together), and I
choose to use these records to offer some service that competes with
OCLC, can I do that and still remain an OCLC customer? Even if its
legal, are there ethical or moral issues here? Do the answers to these
questions vary by jurisdiction? For example, when I was in library
school many moons ago, I heard a war story that the University of
Missouri System's lobbyist in Washington, DC made a patent application
for a week's changes to their union catalog, as well as the catalog as a
whole - weekly at the Patent Office. The idea those records belonged to
the taxpayers of Missouri, regardless of where they records originally
came from or how they were produced, and no matter what OCLC had to say
about the matter. OCLC, for its part (so the war story went) did the
same darn thing, to protect their claim that the OCLC Union Catalog was
a "unique bibliographic entity that exists as a unique work (and asset)
in its own right."
Just curious about whether any of this is still an issue.
Mark Andrews, Creighton University
________________________________
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Casey Durfee
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2007 12:06 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Spiderable OPACs and the elephant in the library
lobby
What if the data was open-source/creative commons, so anybody could do
whatever they wanted with it?
Thought experiment: what would happen if Wikipedia decided tomorrow to
start charging for access to their site?
>>> Jason Griffey <Jason-Griffey_at_UTC.EDU> 4/24/2007 6:03 PM >>>
That's a nice thought, kgs, but as we all know...we're already under the
thumb of the big O. :-)
The one issue with a national catalog with local instantiations is that,
by definition, we would have to be beholden to someone. So unless we
want to start a non-profit library consortia that is dedicated to the
maintenance of bibliographic data...
...wait a sec...
...oh yeah, that didn't work last time.
Jason
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries on behalf of K.G. Schneider
Sent: Tue 4/24/2007 11:47 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Spiderable OPACs and the elephant in the library
lobby
> |Which has to have an identifier. Or some identifiers. And needs to
> |know its relationship to other bibliographic records (editions,
> |reprintings). ...
> |Hmmm. It sounds so simple, doesn't it?
>
> Sounds like OCLC WorldCat to me...
>
> Harvey
I wonder how many of us are conceptually on board with the concept of a
national catalog, and yet hesitate to endorse this concept (or even
argue
for a functional model we realize is not working for us now, if it ever
did)
because the only functional model remotely available to us (and not that
remote any more, either) would place us under the control of the Big O.
Karen G. Schneider
kgs_at_bluehighways.com
Received on Wed Apr 25 2007 - 11:12:29 EDT