> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Andrews, Mark J.
> Sent: 25 April, 2007 13:17
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Spiderable OPACs and the elephant in the
> library lobby
>
> 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?
You can do whatever you want with any intellectual property you
create. So if you want to make them freely available then that's
your decision.
> If my neighbor down the street wants to contribute their records
> to this effort, can they do that?
It depends on the term you set for them to contribute and whether
those terms are acceptable.
> 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?
I think this is still a sticky issue. You are using someone elses
intellectual property.
> Even if its legal, are there ethical or moral issues here?
If it were legal, it would seem to me, that you should at the
minimum cite the sources you used to build your collection and
maintain for each record the source it was derived from.
> 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."
Actually, I don't think that's how it happened. I think what
happened was the OCLC members council decided to copyright
WorldCat as an aggregation to protect its members and made a
filing with the Copyright office. I believe the motivation
behind the claim was that OCLC found out that some prior members
downloaded the entire WorldCat while members and were building
services around the data. Which was in violation of their service
agreements when they were OCLC memebers. This was prior to the
Internet when OCLC was only accessible through their own WAN.
Unfortunately, OCLC members council didn't communicate this very
well to the membership and some members didn't understand what
OCLC was trying to accomplish and it led to a number of members
filing copyright claims on their local catalogs, as well, which
was well within their rights, but didn't affect OCLC aggregation
claim with the Copyright office.
Like you said, its been many moons ago and I didn't take notes at
the time, except a mental one about effective communication.
Andy.
Received on Wed Apr 25 2007 - 12:56:01 EDT