Andrews, Mark J. wrote:
> 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?
>
Mark,
It all depends on the contract you have with the source of your records.
OCLC's contract language is on its site, and is pretty liberal. I
believe it allows for all except commercial use. As I recall, the
vendors providing tables of contents have contract language that says
that you can't share the ToC fields outside of your library system.
The real question is: has anyone ever been hassled about re-using
records? I haven't heard of a case... has anyone else? And it's not like
we aren't sharing them because records are flying around all over the
place with metasearch and Z39.50 and all that.
Also, I know that there are libraries that get at least some of their
cataloging copy by screen-scraping off of other catalogs. OCLC makes it
a point not to show a very full bibliographic record on WorldCat,
undoubtedly to discourage free-riding on their bibliographic database,
but you can get a true MARC-formatted record from LC and a
screen-formatted record from just about any database in this country.
When I was working at UCal on their systems we once got a note from
someone in a monastery library in Italy who had cataloged the library
using the LC and MELVYL OPACs.
So I think we're beyond the point where anyone could say: that's MY
record. But we should also be looking hard at our contracts, because
that's where we're vulnerable.
kc
> 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
>
>
>
--
-----------------------------------
Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
------------------------------------
Received on Wed Apr 25 2007 - 12:59:18 EDT