On 9/21/07, Tomasz Neugebauer <Tomasz.Neugebauer_at_concordia.ca> wrote:
> My humble opinion is that Libraries have been too reluctant to publish
> their authority records in a format that can be used for computer
> science research. Libraries have rich classification schemes and
> structured subject vocabularies, semantically rich catalogues; the
> problem is that they are too reluctant/slow to make these structures
> public, to share them with computer scientists, for example.
I think you're spot on, and for anyone who's followed the fuzz of ODF
vs. OOXML lately and the fast-tracking efforts of Microsoft, that too
digs into the core of the problem ; open format vs. closed (or, in
OOXML's case, "too proprietary")
To allow innovation to happen, you need to make these things open, and
not only open, but simple and easy to use. (Where are our open API's?
Have we done anything towards a simpler meta data system since DC?
What are we doing to integrate / merge it with MARC? Where's our
services that allows re purposing of our data?) You must allow people
to play and experiment. Some claim that there's a risk in it, that the
data we've carefully assembled will be "stolen" and used for free, and
as much as that's probably true, evidence shows that people are more
than happy to allow the source of the data to be the guardian of that
data (this again dips into why open-source actually works quite well;
people are happy to let you assume leadership and control of the
direction and the source, as long as there is significant freedom
given in the process).
Maybe the library world simply don't understand open-source? Thinking
of the open Z39.50 gateways around we can say we *do* understand it
(open access), but then given the nature of Z39.50 (proprietary, and
that whole "culture of MARC" thing) itself I'd say we'd completely
missed the point. :) I'm sure Tim / LibraryThing could chirp in here
about getting to open-source library meta data. We simply don't open
up the same way Amazon or Google does. Maybe we should?
Alex
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Received on Thu Sep 20 2007 - 17:51:03 EDT