I have mixed feelings about this. Z39.50 was supposed to be the
original Napster for libraries. At the same time libraries declare
themselves to be working for open information, collaboration, and
constantly scream for publishers to give their info away, they do
their utmost to make sure no one can do anything useful with anything
they create that has any value. Libraries did a great job of
advocating for Z39.50 until people started using it. Then everyone
wants it turned off. It's like building a radio station and then
jamming your own signal.
The reality is that the vast majority of records are created at public
expense and that the type of place that's going to download records
via Z39.50 isn't going to pay anyway. The real value of worldcat is
the holdings database and having a single place to go for all
bibliographic and authority work. You can't replicate that effectively
simply by broadcast searching a bunch of large libraries via Z39.50.
One thing I find strange about the whole Z39.50 debate is that many of
the most vocal opponents of "record nabbing" want to see their library
catalog in Google. In other words, it's a good thing to freely share
our data with a company with over $150 billion in market
capitalization, but it's a bad thing to share it with some podunk
library with no money that wants to make things better for their
patrons or some geek who wants to use the data to develop better tools
for everyone.
> Current standard cataloging practices at many institutions does not
> assuage my fears. Cataloging workflow often goes: 1) Check to see if a
> record already exists in Worldcat. 2) If yes, use it, if not---put the
> book on the shelf and check again in 3 months. 3) Repeat until it's a
> year old, and then finally, reluctantly, do the cataloging yourself.
> And worldcat record aren't even free!
Unfortunately, there is a great deal of truth in this. While this type
of use can be regarded as parasitic, the reality is that we shouldn't
expect most people to make meaningful contributions. Think of all the
open source tools you use and then think about what you actually can
help with. Frankly, there's no way to force people to work with you
and the quality of coerced contributions is suspect anyway. Better to
just ignore noncontributors and recognize that the best way to
generate ideas is to keep the barriers to participation as low as
possible.
> At least part of the solution has got to be in making cataloging more
> efficient to reduce the cost per record.
My own sense is that the individual ILS is largely an anachronism that
will fade with time since it's nuts for everyone to download and
twiddle about with the same record 1000 times and pay to authorize the
same records over and over at every library. Moving this to a network
level makes so much more sense, and I suspect that where most of the
action will eventually be found.
kyle
Received on Fri Mar 28 2008 - 11:54:07 EDT