> OCLC's funding would have to be revised from a payment per
> record use to, e.g., an annual membership fee based on, say, the size of
> the library, by whatever yardstick one would measure this.
OCLC does in fact charge libraries an annual fee depending on the size of
the library - in addition to charging for downloaded records and other
services. Take a look at the Pricelist (effective July 1, 2009)
http://www.wils.wisc.edu/oclc/oclcprices_09.pdf, page 1. There you can see
"access fees" which have a custom price, depending on the libraries size "by
whatever yardstick one would measure this". In the accompanying footnote
(80) it says: "The Access Subscription cost is the charge for using the OCLC
cataloging and resource sharing systems infrastructure."
Anyway, a big part of OCLC's revenues (35%) comes from "Metadata services".
(See http://www.oclc.org/de/de/news/publications/annualreports/2008/2008.pdf,
page 50). I agree that OCLC will have to open up its data and shift its
revenues in order to be Web2.0-compatible & I hope members will lead to this
change. Like Bernie Sloan said, catalogs will become unattractive and even
worthless to the users if the catalog-data can't circulate and yield
innovative usage. To be part of the web a catalog shouldn't be a walled
garden or silo but rather integrate other application's data as well as
provide data for other applications.
Adrian
*This post reflects solely my opinion and not necessarily that of my
employer.*
Received on Wed Apr 15 2009 - 05:08:22 EDT