I just got back from the NETSL conference in Worcester, MA. I spoke on
library data as DATA, and linked data (slides at
http://kcoyle.net/metadata_netsl_09.ppt, about 10M, lots of pictures,
will do as ppt or add to slideshare for easier viewing).
Ted Fons spoke later during the day about OCLC and its plans. His slides
aren't up yet, but will be linked from
http://www.nelib.org/netsl/conference/2009/index.htm, hopefully soon. He
did a section on OCLC policy, and my notes have these quotes: "Truly
free data is rare." and "There is no such thing as free metadata." And
one slide was: "Reality: everybody has terms and conditions" -- he
listed there Amazon, ProQuest, AllMusic, Twitter, and said "Even
Wikipedia requires attribution." (He also had interesting sections on
upcoming services, so I recommend the slides for that info.)
Maybe we live in alternate realities, because I see a Web that is awash
in free metadata, much of it metadata about the kinds of things that
libraries care about, including metadata found at Amazon, AllMusic,
Wikipedia. Without this 'awash' LibraryThing could not exist, Open
Library could not exist, Zotero wouldn't be useful. Google has figured
out how to pull information about scholarly articles off of Web sites,
and I'm sure they've got someone figuring out how to 'catalog' books
from the OCR of web pages (and it could turn out to be friendlier
cataloging that what libraries turn out).
Like Tim, I'm just not seeing OCLC's argument as having relevance today.
At the same time, I think that OCLC's cataloging services, ILL, data
munging, etc. are very valuable, so this side show about the records
seems to be detracting from a more positive message that OCLC could be
sending out -- they still provide a service that libraries want.
Antagonizing their customers is just so... so.. . so RIAA.
kc
Tim Spalding wrote:
>> Interestingly, libraries are not required to retain the 996 fields that OCLC will provide after the effective date of the policy, and they are just "encouraged" to retrospectively add the 996 to WorldCat records transferred to others.
>>
>
> A lot of people cheered when OCLC backed down from requiring to
> "encouraging" the insertion and retention of OCLC licensing terms in
> MARC records. But the terms themselves didn't change. A library caught
> mis-using or mis-transferring could but cut off from OCLC records,
> including the ones they already had and upon which their library
> depended day-to-day. And, of course, only OCLC got to say when a
> library was misbehaving.
>
> So a clear situation turned into a murky one—every copy-cataloged
> record became legal worry. And when it comes to libraries—which are,
> let us admit, not inclined or equipped to fight legal
> battles—unclarity is paralysis.
>
> I don't know about you, but I've stopped caring what OCLC does. They
> have shown they will push for onerous, monopolistic terms. And they've
> shown they'll back down in the face of concerted action by the library
> and open-data community. They goals and their weakness are known. At
> this point, if OCLC succeeds in locking library information up,
> libraries have only themselves to blame.
>
> Tim
>
>
>
--
-----------------------------------
Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
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Received on Sun Apr 19 2009 - 16:08:43 EDT