Exactly. I expect _more_ from OCLC, a non-profit cooperative whose
mission is to serve libraries, then I do from dot.com corporations whose
mission is to maximize profit.
OCLC in it's communications, formal and informal, emphasizes this fact,
and wants us to trust them and support them because of this. Well, it's
a two-way street -- if they want credit for not being a for-profit
corporation, they need to act like it, and that means we expect MORE of
them.
But at the same time I recognize OCLC needs to find a sustainable
business model, they do need revenue to support their programs which
serve us. They just need to find a way to do this that isn't against the
interests of their membership, as trying to create a monopoly on library
bibliographic data quite clearly (to us) is.
Interesting, my understanding of that original 1986 policy is that it
came out of a similar controversy -- OCLC tried to exert copyright over
the records in WorldCat. The membership got really upset. Those 1986
guidelines came out of it, a compromise in which some restrictions were
proposed as 'guidelines', but no ownership was claimed. In trying to
'update' those 1986 guidelines, OCLC has repeated history, 'updating'
them to try to grab the kind of legal control that they tried before but
the members wouldn't let them do. However, it's a different world now.
One where this kind of control is even MORE harmful than it was 20 years
ago -- but also one where the ranks of catalogers have been decimated
and de-professionalized, such that the cataloging community may be less
able to take on OCLC, or to realize when they ought to be doing so.
Indeed, in the end, if OCLC does not act in it's members interests, the
blame lies at the feet of members for not insisting that OCLC do so.
Jonathan
Tim Spalding wrote:
>> 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."
>>
>
> I'm preaching to the quire, but the response to this is:
>
> 1. Amazon, Proquest and Twitter are corporations. Libraries are
> without exception non-profit entities, and almost all are either
> government entities or receive some amount of government funds in the
> pursuit of a public goal. Most of the data was created by public
> servants paid by with tax dollars and cannot be legally owned, but by
> a sort of alchemy and the inherited accident of standing between all
> libraries, it is transformed into a saleable, restricted good and the
> center of a monopoly—which none of the commercial companies are.
>
> Pardon the hyperbole, but OCLC's theory amounts to a sort of
> "extraordinary rendition" for metadata—just send it to Dublin, Ohio
> and they'll do things Washington couldn't.
>
> 2. The Wikipedia flip is clever. But, of course, this would be a
> different argument if OCLC were only asking for *attribution*. There
> is a vast universe of such data, which is still fundamentally open for
> requiring some minimal notice. In this case, there aren't good grounds
> for attaching Creative Commons licenses—which is based on Copyright
> law, which doesn't apply here. But few would object if OCLC just want
> a link.
>
> The real issue isn't attribution, but monopoly. Wikipedia can be
> forked—it isn't a monopoly. It has never been successfully forked
> because Wikipedians see the value of its coherence and feel in charge
> of the institution they contribute to. Wikipedia stays together by
> being responsive to its members. OCLC needs to prevent forking through
> *legal* means because it can't trust its members to support it.
>
> Best,
> Tim
>
>
Received on Mon Apr 20 2009 - 11:41:33 EDT