My response is at:
http://www.librarything.com/thingology/labels/worldcat%20local.php
It was posted over a year ago. Everyone could see that controlling the
data was only the first step to controlling the whole stack. Koyle's
"switching function" argument—that OCLC needed to control the data
centrally and prohibit other uses to prevent commercial
exploitation—now becomes "in order to exploit it ourselves."
I see upsides and downsides:
1. This is terrible for my business, LibraryThing for Libraries, an
add-on for catalogs. I don't see Worldcat allowing libraries to add
LibraryThing code to Worldcat, do you? Allowing us access to the data
in order to provide it? If there's going to be innovation, it'll be on
OCLC's terms.
2. It's great for the OCLC Policy debate. Before now, the idea of OCLC
leveraging a data monopoly into a priviledged position in the library
software world was paranoid speculation. Well, here it is.
Tim
On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 3:25 PM, Frances Dean McNamara
<fdmcnama_at_uchicago.edu> wrote:
> Right. So sign up for that and then they can claim to own your holdings information as well as any bib information.
>
> And it's "free" if you subscribe. Right. OCLC is overpriced.
>
> Frances McNamara
> University of Chicago
Received on Thu Apr 23 2009 - 15:42:19 EDT