> But there's an important distinction. When I bring this up to catalogers,
> they often say "Well, those records CAN'T have an OCLC number on them,
> becuase they are NOT OCLC records, it would be a LIE."
Particularly a lie as having an OCLC number is one of the criteria by
which the OCLC Policy FAQs determine whether a record is "OCLC's" or
not. (FAQs, Attribution of WorldCat #6)
You know what I want to do? I want to make a competitor with WorldCat
Local. It's a great model—a cloud-based OPAC/ILS. I think I could do
it better than OCLC could, and I think people would pay for that.
Maybe they wouldn't, but I'd sure like to try and show I can.
Alas, to make that I'd need to assemble the data. And that would be
against the OCLC policy and any library attempting to buy my service
would lose all their OCLC-derived records. So, what was supposed to be
OCLC's benevolent "curation" of community content is now the lynch pin
of a software monopoly.
On the plus side, I think this wakes the behemoths, the OPAC vendors,
who should get together to sue OCLC over their non-profit status and
as a monopoly. I hate the notion of LT as a "vendor," but sign me up
for that.
Tim
Received on Thu Apr 23 2009 - 17:59:42 EDT