James Weinheimer:
"But again, if I am correct in my understanding, the master record held
in OCLC, along with the OCLC control number will become very valuable,
indeed."
Karen Coyle:
"...I think it already is very valuable, although under-utilized due to
restrictions (e.g. membership). This adds to my bewilderment about
OCLC's apparent fear of competition. OCLC has an extremely valuable
product, is used by over 60,000 libraries, and has 30 years of history
with the library community. Why are they acting so defensively?"
Me:
Google?
(see:
http://www.niso.org/publications/white_papers/StreamlineBookMetadataWork
flowWhitePaper.pdf )
Allen Mullen on AUTOCAT recently culled the following from the report
(p. 6):
"For current books, Google Book Search is ingesting both ONIX and MARC
records to collect the best possible metadata. Their preference is for
good quality MARC over poorly formed ONIX and well formed ONIX over poor
quality MARC. While ONIX has missing data elements, MARC data may exist
but isn't machine-friendly in terms of understanding the data. There
are a number of librarians working at Google on metadata issues and
Google is also working with OCLC. Google supports standards and follows
new ones as they develop and are adopted over time. Google is also
working to develop algorithms that may solve the problem of
distinguishing related works."
Should we assume that just because OCLC is working with Google they are
not a little bit wary of them? : ) What if Google, whose goal it is to
"organize the world's information" (even as they get into the OS
business and everything else, THIS is their stated goal), and can hire
the best of the best (libs and otherwise), wanted to "compete" in making
the ultimate catalog with the MARC records OCLC has in its possession?
I doubt it would be like the friendly competition that two brothers
might have playing basketball! (with no real good reasons for lack of
trust, fear, or great consequences if one loses) : )
I firmly believe that Google could never make something approximating a
dependable, quality catalog without the records that libraries have
worked so hard to make. Should libraries (and by extension OCLC) look
forward to the day where they can just give everything away to Google...
giving into the added powers that Google's alluring algorithms can
provide? (after all, if they cease to be concerned about protecting
their records, may that not, in effect, be what they are doing?)
A real, not a rhetorical, question.
Regards,
Nathan Rinne
Media Cataloging Technician
Educational Service Center
11200 93rd Avenue North
Maple Grove MN. 55369
Email: rinnen_at_district279.org
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Karen Coyle
Sent: Friday, July 03, 2009 9:35 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] OCLC Formally Withdraws WorldCat Policy
Weinheimer Jim wrote:
> I also have a feeling that the option of WorldCat Local (which is
going to be *very attractive* to many libraries in this current economic
environment) is somehow central to it all. See:
http://www.oclc.org/worldcatlocal/
> For those libraries who opt into this "free" option, it will be almost
irresistible. The basis of WorldCat Local (as I understand it) is that
each library will need only the item management parts of an ILS
(acquisitions, circulation, location) and that users will search
WorldCat, which will then link into your system to display the
availability information to the users, and your library comes up No. 1
in the list of libraries.
>
OCLC is already testing what it calls "web scale" library management
services -- that is, circulation, acquisitions, etc. run off of
Worldcat. (http://www.oclc.org/us/en/news/releases/200927.htm). In
theory this could entirely replace local systems (although I imagine
that libraries will want to keep some kind of local inventory.... or
maybe not).
> But again, if I am correct in my understanding, the master record held
in OCLC, along with the OCLC control number will become very valuable,
indeed.
>
>
>
I think it already is very valuable, although under-utilized due to
restrictions (e.g. membership). This adds to my bewilderment about
OCLC's apparent fear of competition. OCLC has an extremely valuable
product, is used by over 60,000 libraries, and has 30 years of history
with the library community. Why are they acting so defensively?
kc
--
-----------------------------------
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
--
----------------------------------
Received on Thu Jul 09 2009 - 12:37:03 EDT