> Yep, I do, I want Google and everyone else to be free to use our collective
> patrimony of metadata however they want. That will give us the highest
> value for it, the more people use the metadata, the greater the return on
> our investment of creating that metadata.
>
> What I don't want is Google to have _special_ rights to do that.
> So I'm more worried about the secret nature of the agreement that gives
> Google rights others don't have, then I am about giving Google 'too much'.
> Give em everything, just as long as you aren't giving them _special_
> privileges to everything that nobody else has.
Precisely. One of the best ways to relegate ourselves to irrelevance
is to make sure no one can do anything useful with our data. Besides,
we're always harping on everyone to be more open -- what's good for
them should be good for us.
Library culture is very strange. On one hand, we move mountains to
help any random yahoo. But as soon as someone figures out how to do
something useful with our services, we start tossing impediments.
I'm not a fan of secrets in whatever form they take (NDAs, contracts
that we can't talk about, etc). By their nature, the whole purpose of
secrets is to allow a select few to benefit from the ignorance of
others. When libraries and the organizations that represent them rely
on impeding others to stay ahead, I fail to see how they are different
than any other vendor.
kyle
--
----------------------------------------------------------
Kyle Banerjee
Digital Services Program Manager
Orbis Cascade Alliance
banerjek_at_uoregon.edu / 503.999.9787
Received on Thu Sep 10 2009 - 12:32:44 EDT