The thing is, at least for an academic library, even though we could
still share the metada freely, the higher ups within the institution
(CIO, provost, etc.) might not always share the views of "for public
good" only. They might still need to know what the ROI for the library
is, which can be translated into something like: for x dollar spent in
cataloging a material and doing interlibrary loan and hosting digital
libraries, etc., how much z dollar it generates (more grant funding,
more endowments, patents, etc.)
ranti.
On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 6:21 PM, B.G. Sloan <bgsloan2_at_yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Numerous people have mentioned how "A lot of work, and therefore expense went into creating all that data" and asked if we should be giving it away.
>
> Sure, it's expensive to create library data (I once watched four catalogers talk for more than an hour, debating which subject headings to assign to just one book). But these costs weren't underwritten by libraries with the idea of getting some sort of monetary return on investment. Libraries created these data, by and large, for the public good.
>
> So, libraries traditionally have spent a lot of money creating metadata for the public good with no expectaton of any financial ROI. Why should that change now? Why shouldn't we let others use our metadata freely to develop innovative and useful mashups? Isn't that also for the public good?
>
> It also may be in our enlightened self interest to let others freely use our metadata. Sometimes I think a key to keeping libraries relevant in the future lies in letting non-librarians take a crack at making our data more relevant to a broader audience.
>
> Bernie Sloan
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Received on Fri Sep 11 2009 - 19:11:52 EDT