Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
> James Weinheimer wrote:
>>
>> There is a big part of me that agrees with Nathan: that this is *our*
>> stuff
>> that we shouldn't just be giving away. After all, it was made with the
>> blood, sweat and tears of generations of experienced catalogers and is
>> incredibly valuable. Simply giving it away seems crazy.
>>
> Haven't we ALWAYS simply given it away? Have cataloging departments
> contributed shared cataloging to the universe because they expected
> their institutions to be financially renumerated? The paltry
> 'credit' sums you get from OCLC is not why we share our cataloging
> cooperatively, in OCLC or other places, is it?
>
> We share our cataloging cooperatively because we recognize that the
> sum of all of our work is a public good, which serves all of our
> interests to share.
> So now, unlike 50 years ago, there are a lot of people other than
> libraries interested in metadata. Many of them even produce tools that
> our users use. What's the difference between sharing with other
> libraries back when libraries were the only ones interested in
> bibliographic metadata, and sharing with non-library entities now
> interested in bibliographic metadata?
>
> It's not that some of them are for-profit. We've always been happy to
> share our metadata with, for instance, corporate libraries in
> for-profit institutions too. Haven't we?
>
> Jonathan
I would add, wouldn't it be a little hypocritical for us to not share
the information we create being that we share the information others
create. Often in doing so, while legal, without the approval of the
creators of said information?
Edward
Received on Mon Sep 14 2009 - 13:42:13 EDT