On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 10:11 AM, McGrath, Kelley C. <kmcgrath_at_bsu.edu> wrote:
> Neither IMDB nor any other external source is likely to have a comprehensive list of identifiers for library holdings. There are a great many things in IMDB that are not held by libraries because they are not extant in a form that can be collected by libraries or are just unlikely to be collected by libraries. There is an even larger group of things that are held by libraries that are not and never will be in IMDB (and no, we can't just add our holdings to IMDB. IMDB is similar to a library in many ways and one of them is that they have what is essentially a collection development policy that excludes most things that have not been "publicly released" by their definition).
It seems to me that Freebase would be a good surrogate here. There is
a LOT of moving image information in Freebase and it's freely
editable, therefore libraries could add the resources that aren't
there.
The downside is that it's freely editable -- something libraries might
not be fully comfortable with. Because Freebase is provided with a
CC-by-attribution license, however, a conceivable workaround would be
to cache snapshots of these resources -- authorities, if you will --
which would provide a buffer against the dynamics of Freebase as well
as the fact that Freebase is run by a for-profit company, Metaweb,
which could go belly-up or get bought or who knows what.
Nevertheless, these are the realities that I think libraries are
facing and working with these sorts of resources, rather than around
or instead of, is critical.
-Ross.
Received on Mon Nov 23 2009 - 10:31:31 EST