> I'm not quite sure what OAI-PMH would offer in this situation. The
> value-add of OCLC's shared cataloging is that it provides a searchable
> aggregated index of bibliographic records that, in turn, feeds an ILL
> service based on holdings (based on who has particular records).
The key word being holdings.
For many years, any library can avoid OCLC entirely and download
records from many sources using z39.50 or doing something clever with
data from public sources to create records. But this is a bad idea for
a couple of reasons.
There may be a lot of garbage in the WorldCat database, but as soon
as you start mining all these other sources, you'll see it's far more
reliable than the alternatives as a source of metadata. This increases
the time (i.e. cost) of getting a good record in the catalog.
More importantly, without a common control number (ISN's are highly
problematic for a number of reasons), keeping track of holdings
becomes much harder. It becomes WAY harder for libraries to work
together as consortia and resource sharing gets hosed fast. In short,
the only thing that libraries really have on the Amazons, Borders, etc
gets decimated.
As a membership organization, OCLC answers to its members. That means
that if something's screwed up, it falls upon us to help them fix it.
I realize OCLC moves far slower than many of us would like. But given
that libraries typically move at the speed of goo when it comes to
making small adjustments to local workflow, labeling, etc when only a
handful of individuals are involved, I'm not sure why we would expect
a different organization to work so much better.
kyle
--
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Kyle Banerjee
Digital Services Program Manager
Orbis Cascade Alliance
banerjek_at_uoregon.edu / 503.999.9787
Received on Mon Mar 08 2010 - 11:59:42 EST