> Nobody said OCLC costs nothing. The information from MSU said OCLC was jacking up the price from $5K to $88K. I'm not understanding why that is all right.
>
> In point of fact if all libraries dumped their catalogs to linked data, some xml files, those files could be crawled by various services and in various ways they could link up the data to point someone to the library's holdings...
>
The question is how this would actually be accomplished. Most
libraries don't have this kind of expertise on hand, and even if they
did, providing this service locally is more expensive than most people
are willing to admit. That's why almost all libraries libraries still
use a binary format developed for tape transfer in the 1960's to move
their core data around. Anyone wishing to manipulate this data must
use one of only a handful of tools -- the best of which were created
by sole authors in their spare time. If everything is so easy, you'd
think someone would just throw up a server. You'd also think MSU would
just download records for free from public sources rather than getting
them from SkyRiver.
The cool thing about a membership organization is you can fix things
when they are broken. Consider the records use policy. Members found
the original plan unacceptable, a dialog was opened, and the new
policy is far better.
> If it was sustainable for OCLC to charge a certain price to RLIN members who
> wanted to upload holdings to OCLC without buying cataloging copy from
> OCLC.... I'm curious why it's not sustainable to offer a similar price in
> a similar situation to SkyRiver customers. What's the difference?
Without knowing all the facts, I'd speculate it has partly to do with
the nature of the contributions, and partly to do with the fact that
times have changed. Our focus on bibliographic records is out of
proportion to their importance. Library action is quickly moving from
an ownership to access model. We're switching from paper to
electronic. Spending so much effort to figure out how we can replicate
the same records in thousands of relatively low use machines doesn't
strike me as efficient.
In addition to providing services that libraries need now, OCLC needs
to develop services that libraries will need. If they don't, they seal
their own doom while weakening their members.
kyle
--
----------------------------------------------------------
Kyle Banerjee
Digital Services Program Manager
Orbis Cascade Alliance
banerjek_at_uoregon.edu / 503.999.9787
Received on Tue Mar 09 2010 - 08:11:18 EST