Boy, this expresses many of the sentiments I've held for the past couple
weeks, especially given OCLC's response to the MSU's so far. I'd add
that right now OCLC does have a monopoly, at least a practical one,
among most libraries for ILL because of the current predominance of
library holdings in WorldCat. But that might change faster now as more
lending/borrowing/sharing options increase. However, it seems to me, if
libraries increasingly opt for WorldCat Local as opposed to their own
local catalogs, this will significantly reduce possibilities for next
generation alternatives and options, and only increase OCLC's practical
monopoly and power. I don't think that's a good thing for libraries in
general, whether it is an organization responsive to membership or not.
John
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Frances Dean McNamara
> Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2010 9:31 AM
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] OCLC and Michigan State at Impasse Over
SkyRiver
> Cataloging, Resource Sharing Costs
>
> Agreed. But they should have seen this coming sooner and done
> development sooner. It's no excuse for leaving customers holding the
> bag. Perhaps they should have done this software development BEFORE
> starting to write circulation and acquisitions systems. It seems a
> poor strategy to bank on all the libraries being forced to do all of
> their cataloging only on OCLC and then not support it. I think it is
> necessary for the libraries to push back and not accept such poor
> support. In view of this libraries should NOT allow monopoly of
> service by a single vendor like OCLC. It's just a good example of
what
> can happen if you let them ride roughshod.
>
> Glad NLM makes all their data available.
>
> Frances
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Tim Spalding
> Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 3:09 PM
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] OCLC and Michigan State at Impasse Over
SkyRiver
> Cataloging, Resource Sharing Costs
>
> > When will OCLC provide support for the Connexion PC client features
> for Windows 7 64 bit Operating System?
>
> I suspect they're trying to move to a web-only platform. The web is
> easier to control than binaries running on God-knows-what machines and
> operating systems.
>
> If not web-only, they could move to HTML/web with HTML 5's ability to
> keep a local store of data, akin to Google Gears-which is what Biblios
> used.
>
> Tim
Received on Tue Mar 16 2010 - 11:16:33 EDT