OCLC Round Up

Wow, there's been a lot of talk about OCLC's change in policy (which they had a few goes at - here's some the policy differences wikified). A fair amount of the reaction from librarians has been anger that the new policy might impede the work of LibraryThing and similar projects. It's strong to refer to records passed through WorldCat as 'infected' but you can see how an unfriendly policy can poison the viral spread of information.

As of February next, OCLC's new policy kicks in and - in essence - the rights of libraries over records contributed to WorldCat will change, and sharing (particularly for commercial reasons) will be more tightly controlled. Knock on effects are likely to be felt by both the open library community (deliberate non-caps there) and even organisations like Talis.

There's been an 'interesting' response from OCLC in the form of an open letter [pdf] - which seems to reflect many people's fear that OCLC is essentially circling the wagons and not trying to engage with the community.

For libraries, there are some key questions which need to be answered before February:

• What do we get from our arrangement with OCLC? Is it worth it?
• What are our plans for data which might be affected? How are the affected?

(ok, big gulp... and)

• Does OCLC represent the future or the past?

For me, it's the attitude that might be worrying. Take, for example, how Karen Calhoun (OCLC) refers to the idea of Commons:

OCLC's and the members' central asset is the WorldCat database that we share. It is our common investment, our "commons." I believe it is the right course to protect the commons.* Thus, as Garrett Hardin has suggested in his writings about the "tragedy of the commons," it is appropriate to regulate the use of the commons. OCLC needs to manage WorldCat data sharing to assure that benefit accrues back to the members who have invested in WorldCat, and that the WorldCat commons is not exhausted through over-exploitation. Protecting the commons means adopting "some rights reserved" as the data sharing model.  While a data sharing model based on "no rights reserved" is a laudable ideal, if OCLC were to adopt such a policy, it is possible, if not likely, that the WorldCat commons and the OCLC cooperative would not survive. 

If OCLC really want to engage with librarians (as opposed to Library managers) they need to quickly realise that WorldCat represents part of a wider metadata commons - and decide whether they want to fence off 'their' part with over-the-top guidelines or play and active role.

In case you need more, here's a good synopsis of the situation and there's a good page on the code4lib wiki - here.

Brewster Kahle: The Closing of Library Services... The Opening of Library Services"

I'm currently enjoying a (constantly buffering....) stream of Brewster Kahle's John Seely Brown Symposium on Technology and Society keynote it's an interesting lecture which, hopefully, will be online soon. Here's some key points that I found noteworthy:

• Because of licensing we are actually becoming more closed, even though we're making things available online - publishers have too much power
• Staff are service-orientated but not IT service-orientated
• Libraries have a preference for outsourcing service development rather than developing in-house
  
• It's likely that libraries who develop in-house will specialise (eg MIT in engineering resources)
• Open data leads to better data mining [Hmm, there's an assumption that vendors data is not open, which might be true of some but not necessarily 'Google-type' companies]
• Open books = easy Print on Demand (at $3) [One of my personal faves]
• He says you can scan and store a page (inc Metadata) for 10cents [for how long...?!]
• Multiple repositories are safer than one 'trusted' repository [LOCKSS-like]
• It's just as easy to migrate 100 movies as 1000.
• JPEG2000 is the IA's choice for high-resolution archival versions.
• Trying to get rights for out of print materials is difficult - lack of answers because there's lack of interest.... unless something suddenly 'turns' valuable.
• Being accessible does not mean being 'cost free' [hmm, this kind of contradicts the idea about libraries becoming more closed because of their relationship with publishers]

• Libraries can build an open world by:

1. Scan a core set: 1million book library = $30m and then you do 'scan on demand' - and this could be funded through purchasing budgets [maybe in the US...!]
   
2. Free access to Public Domain, Integrate in-print products from publishers as necessary, and then loan out-of-print (digital files) out [how this loaning will work with in-copyright material is still unclear]
   
3. Encourage bulk access to allow computational reuse (such as AI learning, translation etc) - this is the same as 'research' access. This requires open contracts.

• This is our 'responsibility as libraries'

Digital lending will be a really interesting application of DRM and DRM-like technologies. It'll be interesting to see how things develop in this area - there's much to learn from video/audio loaning services. His idea of making Library Books "look different" to make them guilt ware or personally tied to an individual.

It's interesting to hear Brewster talk about the creation of Libraries, but his approach is totally dependent on 'others' creating services built on the principle of Libraries as Data Archives. At the start of the talk he describes how libraries are becoming more like "spaces to think" and it's this 'value-added' that we need to give in the digital world along side the traditional world. To accomplish this we have to explore whether Libraries can offer actual mediation to data and resources rather just the resources themselves.

Note from the Panel Session: John Seely Brown discussed how 'value added' information (such as annotations) are going to be more important and how such meta-information enhances the material - including by speeding up the processing of that information. [Think Uber-CliffsNotes....]

More information on the talk here.