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Non-Profit Org Claims Rights In Library Catalog Data
lamona writes "The main source of the bibliographic records that are carried in library databases is a non-profit organization called OCLC. Over the weekend OCLC 'leaked' its new policy that claims contractual rights in the subsequent uses of the data, uses such as downloading book information into Zotero or other bibliographic software. The policy explicitly forbids any use that would compete with OCLC. This would essentially rule out the creation of free and open databases of library content, such as the Open Library and LibraryThing. The library blogosphere is up in arms . But can our right to say: "Twain, Mark. The adventures of Tom Sawyer" be saved?"
Who knew you could own a part of the Dewey Decimal System?
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
God help us all.
There really is no such thing as a non-profit org.
"Dewey, You Fool! Your Decimal System Has Played Right Into My Hands! Ha Ha Ha Ha!"
Although I guess OCLC is saying that instead of the giant brains.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Odd that a non-profit site would have a link to Products and Services. I guess when you get a quote on their site you can pay in peanuts.
Jeez, has everyone here gone soft? Download it, repackage it, and give it to your friends. To hell with the law! I'm not saying screw over the authors but if it's been out more than 15 years, to hell with corporate interest then. Practice an act of civil disobedience. And as Mark Twain would say, "A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way." Tell these corporate bastards we're not going to pay anymore. It's their turn to give something back, rather than just take, take, take.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
They can claim anything that they want, but they can't enforce property rights on something they don't own.
Serutan's Fun Factz #22583: Columbus is the capital of Ohio.
Serutan's Fun Factz #57661: The chemical formula for water is H20.
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Have a Fun-Factz-Filled day!
I've been wondering what was going to happen to OCLC in the Internet age. I have thought it was strange that up until now, they really have been under the radar. Sounds like that's going to change.
Then there is Chemical Abstracts that lives in the same town that I'm pretty sure has much more money than OCLC. That's another Internet fight.
Bryan
Some of the problems caused by OCLC can be avoided by using better tools. Evergreen, Koha are both feature-rich, open source integrated library systems. They're not just competitive, in many cases they are just plain better.
Another danger point is Metalib. The Z39.50 profiles are about the only advantage there, aside from the sales pitch. Those are public anyway and could easily be listed centrally by pooling resources to the tune of a few cents per month per participating organization.
However, all that is about the code and the article is about claims of ownership over database content. Well fortunately enough, data can be imported, exported and shared between systems like Koha or Evergreen without ever having anything to do with OCLC. Most libraries, even many library consortia, no longer have any catalogers. In those cases, import the metadata for the catalog from the Library of Congress, that's what it's there for...
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
OCLC stores the bibliographic records in its database, but it did not create the vast majority of them. The records were created by catalogers at thousands of libraries. These libraries contribute their records to OCLC so that they can be shared with other libraries, but never do they grant OCLC ownership of the records.
...OCLC is a business (sorry, non-profit) that has orchestrated a ginormous database of bibliographic data and summaries, which it then sells to libraries both on- and off-line.
Libraries that use and display these records are expected to indicate that they were provided by OCLC and cannot be re-copied en masse.
So far, I can't blame 'em. That's a huge database to just let slip away for free. However, I imagine that this part of the policy would make a few libraries upset:
Reasonable Use. Use must not discourage the contribution of bibliographic and holdings data to WorldCat or substantially replicate the function, purpose, and/or size of WorldCat.
Which, to me, translates as "If you use our database, you're not allowed to compete with us, period."
This comes as no surprise to me. I work for a small record label that provides a streaming audio service to about 150 colleges and institutions. Many of our clients like to have information about our content stored in their institutional catalog/OPAC.
The thing is, these catalog systems pretty much only accept MARC-formatted records. The MARC format is kind of obscure, and it's nothing we want to generate ourselves, so we provide CSV data to OCLC and they convert it to MARC format for us.
The amazing part of the racket they're running is that we have to *pay* OCLC to make these records for us, and then they turn around and require *another* payment from anyone who wants to use the records.
We aren't even entitled to our own copy of the data they've converted for us. Presumably, if we wanted it, we'd have to purchase it from the people we gave it to in the first place. It's needless to say, but we also don't see any kind of profit sharing from OCLC when 150 libraries each purchase thousands of these records.
have you been seen on slash?
I am a systems librarian (librarian who is in charge of the servers and systems) who has dealt with OCLC for thirty years. They tried to do this with libraries as well, claiming ownership of information that has, for the most part, been contributed by libraries themselves. OCLC does very little original cataloguing. It's mostly value-added stuff by little podunk, and a few large, libraries all over the world. They're going to have a hard time asserting their so-called rights here and the quite substantial 'library community' is not going to be on their side.
One note here: Several have already asserted that open source integrated library systems (ILS) projects are 'superior' to OCLC. You are comparing apples and oranges. KOHA is an ILS. It is NOT a bibliographic utility. KOHA (along with Dynix, Sirsi, Gaylord, VTLS, and a few others) provides a suite of programs to manage library collections and inventory, allow the check out and in of books and materials, provide an online public catalog, send overdue notices--that sort of thing. They are, by and large, local to and managed by a library system (which is exactly what I did for years), though there are many libraries which share such systems on a regional basis as well.
OCLC is a BIBLIOGRAPHIC utility, though they also dabble in other things such as acquisitions, collection analyses, and interlibrary loans. They are responsible for keeping records of books and materials in standard formats such as MARC (Machine Readable Cataloguing, a format originally designed to transport bibliographic records via 9-track tape, i.e.: it is a 'serially organized' database making use of tags and sub-tags to parse the data.) which are then made available to other libraries. This provides the kind of centralization that means 16,000 libraries don't have to all individually catalog the same book. Once is sufficient. Every ILS has an interface to OCLC that allows them to grab records and download them to the local system--as well as upload original cataloging to OCLC (a crucial point, I think.) Every library that owns a particular title attached their own identifier to the main record, which is what makes OCLC a good source for interlibrary loan information. In a sense, OCLC is the world's online catalog, but it DOES NOT displace the local OPAC. (Online Public Access catalog).
Now, places like librarything.com get their records from a variety of places, including Amazon, well known for crap-quality bibliographic records, and any number of universities and large library systems around the world. OCLC would be hard-pressed to 'prove' records in place at librarything originated with OCLC, much less that they are 'owned' by OCLC. In other words, OCLC can be easily circumvented.
With the demise of the smaller bibliographic utilities such as WLN (The Washington, then Western Library Network) OCLC has achieved world domination in some sense, but it is also a membership organization with library representation on its board and governing committees. Having seen OCLC try this crap before, my take on it is that it won't fly. I wouldn't worry about it.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
[Conan the Librarian lifts the man up with his bare hands]
Conan the Librarian: Don't you know the Dewey Decimal System?
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Didn't you know? That is the new financial market trading system. People will now be able to buy, sell, and invest in the Dewey Decimal System. Buy the 500 subsection now while you still can. Fortunately it will be unregulated market with no government oversight. WHAT COULD GO WRONG?!?
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
With everything going online, there is no longer a need for a linear sequencing of all human knowledge. It's all hypertext and keyword-based. So when I say "ASIN" database, I mean not just title and author, but also keywords, summaries, and maybe even recommended similar books and customer reviews. Amazon would still retain its well-oiled shipping system, but it would be in a position to define all of human knowledge in a finer way than Google currently does.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
They'll blog furiously about it! There might even be a flame war! Someone could... get their feelings hurt. Or something.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Obligatory Molly Ivins quote:
"I say unto you, you do not know what courage is until you have sat in the basement of a Holiday Inn in Fritters, Alabama, with seven brave souls, led by a librarian, fixing to start a chapter of the ACLU."
The main source of the bibliographic records that are carried in library databases is a non-profit organization called OCLC
It was just a matter of time before one laptop per child wasn't enough... now they want all our bibliographic records!
will be that building any creative work in digital form better be a charitable act. Once it is in digital form, you can't control it either through contracts or law. It is fair game for being "shared" out the wazoo.
I'd say that OCLC doesn't really stand much of a chance in this. We have grown up with the idea that if it isn't nailed down, it is going to be shared. Why do you think they might object to assisting in creating a competitor to themselves?
It is like being asked to train your replacement, only your replacement only has to work half days. Cheaper for the company - part time employee - and free training program for someone that just walks in off the street. Sounds like a real plan and even better than outsourcing.
It sounds like greed here, which seems very out of place for a so-called non-profit organization.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
> The main source of the bibliographic records that are carried in
> library databases is a non-profit organization called OCLC.
That's absolutely not true. Many (possibly most) libraries don't use OCLC MARC records at *all*, and even most of the libraries that do only use them when they can't find a MARC record somewhere else (e.g., from the LOC) for free. I don't have any formal statistics to cite for this, but I've been on several library-related mailing lists for several years, as part of my job, and followed numerous conversation threads about OCLC records, so I'm not just guessing out of ignorance, either.
They *are* a fairly major and widely used service, but they're nothing like the majority/monopoly provider that the article summary implies.
> Over the weekend OCLC 'leaked' its new policy that claims contractual
> rights in the subsequent uses of the data, uses such as downloading
> book information into Zotero or other bibliographic software. The
> policy explicitly forbids any use that would compete with OCLC.
This is not a very big change, really, in the scheme of things. They've always considered the MARC records they provide to be copyrighted and all rights reserved except those specifically granted. For instance, any library that uses their records cannot then make the resulting catalog generally available via Z39.50/NCIP for other libraries to freely borrow from, because that would violate the OCLC copyright. Since mutual-catalog-sharing agreements are a *major* (perhaps *the* major) source of bib records for a many libraries, especially libraries that use a modern ILS, this is a fairly onerous restriction.
As I mentioned earlier, a lot of libraries don't use OCLC records, partly because of these issues, and partly because of the cost.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
OCLC can try, but really now: it's best not to fuck with librarians.
We come from an unbroken lineage that doesn't simply date back to recorded history: we're the ones that RECORDED recorded history in the first place.
Cross us, OCLC, and you'll soon be as significant as the dust surrounding the jars that housed the Dead Sea scrolls. Bitches.
It sounds like the library's version of the CDDB debacle. Time for fork, just as freedb did?
anybody to follow it.
That is a matter of law, not just whatever the OCLC wishes.
Looks to me like there is a very big opening here for Open Source library information and cataloging.
Is LOC data accessed through Z39.50 or their MARC gateway in the Public Domain?
It appears, by virtue of consisting entirely of information that is common property and containing no original authorship, specifically lists taken from public documents or other common sources, to not be under copyright and thus in the Public Domain. This is, after all, material taken from the inside cover of the published item. The list itself, the Library of Congress Catalog, is also a public document.
Now all that won't stop RIAA, M$ and Disney from suing you. But then what would?
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Well, the problem is whether or not the Library of Congress has a record for what you are cataloging. For example, my institution's library consists of a large number of rare books that do not appear in the LoC database. I'm sure there are plenty of other organizations in the same boat as us, which is how OCLC stays in business.
So in the case of newly acquired rare books, someone will have to have the dangerous task of opening the front cover and reading at least the title page. Yes all that takes time and many institutions don't budget for that time any more, but it can be cheaper and less hassle than dealing with OCLC's shenanigans.
Or you can take your ball and go, if OCLC won't play. Catalogs do have the ability to transfer records using ISO 2709 or ANSI/NISO Z39.2.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Then the rapacious Slashdot hordes get to have a go.
Blancmange
the same people who say "God is dead" are sayinghis Son was just elected in the US. :-)
So let me get this straight.... The for-profit corporations, LibraryThing.com, Serial Solutions, etc, are crying about the fact that the non-profit company won't share data with them. What is this? Corporate propaganda? Corporate entitlement? Corporate Welfare? OCLC is not Microsoft. Librarians need this organization for larger representation. If they didn't have them, they'd rely on governmental institutions for support, aka American Library Association. I think we all know how that rides. I delight in corporations whining about the difficulties of doing business with a non-profit. Turn the table and try making a deal on your terms with the for-profit world. The medicine ain't so tasty, is it?