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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?"
God help us all.
I used to steal cards out of the card file when I was young... can I claim prior art?
"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.
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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YOU ARE FREE:
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UNDER THE FOLLOWING CONDITIONS:
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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.
Um, anybody who knew more than what they learned in elementary school about the DDC (it's actually called the Dewey Decimal Classification) to begin with probably knew that. Admittedly, that's not very many people, unfortunately. I understand why a lot of people question IP laws in general, but I don't understand why so many people are surprised to find out that the DDC is a piece of IP like any other.
Now, the fact that one needs to pay to get the full version of the Library of Congress Classification (LCC) confuses me a little more, since it's actually a governement-created resource. Well, actually I guess I do know. LC, and especially it's under-appreciated traditional services, like cataloging, classification and authority control are so underfunded that they actually need to charge money to libraries to keep those projects alive. Alas.
I'm just sayin'.
...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?
Circuit city seems to be doing its best.
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
When you say "own", people may assume that this is a copyright thing. It's not. In Feist v. Rural, the US Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that facts cannot be copyrighted (owned). This database is just a collection of facts, hence not subject to copyright. It's basically exactly like the case in Feist v. Rural in which the parties were fighting over the list of names in the white pages of a phone book. For those who like legalese, try http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/499_US_340.htm.
That's why these guys are coming at it with contract law instead of copyright. They're telling libraries that the contract they signed to get the data controls what the libraries can do with the data. The contract apparently says, or the data provider wants people to believe that it says, that libs can use the data themselves, but cannot transfer it.
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?
Way to completely miss the point! The name-calling is especially constructive, too.
I said "I understand why a lot of people question IP laws in general..."
Then, in your rush to use your ever-so-clever language like "douchebag" (the 80s called, BTW, they want their slang back) and to talk about "my ideas" and "my theory," you completely ignored this ever-so-important part of the sentence.
You see, you don't think ANYTHING is protected as IP. I asked, however, that if A is protected, why should it be so surprising that B is protected. You then started foaming at the mouth and ranting without having actually understood what you were reading.
Why am I bothering to explain this? Sigh. I must me new here.
I'm just sayin'.
If you think that you misunderstood him then the appropriate thing to do is to apologize, not to attempt to further insult him. And then you should probably think longer about whether you understand what people are saying before you post online about something.
It's great that you take initiative to learn a lot of languages, I applaud you for that. However, the effort you have expended in this endeavor does not entitle you to behave as badly as you have.
You should really consider apologizing.
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
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.
You should really consider apologizing.
That would be a sign of weakness, and upon the first such exhibition the ravenous Slashdot hordes will descend upon him, leaving only his empty carcass behind.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Yeah, I was previously unaware that OCLC was non-profit, and I've worked in a library for 8+ years. (Granted, we don't use any of their services in the library where I work. But I was very much aware of their existence and what some of their services were, and very much unaware that they were non-profit. Certainly we generally think of them as a vendor.)
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Yes there is. A lot of hard work performed, most likely by "member" (read "customer") libraries, goes into those records. Since OCLC is the only game in town and this behavior is clearly anti-competitive, with little benefit to consumers, they could run afoul of anti-trust laws.