Jonathan,

It's worth noting that OCLC *is* the "we" you are talking about.

OCLC member libraries contribute resources to do exactly what you
suggest, and to do it in a way that is sustainable for the long term.
Worldcat is created and maintained by libraries and by librarians.
I'm the last to suggest that OCLC is the best possible instantiation
of libraries-working-together, but we do try.


Eric



At 3:01 PM -0400 5/9/07, Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
>2) More interesting---OCLC's _initial_ work set grouping algorithm is
>public. However, we know they've done a lot of additional work to
>fine-tune the work set grouping algorithms.
>(http://www.frbr.org/2007/01/16/midwinter-implementers).  Some of these
>algorithms probably take advantage of all the cool data OCLC has that we
>don't, okay.
>
>But how about we start working to re-create this algorithm? "Re-create"
>isn't a good word, because we aren't going to violate any NDA's, we're
>going to develop/invent our own algorithm, but this one is going to be
>open source, not a trade secret like OCLC's.
>
>So we develop an algorithm on our own, and we run that algorithm on our
>own data. Our own local catalog. Union catalogs. Conglomerations of
>different catalogs that we do ourselves. Even reproductions of the OCLC
>corpus (or significant subsets thereof) that we manage to assemble in
>ways that don't violate copyright or license agreements.
>
>And then we've got our own workset grouping service. Which is really all
>xISBN is.  What is OCLC providing that is so special? Well, if what I've
>just outlined above is so much work that we _can't_ pull it off, then I
>guess we've got pay OCLC, and if we are willing to do so (rather than go
>without the service), then I guess OCLC has correctly pegged their
>market price.
>
>But our field is not a healthy field if all research is being done by
>OCLC and other vendors. We need research from other places, we need
>research that produces public domain results, not proprietary trade
>secrets.
>

--

Eric Hellman, Director                            OCLC Openly
Informatics Division
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