I've said it before and I'll probably say it again: OSLC anyone?  OCLC is too large and too old to substantially change their business practices.  They have great people working there and do some excellent things (which is why the fact they won't share their goodies with the rest of us is so galling) but they're just not going to fundamentally change the way they do business until they have to, and since they're a monopoly, that may be never.
 
We need to recognize this.  Building an open content library data commons is far more likely to happen than OCLC changing the way they've done things forever.  No flies on OCLC but they are what they are.
 

>>> Jonathan Rochkind <[log in to unmask]> 5/10/2007 7:59 AM >>>
PS: The more I think about this, the more burned up I actually get.
Which maybe means I shouldn't post about it, but hey, I've never been
one for circumspection.

If OCLC is "us", then OCLC will gladly share with us (who are in fact
"them", right?) their research on workset grouping algorithms, and
precisely what workset grouping algorithm they are using in current
implementations of xISBN and other services, right? After all, if OCLC
is not a vendor, but just "us" collectively, why would one part of "us"
need to keep trade secrets from another part of "us"?  Right?

While OCLC is at it, OCLC could throw in some more information on this
project, which has apparently been consigned to trade secret land since
it's sole (apparently mistaken) public outing:
http://www.code4lib.org/2006/smith 

Our field needs publically shared research results and publically shared
solutions, to build a research community, to solve the vexing problems
we have in front of us in increasingly better ways, building off each
other. We need public domain solutions. "We" are not interested in
secret solutions. Vendors, however, need proprietary trade secrets, to
make sure they can solve the problems better than their competitors. If
OCLC is not a vendor but is instead "us", then why does OCLC treat it's
research findings as something that needs to be kept secret from the
actual _us_---everyone here who does not work for OCLC. That's "us".

Jonathan

Eric Hellman wrote:
> 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
> [log in to unmask]                                    2 Broad St., Suite 208
> tel 1-973-509-7800 fax 1-734-468-6216              Bloomfield, NJ 07003
> http://openly.oclc.org/1cate/      1 Click Access To Everything
>

--
Jonathan Rochkind
Sr. Programmer/Analyst
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu