Andrew Pace, Greetings,

On 11-3-2010 you stated:
*We believe it is critical to maintain a research approach to some of these
services so that the community can determine which ones have the legs to
foster cooperative innovation. We will do better in communicating and
discussing these distinctions with the DevNet community.*

You have not done better. Questions of 3-18-2011 to Karen (below) on the
nature of collaboration between DevNet and WorldCat researchers, and on the
value of displaying bibliographic mistakes were not answered. This has been
a pattern and an approach. Evidently, Karen relies on other staff at
OCLC/WorldCat given the organizational structure you enabled. Under your
leadership, WorldCat still cheer-leads mashatons and collaborations while
it:

   - has not created a quality control for checking DevNet developments
   before they are issued. That labor is passed as free labor to non-OCLC
   developers;
   - has not created a platform where non-OCLC-DevNet researchers could
   shape decisions about the service;

Here's a thought: were OCLC to sell Identities (?) to Google,  profits for
non-OCLC developers' labor will go to OCLC, not to these developers. A
profitable corporate loophole.

Such business model seems plausible for a 'populist' corporation seeking
profits. Disappointingly, it contradicts your 11-3-2010 commitment to
us. Without
 proper responsiveness to questions and without direct access to decisions
made, communication with developers is rendered trivial. Specific questions
are trivialized by vanilla replies such as  'WorldCat will be closely
looking at this' while Dublin's WorldCat decides *without* these developers.
Other corporations call this business model Deregulation.

Mr. Pace, I have enormous respect for the Identities team.  It's not that
team that administers the corporate bottom line structure, and the lack of QC
and platform for coordinated decisions I refer to. It is at your level where
these researchers, possibly best in the industry, could be enabled to
collaborate with other teams at OCLC and outside OCLC.  I look forward to
how you will conduct the changes you committed to us five months ago,

Respectfully,
*Ya'aqov Ziso.*
*
*



On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 10:43 AM, Ya'aqov Ziso <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> .... by using only names from authority files, we might also lose
alternative names that we are currently displaying because we don’t possess
authority files containing those versions.
> yz >> there is no authority check on bib records' names you are
displaying; anything can be present there; in this case 880 (alternate
graphic/vernacular field) displays an incorrect mix of CJK and Latin-1. And
we get it.
> yz >> what is the value of having such mix scripted heading?
> We need to carefully consider these factors as well as the resources
necessary to refactor the Identities code before making a decision to switch
how the alternative names are generated
> yz >> which criteria are you going to consider? what access does DevNet
have to these criteria and resulting deliberations? was there a tacit (?)
agreement DevNet will (labor free) do the checks of what WorldCat will
decide, while DevNet and WorldCat work as disparate bodies on this case (and
maybe others)?