 |
 |
> Maybe Roy will answer that one -- but I doubt its that difficult to guess. > OCLC's primary value is its bibliographic database and the information > about its member's holdings. Nearly all of it's services are built around > this. If they gave that information up to the Open Library, it would most > certainly undermine their ILL, Cataloging and Grid Services initiatives. > However, if a handful of members in relation to their membership > participate in the program -- its no skin off their noses. > > --TR > You know, I realize that's the going-in thinking, and OCLC has shared that with me. I fully understand the need for OCLC to protect its services. But I remember with a previous job that people (even some very important people) thought our product was our data, but it really wasn't: it was the services we wrapped around the data, including maintenance, delivery, affiliated products, etc. It's true that the data had to be good, but that goodness didn't come with a core dump of one-time static data. Keeping our data closed ultimately harmed us, perhaps perniciously, and I wish I had done a better job of championing a different path. I didn't have the skills or vocabulary and to this day I regret that. In fact, most of the gripes I hear about OCLC are service-based. If OL built a database of 50 to 100 million records (as an example), it would still need to address a lot of issues: the functionality of its primary portal, the maintenance of the records, organizational structure, etc. Someone recently compared my comments about ALA to Open Library: if we set about to build a new professional association, in the end it would end up looking an awful lot like ALA. Take the value proposition and walk it down the road... a few billion records later, and a few years under its belt, what would OL look like? In fact it could help all of us, including OCLC (understanding OCLC here as a membership organization, not as a vaguely vendorish entity) if a few libraries gave OL some data and let them go to town with it. I'd surmise OCLC could open its data and in the end come out ahead. That is of course risky thinking, of which the comfortable compromise is the middle ground of providing OL with a few big datasets (as our agreement clearly allows... and sharing that information is GOOD for OCLC). In the same vein, those who paw the ground and snort when pundits make valid observations about OCLC need to chill out and study the observations, not the source. After all, we ARE talking about the organization whose operating philosophy seems to be "I came, I saw, I bought it" - and in some cases has had an attitude of, "Pretty! Now I kill it." If OCLC wants to be perceived as all cuddly and member-focused, it needs to cool its jets and train its attention on improving its services and not acting all paranoid. Grid Services is an example of OCLC trying hard to do that, and should be broadened. The recent governance report which proposes members have even LESS of a vote on the board is in the other direction. I have observed more than once that OCLC internally is an organization with some interesting conflicts going on; I consider the recent "privacy and sharing" report to be in large part a roman a clef. With no disrespect to OL, I think the impulses behind OL are worth studying and thinking about in terms of how to improve OCLC. One of the questions is do we understand what business OCLC (or any bib utility-as OL plans to be) is really in? Does OCLC? Ah, now I've probably ruffled a few feathers in various chicken coops, and it's not even 8 a.m. I love the smell of napalm in the morning! Karen G. "Been there, done that, got the teeshirt" Schneider [log in to unmask]