Comments on: Very glad to see this on Slashdot

By: Greg

Greg — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:21:53 +0000

Jim: I think you are mostly right.

The only thing is if the supplier of your MARC records made you agree to NOT stripping that identification number and sharing it with others. I’m pretty sure that the records in OL retain the MARC field that shows library of origin (provenance is still important). You did say “putting aside any legal issues” :)

And my understanding of OL’s acquisition of MARC records policy is to ask permission from large libraries to provide the access: probably due to agreements like OCLC’s prohibiting those libraries from sharing certain records.

I think some businesses _already_ claim ownership of their records, so this isn’t really new, unfortunately. And claiming that they are “in a sense open” is right, with a large caveat: they are openly viewable, but most likely not en masse copyable.

And “closing” them entirely depends on your definition of “closed.” Is the ability to view the MARC record in your library’s OPAC all that is required? How about downloading the MARC record (web interface, Z39.50, etc) for personal use? What about for non-personal but non-commercial use (OL)? What about commercial use? Right now the answers to those questions probably differ on a record by record basis (I need to do more research into that area).

By: jim

jim — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:43:46 +0000

Putting aside any legal issues with OCLC, I looked at some of my MARC records. I buy them from my book vendor with my books and it looks like there might be some sort of number in there marking them as from the vendor. However, since most libraries have their catalogs online and most allow you access to the MARC records, I wonder what’s to stop people from downloading them and then uploading them to OL. By extension, whose to say how ALL of a library’s records got into OL? It would also be fairly easy to remove said identification number. Since there is nothing all that unique about the records whose to say they were not original cataloging. I guess before businesses try to claim exclusive ownership of MARC records we should all be doing what we can to share as much data with OL as we can. Legally gray area? Probably, but better to act now and ask forgiveness later. Given the factual nature of MARC records and the fact that they are in a sense open I think it would be hard to close them entirely.

By: Greg

Greg — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 06:11:44 +0000

Jim: I actually don’t know what terms OCLC acquired their MARC data under, I should look into that. If there was anything about sharing with others (explicitly or implicitly) there could be some individual libraries that would be pretty pissed about their records being locked up.

And yeah, there is nothing stopping projects like the OpenLibrary from sharing data it already has. This would only be able to prevent OL from acquiring new/more records if the libraries they get their information from are OCLC members. And, unfortunately, the production of MARC records is such a time consuming process that OL would not be able to do it themselves, or even crowd-source it effectively. Although I would love to be proven wrong on that second part.

Also, I would be careful about stripping any OCLC information from MARC records; sounds like rough legal waters ahead. :)

By: jim

jim — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:58:47 +0000

Perhaps you misunderstood (or maybe I did). OCLC can certainly restrict whatever data they want if it’s theirs and they own it. The question is, do they own it when much of it came from others with the impression it was to shared. Perhaps there is a GPL comparison here. If someone shares code with a GPL project can the project close the code and not share it anymore when clearly some of it was not theirs to begin with? Maybe they can but then it would probably fork. So if OCLC wants to restrict their data, other projects like Open Library are a kind of fork. OCLC can’t prevent them from sharing. More importantly, MARC data is just facts about a book. The title, author, etc. isn’t secret or proprietary. OCLC can probably restrict others from sharing records received from OCLC but nothing says others can’t recreate them – time consuming as that would be. However, since many are already out there can OCLC really expect to stop a project like Open Library? Hinder it maybe, but can’t I and others just dump my data there for all to use? Now that you got me thinking I’ll have to check some of my records and see if there is an OCLC stamp in there somewhere. If so, I could probably strip it.

By: Greg

Greg — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 04:47:30 +0000

Jim: any company can restrict access to information they provide ESPECIALLY if they want to prevent competition (preventing competition is part of competition, see: patents). And yeah, they can prevent others from sharing MARC data which OCLC gives them as the institution has signed a contract saying so. You can sign away some of your rights if you so choose.

Matthew: If you have an opinion, please post it. I’m curious to see everyone else’s opinions. It isn’t as though planet ubuntu doesn’t see unrelated topics (*cough*book meme*cough*).

By: matthew

matthew — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 04:37:36 +0000

Thank you for posting this. I was reading it earlier and found myself just aghast. I was going to write about this mysef, but since my blog is mostly read by planet ubuntu folks, and you have done such a good job, I won’t bother.

By: jim

jim — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:52:04 +0000

As a geek and high school librarian I am disappointed I didn’t know about that and pissed to discover how evil OCLC really is. However, I have to wonder how legal this would be. They can’t prevent competition as that is in itself illegal. I guess they can lock up their data (although being that much was contributed to them they might have a hard time with that too) but certainly can’t prevent others from sharing MARC data if they so choose – at least I hope they can’t.