Comments on: OCLC, Record Usage, Copyright, Contracts and the Law

By: paul walk’s weblog » Blog Archive » Smoke and mirrors, or good intentions?

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:06:15 +0000

[...] revisit the arguments here – there was significant commentary criticising the changes (e.g 1 2 3 4 5) and a response from Karen Calhoun: essentially the concerns revolved around the perception that [...]

By: Why you can’t find a library book in your search engine « Learning Technobrarian

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 12:14:24 +0000

[...] OCLC are considering making WorldCat records easier to search, though, according to this post: OCLC, Record Usage, Copyright, Contracts and the Law No Comments so far Leave a comment RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI [...]

By: iand’s latest Google Reader feed « Notes from the edge

iand’s latest Google Reader feed « Notes from the edge — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:33:28 +0000

[...] OCLC, Record Usage, Copyright, Contracts and the Law [...]

By: Copyright Advisory Network » Blog Archive » OCLC licensing saga

[...] Rob Styles: OCLC Record Usage, Copyright, Contracts, and the Law [...]

By: Jonathan Rochkind

Jonathan Rochkind — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 01:13:30 +0000

A longer follow-up (with paragraphs! And section headings!) to the conversation Karen and I were having about OCLC numbers as identifiers can be found here:

http://bibwild.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/of-identifiers-matching-oclcnums-and-umlaut/

By: Of Identifiers, matching, OCLCnums, and Umlaut « Bibliographic Wilderness

Of Identifiers, matching, OCLCnums, and Umlaut « Bibliographic Wilderness — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 01:12:33 +0000

[...] recently had a discussion with Karen Coyle (over in the comments section here), where she was negative toward the idea of using an OCLCnum as an identifier. If you consider the [...]

By: Molly Kleinman » Blog Archive » The OCLC data licensing saga: Adapt or die

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:15:11 +0000

[...] Rob Styles: OCLC Record Usage, Copyright, Contracts, and the Law [...]

By: | I Really Don’t Know

| I Really Don’t Know — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:33:32 +0000

[...] podcast discusses the recently published changes to OCLC’s record usage policy. I wrote about the legal aspects of OCLC’s change from guideline to policy before and why OCLC’s policy changes matter. It’s great that they’ve come on a [...]

By: blog.ecorrado.us » Rob Styles on OCLC, Record Usage, Copyright, Contracts and the Law

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:33:28 +0000

[...] Styles has an interesting post on OCLC, Record Usage, Copyright, Contracts and the Law. While Rob is not a lawyer, he did ask James Grimmelmann, an Associate Professor at New York Law [...]

By: Karen Coyle

Karen Coyle — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 15:13:20 +0000

Yes, I agree that OCLC numbers are useful — that was me mouthing off, of course, in a rabid pique — but they are useful precisely because OCLC is the largest database of library-related metadata and the OCLC number identifies the metadata. If you consider the OCLC number the primary identifier for bibliographic records, then OCLC owns our identification system, as Jonathan points out, which is very frightening.

But let us remember that OCLC numbers, while useful, are not identifiers for bibliographic data, only for that bibliographic data that is in OCLC’s database. For some of us that is all of our records, but for many it is not. I think it is important to be clear that the OCLC number identifies the OCLC record; and while that can be handy for many services, it is not a generalized bibliographic record identifier, but specific to that one database.

Depending on these numbers, however, means continuing dependence on OCLC and it means continuing to see OCLC as the source of all things bibliographic. We should be looking beyond OCLC to a solution that can be inclusive of ALL libraries and all metadata. We should also be moving to more global bibliographic sharing, less US-centric.