As Record Use Policy Draws Comments, OCLC Reacts Quickly
Still some dismay, but OCLC reiterates that WorldCat as a whole shouldn't be diminished
Josh Hadro -- Library Journal, 04/15/2010
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- Community forum site of quick dialog
- What if WorldCat were released into the public domain?
- No ownership claimed over individual records
In the week following the release of the "WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities for the OCLC Cooperative," the OCLC Record Use Policy Council has vigilantly attended to commentary and criticisms on its online feedback forum page.
On that official feedback page and elsewhere, many in the bibliographic community agree that the revised policy features much improved language and clarity (though some have questioned whether that clarity breaks down when it comes to specific use cases).
Jennifer Younger, President-Elect, OCLC Global Council and Edward H. Arnold Director of Libraries, University of Notre Dame (and Record Use Policy Council's co-chair), told LJ the Council has been pleased with the commentary they've seen so far "through the community forum on the policy, through individual blogs, tweets, Webinars and e-mails directed to the Council and to individual Council members. We are hearing from a wide range of constituencies and partners in the library community, and we encourage continuing input. Steady input from the community has enabled us to continue to expand the FAQ."
The proposed policy will be discussed with the Global Council next week, she said, adding that the Records Council "will be meeting through mid-May to address questions, concerns and comments that have been coming to us since we posted the policy draft last week.”
Still, at the same time that many issues are being individually addressed on the feedback forum, an undercurrent of broader criticism also remains.
Some say adding WorldCat records to the public domain would enable new bibliographic projects to flourish, neither overseen by OCLC nor constrained by its data policies. Of course, these projects could then compete with OCLC to be the most prominent access point to library bibliographic materials.
Public versus protected
"Kudos to OCLC for a more transparent process and providing the opportunity to comment," wrote Heather Morrison, a Ph.D Student at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, BC) School of Communication, on her blog The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, and copied into a comment on the feedback forum.
However, Morrison then articulated a fundamental disagreement held by certain critics of the policy. "[W]hile this draft is an improvement over the first one, it is nevertheless going in the wrong direction altogether," she wrote. "Library bibliographic records belong in the public domain."
The Council, in a notably lengthy comment, pointed to a diminishment of the whole:
Consider what would happen if WorldCat (or a significant portion of it) were released into the public domain: in transferring large swathes of WorldCat records to non-member organizations, members in effect would be transferring the cooperative’s chief asset to organizations with no obligation to invest in it. Our analysis suggests that this would increase free riding, diminish the incentive to be a member, and eventually compromise the economic viability of the cooperative. The utility of the database would also be compromised as WorldCat fragments, resulting in a less comprehensive record supply, scattering efforts at collaborative knowledge organization, raising the costs of resource sharing, and reducing the global discoverability and visibility of members’ collections.Fundamental issue
Librarian and consultant Karen Coyle has similarly expressed her belief that the scope of the revision was insufficient.
"Sharing of this data is absolutely necessary for the furtherance of intellectual pursuits and scientific progress, as well as the market for new and used items," she wrote on her blog. "Ironically, the policy would restrict use of the data by OCLC members without restricting its use by the multitude of non-members. It would be unacceptable even if it were workable, which it isn't."
She later told LJ that the policy, which would ask libraries to consider the intent of potential agents and business partners, poses new problems. "How can you know what someone's intent is? Someone's intent can also change," she said. "What if there's something the library needs to do, but it doesn't further WorldCat? [The policy] puts libraries in a funny position."
Question of ownership
Though just one of many intermingled conceptual and legal issues, the question of data and record ownership has come up on email lists like AUTOCAT and others.
In the first question posed on the Feedback Forum, Bill Drew, Systems and Tech Services Librarian at Tompkins Cortland Community College (NY), asked whether OCLC considers itself "the owner of the OCLC records created by the membership," according to the revised policy.
The Council posted a response to Drew's question just 16 minutes later, and eventually added an entry to the FAQ document.
In both cases, the Council's answer stresses that the policy concerns itself solely with the WorldCat database as an aggregate resource maintained for the explicit benefit of the OCLC membership.
The FAQ question and answer:
10. I can't find anything in the draft policy about the ownership of the records. Who owns WorldCat bibliographic records?
OCLC only claims copyright rights in WorldCat as a compilation. Those rights are based on OCLC's intellectual contribution to WorldCat as a whole, including OCLC's selection, arrangement and coordination of the material in WorldCat. To the extent copyright rights exist in an individual bibliographic record in WorldCat, the copyright rights in the record would vest with the author of the record. Modifications, corrections and enhancements to a record may vest the author of those changes with copyright rights in the changes.
Having said that, the draft policy takes a very different starting point than who owns the records, what that means, or whether WorldCat data is public or proprietary. Instead, the draft policy begins with a new premise—the conviction that WorldCat is a shared community resource that is intended to benefit the cooperative of members who contribute to its growth and financially support it. Another principle underlying the draft policy is that the cooperative relies on WorldCat to share resources, reduce costs, and increase members' visibility and impact in the communities they serve. To that end, the draft policy sets out a framework of self-governing behaviors that will sustain WorldCat, the services based on it, the outcomes those services produce, and the cooperative itself over time.
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