- Mar 2024
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storage.courtlistener.com storage.courtlistener.com
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39. Of the entire WorldCat® collection, more than 93% of the records have beenmodified, improved, and/or enhanced by OCLC.
Percentage of WorldCat that has been “modified, improved, and/or enhanced”
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7. When OCLC member libraries subscribe to WorldCat® through OCLC’sWorldCat® Discovery Services/FirstSearch, the subscription includes the WorldCat.org service.Libraries are willing to pay for WorldCat.org as part of their WorldCat® subscription
Libraries pay for WorldCat.org visibility
The first sentence of the paragraph says that a subscription to WorldCat Discovery Services includes visibility on WorldCat.org. The second sentence says that libraries are willing to pay for this visibility. I’m not sure what else is included in a WorldCat Discovery Services subscription…is there a contradiction in these two sentences?
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- Oct 2023
- Aug 2023
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hangingtogether.org hangingtogether.org
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Recently we recommended that OCLC declare OCLC Control Numbers (OCN) as dedicated to the public domain. We wanted to make it clear to the community of users that they could share and use the number for any purpose and without any restrictions. Making that declaration would be consistent with our application of an open license for our own releases of data for re-use and would end the needless elimination of the number from bibliographic datasets that are at the foundation of the library and community interactions. I’m pleased to say that this recommendation got unanimous support and my colleague Richard Wallis spoke about this declaration during his linked data session during the recent IFLA conference. The declaration now appears on the WCRR web page and from the page describing OCNs and their use.
OCLC Control Numbers are in the public domain
An updated link for the "page describing OCNs and their use" says:
The OCLC Control Number is a unique, sequentially assigned number associated with a record in WorldCat. The number is included in a WorldCat record when the record is created. The OCLC Control Number enables successful implementation and use of many OCLC products and services, including WorldCat Discovery and WorldCat Navigator. OCLC encourages the use of the OCLC Control Number in any appropriate library application, where it can be treated as if it is in the public domain.
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- Sep 2022
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While libraries pay substantial fees to OCLC and other providers for services including deduplication, discovery, and enhancement, they do not do so with the intent that their records should then be siloed or restricted from re-use. Regardless of who has contributed to descriptive records, individual records are generally not copyrightable, nor is it in the public interest for their use to be restricted.
Libraries are not contributing records to the intent that access can be restricted
This is the heart of the matter, and gets to the record use policy debate from the last decade. Is the aggregation of catalog records a public good or a public good? The second sentence—"nor is it in the public interest for their use to be restricted"—is the big question in my mind.
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