Subject: [NGC4LIB] New record use policy 'WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities for the OCLC Cooperative' - effective August 1

From: "Whitehair,David" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2010 12:13:12 -0400

Sent on behalf of the OCLC Record Use Policy Council.

The new WorldCat record use policy has been approved by the OCLC Board
of Trustees. WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities for the OCLC
Cooperative <http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/recorduse/policy/default.htm>
will be effective August 1, 2010.

Our 12-member Record Use Policy Council undertook a detailed
investigation of the issues and drafted a new policy that we introduced
for community review In April 2010. More than 275 comments were gathered
via e-mail, phone, meetings and letters, in an online forum, and by
monitoring blogs, listservs and Twitter. Your comments resulted in
additions and changes to the draft. At the end of May 2010, we submitted
our revised policy statement to the OCLC Board, which approved the
document during its June meeting. 

To view the new policy, including a Frequently Asked Questions document
and a comparison between the draft submitted for community review and
the final document, visit:  http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/recorduse/

--OCLC Record Use Policy Council

Thanks,

David

David Whitehair

Senior Product Manager, Cataloging & Metadata Services

OCLC

6565 Kilgour Place

Dublin, OH 43017-3395 USA

Voice -- +1-614-764-6483 or 1-800-848-5878

Fax -- +1-614-718-7292

Email -- [email-masked]

---

From: "B.G. Sloan" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2010 13:25:55 -0700

Curious to hear what NGC4LIB folks think about the new OCLC policy...
 
Bernie Sloan

--- On Mon, 6/21/10, Whitehair,David <[email-masked]> wrote:

From: Whitehair,David <[email-masked]>
Subject: [NGC4LIB] New record use policy 'WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities for the OCLC Cooperative' - effective August 1
To: [email-masked]
Date: Monday, June 21, 2010, 12:13 PM

Thanks,

David

David Whitehair

OCLC

6565 Kilgour Place

Fax -- +1-614-718-7292

---

From: Tim Spalding <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2010 23:31:07 +0200

My thoughts:

Much of librarland has turned against its principles and hung out a
big "Go away!" sign to freedom, competition, innovation and anyone
outside the library world who has a good idea or who has the temerity
to think that, since citizens pay for libraries, they have a right to
library data.

The rules are fuzzier than the first draft, but fuzzy rules aren't
necessarily better. A true legal contract offers concrete protections
and rights, which the new rules do not. The effect will be the same:
the brief spring of open bibliographic data is over. You are stuck
with OCLC forever. God help you.

Libraries have undermined their moral authority about access to data
just when ebook licenses are starting to cut libraries out. The future
is clearly licenses, licenses, licenses. The way ebook licensing is
going, that may well be biggest effect.

But, most importantly, the policy is now in place. The time for
talking is over. The time has come to shut up.

Tim Spalding

---

From: Jan Szczepanski <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2010 08:26:11 +0200

Tim, you are obviously living in a strange world, a world of licenses. 
Have you not heard
about open access? Have you not heard about the million of books that 
Google Book
Search or about National Academic Press, eScholarship Editions, Project 
Gutenberg, Europeana
and many others?

I would say that "licenses, licenses, licenses" soon is more part of 
history than the future and we
will have to create millions of new records.

I would say that digitalization will be our big challenge this century 
not Big meals, sorry
Big Deals.

In a world where "money makes the world go around" we should give away 
the most
valuable we have just for something called " "freedom, competition, 
innovation" seems
rather naive and childish.

Jan

-- 
De åsikter som framförs här är mina personliga 
och inte ett uttryck för Göteborgs universitets-
biblioteks hållning

Opinions expressed here are my own and not
those of the Gothenburg University Library 

Jan Szczepanski
Förste bibliotekarie 
Goteborgs universitetsbibliotek 
Box 222
SE 405 30 Goteborg, SWEDEN 
Tel: +46 31 7861164 Fax: +46 31 163797 
E-mail: [email-masked]

---

From: Tim Spalding <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2010 02:55:28 -0400

Well, I'm not quite sure what you mean.

I applaud free content and copyleft licenses. It's certainly a good
thing that there are public domain books, open access journals and
Project Gutenberg.

I think it's a bad thing that a library record about any of those
things, even if created by a government agency, is now subject to
licensing. I would hope that libraries worked for the common good, or
at least the good of the people who pay for them. As it stands, OCLC
libraries now work to create a monopoly. Worse, they are creating a
perpetual monopoly.

As for "giving away what is most valuable," its seems to my naive mind
that the most valuable thing libraries have are information, expertise
and passion. You've been "giving that away" for millennia. It's why
you exist.

Tim

On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 2:26 AM, Jan Szczepanski
<[email-masked]> wrote:
> Tim, you are obviously living in a strange world, a world of licenses. Have
> you not heard
> about open access? Have you not heard about the million of books that Google
> Book
> I would say that "licenses, licenses, licenses" soon is more part of history
> than the future and we
> I would say that digitalization will be our big challenge this century not
> Big meals, sorry
> Big Deals.
>
> In a world where "money makes the world go around" we should give away the
> most
> De åsikter som framförs här är mina personliga och inte ett uttryck för
> Göteborgs universitets-
> biblioteks hållning
>
>
> Förste bibliotekarie Goteborgs universitetsbibliotek Box 222
> SE 405 30 Goteborg, SWEDEN Tel: +46 31 7861164 Fax: +46 31 163797 E-mail:
> [email-masked]
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

-- 
Check out my library at http://www.librarything.com/profile/timspalding

---

From: Ross Singer <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2010 10:16:15 -0400

Tim, what exactly in this requires a license?

I see this:
"While, on behalf of its members, OCLC claims copyright rights in
WorldCat as a compilation, it does not claim copyright ownership of
individual records."

which seems to me that you're free to use the data in Worldcat -- you
just can't copy Worldcat.  It also implies that there are licensing
restrictions on data generated by Worldcat services (x-identifier
services and whatnot), but that doesn't seem unreasonable.  You put
licensing restrictions on LibraryThing API data, for example.

I agree it seems contradictory later when they talk about the
restrictions on "Worldcat Data" (esp. given the definition of
"Worldcat Data" given in the glossary at the end).

To me, it seems an almost indefensible position given the amount of
data that is already out there and that will still be available via
Z39.50, screen scraping, etc. (and the presence of presence of an OCLC
number in the 035 is a pretty weak form of copyright) aimed mainly at
fining at institutions that, say, make bulk exports of their MARC
records available.  I wonder, though, if LC, Harvard or University of
Michigan were to defy this if OCLC would realistically come after
them.

OCLC would do best to focus on the value that Worldcat as a whole
brings rather than worry about value of its individual records (even
in bulk).

-Ross.

---

From: Karen Coyle <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2010 18:26:18 -0700

> Curious to hear what NGC4LIB folks think about the new OCLC policy...

While the main thrust of the policy is the same as it always has been  
(protecting WorldCat), I am glad that OCLC clarified their stand on  
the copyright issue. That doesn't mean that I agree with their  
copyright statement, but in the past it hasn't been expressed this  
clearly and there was a lot of speculation. OCLC claims no copyright  
in the bibliographic records, but does claim copyright in WorldCat as  
a whole:

It does seem that one could conclude from this statement that if OCLC  
can claim copyright in WorldCat then any library could also claim  
copyright in their bibliographic database as a whole. If so, then you  
could conclude that the libraries have the right to do what they wish  
with the database that they hold the rights to. My thinking goes like  
this:

1) OCLC didn't create the records, the libraries did, but OCLC can  
still copyright the database as a whole
2) the libraries have records in their databases, some of which they  
created, some of which were created by other libraries
3) therefore, using #1 and #2, the library database is to the library  
as WorldCat is to OCLC
4) thus, the library should be able to copyright their own database  
... OR neither the library nor OCLC should be able to copyright the  
database

It would be extremely interesting to see this get a legal test,  
because my musing on it is really just idle brain games.

kc

-- 
Karen Coyle
[email-masked] http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet

---

From: Weinheimer Jim <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 11:55:11 +0200

Karen Coyle wrote:
<snip>

</snip>

I hope this is correct, but on the other hand, to me there appears to be a contradiction as shown in the definition of Worldcat Data (or Worldcat bibliographic data):
"WorldCat Data. For purposes of this policy, WorldCat data is metadata for an information object, generally in the form of *a record or records* [my emphasis--JW] encoded in MARC format, whose source is or at one point in time was the WorldCat bibliographic database."

The definition of Worldcat data appears in a slightly different form in Section 1:
"The purpose of the policy is to define the rights and responsibilities associated with the stewardship of the WorldCat bibliographic and holdings database by and for the OCLC cooperative, including the use and exchange of OCLC member-contributed data comprising that database."

Worldcat data makes up the Worldcat database, and from this, we see that the Worldcat database is also comprised of "OCLC member-contributed data".

It seems to me from this reading that, because the data went through the Worldcat database, the following conclusion is mathematically inescapable:

Worldcat Data = OCLC member-contributed data

This seems to me to imply some level of ownership.

In any case, from this reading it seems that a local library, if it wants to do something with its own records, perhaps outside of its own catalog, must follow Section 3.A.4. The only out is the vague terminology of "should" and "are encouraged":
"OCLC members should ensure..." 
and
"OCLC member's agent are encouraged, subject to the terms and conditions of a mutually acceptable separate agreement between the agent and OCLC...]

Of course, I am no lawyer either, but while the Google-Publisher agreement is not dealing with library information per se, i.e. we only own copies of intellectual property that belongs to others, librarians have gotten all bent out of shape over it. Here we are speaking of library created metadata that has definitely belonged to the library that created it. Calling it Worldcat data, which then has a number of conditions attached, seems to merit some attention too.

James Weinheimer  [email-masked]
Director of Library and Information Services
The American University of Rome
via Pietro Roselli, 4
00153 Rome, Italy
voice- 011 39 06 58330919 ext. 258
fax-011 39 06 58330992

---

From: Adrian Pohl <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 18:07:48 +0200

Karen,

I argued similarly as you do on the OCLC community forum. (I don't
know why, but OCLC took the forum off the web so I can't link to
single comments and all existing links to it are now broken. OCLC
published a PDF document instead with all entries but without keeping
the hyperlinks in them:
http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/recorduse/policy/forum/forum.pdf) The
comment I am referring to is on page 16 of the pdf, the Record Use
Policy Council's answer is on page 17.

The OCLC Record Use Policy Council neither contradicted nor confirmed
my statements. They just highlighted the policy's "social contract"
character and refrained from taking a stand on legal questions.

I am not a lawyer but am quite sure that - legally - libraries can do
with their local data whatever they want. (For the arguments backing
this view see the mentioned forum post.) If single libraries release
their data under an open licence
(http://opendefinition.org/licenses#Data) or do other things with it
which aren't conform with the policy OCLC won't have legal grounds to
prevent that or legally proceed against it. They can only use OCLC
internal sanction mechanisms. The "worst" thing OCLC could eventually
do is exclude libraries who make "disputed use" of WorldCat records
from the OCLC club.

BTW, in the hbz (North Rhine-Westphalian Library Service Center) it
goes the other way round: The library center would like to make the
union catalog data public domain while single libraries think the
union catalog can't and shouldn't be published under an open licence
without their consent. So the hbz decided to only open catalog data
which has holdings from libraries who cooperate with the hbz in this
open data initiative. (BTW, recently RWTH Aachen University Library
decided to join the initiative and opened up 1.2 million more records:
http://www.bth.rwth-aachen.de/offbibdat.html) Just as in OCLC's case
it is - legally - a very difficult question who can decide over a
cooperatively created database and its content. I believe it would be
the most elegant solution to set the data free, so that anyone can
make use of it. Consequently, all legal questions would disappear, the
library community could concentrate on providing good services with
the data and the data's use would be maximized. That's without even
mentioning all the other good reasons for contributing publicly funded
data to the public domain...

Adrian

2010/6/23 Karen Coyle <[email-masked]>:
> (protecting WorldCat), I am glad that OCLC clarified their stand on the
> copyright issue. That doesn't mean that I agree with their copyright
> statement, but in the past it hasn't been expressed this clearly and there
> was a lot of speculation. OCLC claims no copyright in the bibliographic
> records, but does claim copyright in WorldCat as a whole:
>
> "While, on behalf of its members, OCLC claims copyright rights in WorldCat
> as a compilation, it does not claim copyright ownership of individual
> records."
>
> It does seem that one could conclude from this statement that if OCLC can
> claim copyright in WorldCat then any library could also claim copyright in
> their bibliographic database as a whole. If so, then you could conclude that
> the libraries have the right to do what they wish with the database that
> they hold the rights to. My thinking goes like this:
>
> 1) OCLC didn't create the records, the libraries did, but OCLC can still
> copyright the database as a whole
> 3) therefore, using #1 and #2, the library database is to the library as
> WorldCat is to OCLC
> 4) thus, the library should be able to copyright their own database ... OR
> neither the library nor OCLC should be able to copyright the database
>
> It would be extremely interesting to see this get a legal test, because my
> musing on it is really just idle brain games.
>
> kc
>
>
>
> --
> Karen Coyle