ILS user groups can be one of the greatest sources of tips, tricks and inspiration for tech-oriented library staff. There was a recent discussion on the Innovative User’s Group that has led to an interesting way to embed various media into OPAC search results.

Each of these work in Innovative’s Millennium OPAC. I have not had a chance to check whether this will work in other systems, but would greatly enjoy hearing whether or not it works for others.

The key to this is the MARC 970 field, using the subfield |t, which is used for Table of Contents display information. It was observed that the contents of the field were passed along to the browser, and that html code could be passed to the bibliographic display.

It works well, and is a perfect example of a “hack”, utilizing existing functionality in new and creative ways. To date, there are six ways to extend the OPAC.

To try out these examples, simply copy the html code, starting with the |t, and paste it into a 970 field in a bibliographic record. Each of the examples should work as is; some information about how to modify the code, as well as a screenshot of the example is provided.

Displaying an Image:
This is fairly straightforward insertion of an image stored on Flickr. Change the URLs to whatever you need, adjust the pixel height and width, and this will serve you well.

|t<center><object data="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3433/3694927599_039309b2e6_o.jpg" type="image/jpg" width="400" height="600"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3433/3694927599_039309b2e6_o.jpg"></img></object></center>

Image Screenshot

Embedding a Search Form:
This code embeds a search form for OpenLibrary, including a selector check box and link to an advanced search page. Search forms can be tricky, and it can be very challenging to get even basic search functionality for some services.

|t<br />Search OpenLibrary:<form method="get" action="http://www.openlibrary.org/search"><input border: 1px solid #ccc; width: 100%" type="text" name="q" value="" title="type_search." /><button class="go" type="submit">Go</button><br /><input tabindex="9" type="checkbox" value="mhsncqbxgkup" name="ftokens">Scanned books only<br /><a href="http://www.openlibrary.org/advanced" style="text-decoration: underline">OpenLibrary Advanced Search Page</a></form>

Search Box Screenshot

Embedding a Video:
This example embeds a YouTube video, specifically the preview for the film “A Streetcar Named Desire”. Previews of videos available in the library, library instructional videos, and author interviews are examples of the types of embedded video that add can value to your OPAC.

The embedding information comes from the “Embed” information from the YouTube result page. You can also simply replace the URL information in the code below:

|t<center><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ilW32IKJoM0&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="720" height="578"></embed></center>

Embedded Video Screenshot

Streaming Audio:
This example uses a third-party service called Odeo to stream the MP3 audio of Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The audio file lives on the Internet Archive.

|tTo listen to the speech, click the "Play" button:<br /><center><embed src= "http://www.odeo.com/flash/audio_player_standard_gray.swf" quality="high" width="300" height="52" allowScriptAccess="always" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" flashvars= "valid_sample_rate=true&external_url=http://www.archive.org/download/MLKDream/MLKDream_64kb.mp3" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed></center>

Streaming Audio Screenshot

Journal Table of Contents
This example utilizes two separate third-party services. First, the ticTOCs Journal Tables of Contents service is used to locate an RSS feed for a table of contents, in this case “Educational Research“.

After this, the feed URL is entered into the Feed2js service, which generates the code. To display any RSS feed, simply use the Feed2js service with a feed’s URL.

|t<script language="JavaScript" src="http://feed2js.org//feed2js.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.informaworld.com%2Fampp%2Frss%7Econtent%3D0013-1881&chan=y&tz=-5&targ=y&utf=y&html=a" charset="UTF-8" type="text/javascript"></script> <noscript> <a href="http://feed2js.org//feed2js.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.informaworld.com%2Fampp%2Frss%7Econtent%3D0013-1881&chan=y&tz=-5&targ=y&utf=y&html=y">View RSS feed</a> </noscript>

Journal Table of Contents Screenshot

Virtual Bookplate
This example is simply a proof of concept, but I especially enjoyed putting this one together and hope to create a more polished version in the future. It uses a background image of an open book with blank pages (credit to happysweetmama via Flickr), and then applies Relative Positioning to place text on top of the image.

The text position, font, size, and content are all able to be controlled for each record. This can be a great way to honor those who add to a collection, or to highlight items from a particular collection.

|t<center><object data="http://www.libology.com/capital/OpenBook500.jpg" type="image/jpg" width="500" height="364"> <img src="http://www.libology.com/capital/OpenBook500.jpg" width="500" height="364"></img> </object><div style="position: relative; top:-225px; left:-125px"><font size="+1" font-family:"Times New Roman",Georgia,Serif;>A Gift from:</font></div><div style="position: relative; top:-260px; left:125px"><font size="+2" font-family:"Times New Roman",Georgia,Serif;>Josiah H.<br />Blackmore II</font></div></center>

Virtual Bookplate Screenshot

There are, I am sure, dozens of ways that one can use this hack to enhance the OPAC… these are just a start.

The American Antiquary Society has a great visual reference on the Anatomy of a Catalog Record:

found via Catalogablog

While clearing out old lists of post inspirations, I ran across a post on Commonplace.net that still gets my brain going:

At my place of work, my desk is in close proximity to our two catalogers.  The conversations that ensue about cataloging standards, MARC, and such are often interesting, and occasionally stray into realms so esoteric that it becomes a challenge to keep up with the thread of conversation.

My rare contribution usually boils down to “I am an agnostic as to what standards are used, but the basic storage and retrieval of cataloging information should be as granular and relational as can be achieved.”

By granular, I mean that information should be divided into small, well-defined chunks.  When an author is listed as “Smith, John, 1947-” I cringe a little.  Dividing the author’s first and last (and middle) names into separate fields makes a world of sense, especially when you encounter authors with multiple middle or last names (or both).  Instead, MARC relegates the name into one string.  This also creates problems with cultural differences in how given and family names are presented.

Another problem is that this information exists separately in each bibliographic record.  If our data storage systems were to store author/creator information in a relational manner, we could have one record for “Smith, John, 1947-”.  This would make it much easier in the unfortunate circumstance that the author becomes “Smith, John, 1947-2010″.

Most library software uses granular and relational database methods for the storage of circulation and acquisitions information.  It is our bibliographic information that is stuck in an inefficient rut.

The strongest argument I can think of for changing this is that is is very easy to create scripts and use software to put together small pieces of information to create an easy-to-understand string; it is much, much harder to take that string and break it into well-defined and usable chunks in order to use the information in new ways.

The future of data is not so much everyone using the same specific standards, but using standards that can be compared and used in ways that are compatible.  We can easily build MARC records from a granular relational database; cataloging need not change how it views and edits records (not much, at least), but the current methods are holding libraries back.

Baker & Taylor has the next big thing in ebooks. Really!

As with all of  the “next big things” we see in digital technology, we get to “wait and see”.

However, reading the post makes me marvel at the possibilities that this could provide to libraries that use Baker & Taylor and their Yankee Book Peddler (YBP) subsidiary.  Imagine being able to offer e-books bundled with any print copies purchased, with cataloging services included.

found via LISNews

The part of me that is somewhat of a Star Wars geek really finds it fascinating that, according to one of the catalogers at my place of work,  Barack Obama’s Dewey Decimal Cutter Number is…

Ob1

My favorite example of “proper” library terminology that doesn’t relate to the language in use by the general public (or most library employees for that matter) is Cookery.

The Library of Congress is in the process of retiring the subject heading for “Cookery” and replacing it in most cases with “Cooking” (Pdf).

found via Catalogablog

Lorcan Demsey discusses a previous post about Metadata that he wrote a couple of years ago, and the implications for how we approach the creation and selection of information about information.  His four categories:

1. Professional. Produced by staff in support of particular business aims. Think of cataloging, or data produced within the book industry, or A&I data.
2. Crowdsourced. Produced by users of systems.Think of tags, reviews and ratings on consumer sites.
3. Programmatically promoted. Think of automatic extraction of metadata from digital files, automatic classifcation, entity identification, and so on.
4. Intentional. Data about choices and transactions which support analytics or business intelligence services. Think about ranking, relating, recommending in consumer sites (e.g people who like this also like this) based on collected transaction data.

The traditional library approach has been the first category (Professional).  The downside is that it it far too time consuming to keep up with the firehose of new resources.  When was the last time you heard someone discuss cataloging the internet?

The challenge with the remaining options is the opposite.  There is a great deal of metadata being generated, and the challenge is to organize and/or standardize what we use.

Where does this leave library catalogers, and libraries in general?  How should we focus our efforts?  Should we focus on traditional metadata creation, or should we attempt to update and adapt our processes and standards to a changing world?  Potential rewards, and possible troubles await either choice.  Can we forge a path that allows us to do both, or is that doomed to failure.

Just some things to think about….

May All Your Standards Be Simple and Evolvable is a post by John Wilbanks on Science Blog’s Common Knowledge.  It is written with medical data standards in mind, but it could be discussing the state of library data as well:

“…TCP/IP, created simply to move bits between computers, begat a variety of new protocols like FTP, Gopher, Finger, many other protocols that layered atop the basic bits standard. Complexity from simplicity. Attempting to embed file transfer into the bits protocol would have made this whole process a lot harder.”

We are approaching a point in which we will be moving our data out of the cumbersome and outdated MARC format.  It will happen, regardless of the heel-dragging that has been taking place for over 10 years.  The debate is still heated over what we will replace the standard with.

Can we come up with something simple and evolvable?  I define this as being able to build things out of data without having to break the it up into usable chunks.  Have you looked at a MARC (.mrc) record with a text editor?  There is no easy way to determine what much of the data means, and the entire record is one string of information.  You can usually pick out the title, author and a few other things, but mostly it looks like gobbledygook.

If our data were in nice, small, understandable pieces to begin with, with straightforward rules guiding how it was formatted, it would invite innovation and creative use.  We are only hindering ourselves with the complexity and arcane rules; simplicity would serve everyone’s needs far better.

The Review Board on Principles of Shared Data Creation and Stewardship has released their final report on OCLC’s proposed policy for use of records (pdf), and after reviewing the report, OCLC has formally withdrawn the policy.

This conclusion to the records policy proposal is the best that could be imagined.  OCLC has listened to criticism from the greater library community, considered both the policy and it’s criticism through the efforts of the Review Board, and has responded in a way that allows everyone to move forward with a greater understanding of how best to go about updating the policy.

I suggested early on that OCLC was a tiger, instinctively defending its territory.  This still feels like a proper metaphor:  the movement towards creating a policy without proper input from the library community, and the subsequent review and withdrawing of the policy, seems more like an organization that didn’t realize the true implications of what it was putting in place, as opposed to one that was attempting a power grab to create a monopoly.

This was, and remains, a critical issue for libraries.  The ability to use the metadata representing our collections (as well as connecting them to collections and resources beyond what we own) is critical to our future ability to offer services in ways that will serve our patrons best.

I certainly hope that OCLC sets up a policy creation board similar to the review board – one that seeks a wide a range of ideas, opinion and input.  This will ensure a policy that takes a broader and more complete view of the use of cataloging records, but will also strengthen OCLC, because a membership organization is stronger when the constituent members are consistently heard and respected.  This has happened with the Review Board, and if OCLC continues to encourage it, everyone will come out ahead.

To OCLC:  You have responded well, and in the process have created an opportunity to solidify your position as a membership organization.  Keep up the good work and you will benefit, along with your members.

To the Review Board:  The report is well-written, and does an excellent job of stating what was wrong with the policy (and the process of creating the policy), as well as providing a constructive means to create a new policy that will properly reflect the needs and desires of the membership as a whole.

To detractors of the policy:  Those who offered strong, but constructive, criticism deserve recognition.  This was an emotional debate, and keeping focused on the issues at hand has ultimately won the day.  The best, and most complete, resource of commentary and information is the Code4Lib OCLC Policy Change page.

This has been an education for all involved:  the power of sustained commentary, of constructive criticism, of listening as well as talking, and of reviewing and changing positions when necessary.  Everyone should keep it up.

resources:  ResourceShelf & Disruptive Library Technology Jester

Oracle has purchased Sun Microsystems.

This is significant on many levels.  Many of our library systems run on software or hardware from these companies.  The Voyager library I used to work for used an Oracle database running on a Sun Solaris server.  The clients (Circulation, Cataloging, Acquisitions, etc.) for III’s Millennium system run on Java.

Many web-based software platforms use MySQL (an open-source database project owned by Sun), including many, many blogs (including this one) wikis and CMS.

Many of us use OpenOffice as either their primary or as an additional office suite.

I am not saying that we are at risk for losing these foundations of our library and internet software programs.  The fact that OpenSolaris, Java, MySQL, and OpenOffice are all open source means that we can trust that they will be with us in some form for as long as there is a demand (a trust that cannot be equally placed with any closed source software, which can disappear with the collapse or acquisition of the company holding the software rights).

What I am sure of is that we will see changes.  Oracle has a strategy, or if it doesn’t, it will.  Some of these programs will likely see greater support and resources (hopefully OpenOffice), others will likely see less (hopefully none of them).  Some may become more focused towards a particular segment of the technology world (watch MySQL for this possibility).

Look at what you use, and recognize that today marks a turning point for some of the software.   Hopefully it is for the better.

found via TechCrunch and MetaFilter

For those interested in Open Source Integrated Library Systems such as Koha, Evergreen, Open Library Environment Project (OLE), OpenBiblio, etc., the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS) will be holding an e-forum on April 21st and 22nd.  From the announcement:

Please join us for a free ALCTS e-forum discussion!   Participation is open to all.

April 21-22, 2009:  Open Source ILS and Technical Services:   High Risk or High Reward?

Moderated by Clint Chamberlain, University of Texas Libraries, and Rob Van Rennes, University of Iowa Libraries, members of the ALCTS CRS Acquisitions Committee.

Over the past few years, many librarians have expressed dissatisfaction with our current ILS, citing inflexible systems, high costs, and lackluster vendor service.  Some libraries have consequently pursued Open Source ILS such as OLE, Koha, and Evergreen.  Join this e-forum to share your experiences with and your questions about Open Source ILS and your thoughts on the future of the traditional, proprietary ILS.   We are particularly interested in hearing about experiences with the technical services aspects of Open Source ILS:  acquisitions, management of continuing resources, and cataloging.

Discussion will start Tuesday, April 21, 9AM EST and will conclude Wednesday, April 22, 5PM EST.

You can sign up at http://lists.ala.org/sympa/, go to the ALCTS section, then select alcts-eforum@ala.org.

I am especially interested in hearing about how the Cataloging, Acquisitions, and Circulation functions are viewed by people who use them in a production environment.  Koha and Evergreen have been making incredible progress into the library world, and I suspect that many of us will have experience with them before long.

received via SerialsT list

Marc was a Good & Loyal Mule but Now It’s Time to Shoot It is a post over on the Future4catalogers blog that does an effective job at explaining why the library community should be focusing on using a new, more powerful (and easier to learn, use, explain, and mashup) metadata structure.

I suspect that part of the problem lies with people who don’t really know what a marc record looks like, and why it is nearly impossible to work with in its native form.  From the essay:

To do anything with a Marc record, it must be disassembled and reconstituted in pieces.  Even the displays we see as Marc workforms require this disassembly and reassembly to make it comprehensible to catalogers.

Most see the nicely formatted row-by-row marc view that can be seen on some library OPACs as well as cataloging software in our ILS platforms.  If you have ever opened a pure marc file in a text editor, you would quickly conclude that locating and understanding information in the record is very challenging, and the thought of editing the record in this form is crazy talk.

If a good and robust metadata format were used instead, then the data could be arranged and edited in a wide variety of ways (including replication of the standard cataloging interface).  Even better, however, is that one can open, view, and edit the record (or even a large group of records) within a text editor (though there are and will be many tools to streamline and simplify the process).

Karen Coyle writes about the Library of Congress and their follow-up to the lcsh.info shuttering last fall.  In LC discovers infinity, she points out that at ALA Midwinter they not only stated that they recognized the value of the service, but that they were planning on re-releasing it as “Library of Congress Subject Headings” within 6-8 weeks.

Then she points out that 9 weeks have passed, with no changes on the website, nor updates as to the progress being made.

Any project, including re-implementing a service that was fully functional, can run into complications.  We have all experienced this.  The key is keeping people informed, and being realistic about solving problems.

LC should not have shut down lcsh.info in the manner they did; they should have implemented their version first, then allowed for an overlap (6 months, for instance) to give those who had integrated the service into their systems time to switch over.  What we have is a mess, and the pressure is on the Library of Congress to clean it up.

Terry Reese has released an updated version of MarcEdit 5.1, and there are a few interesting additions:

• Improved support for Enterprise users (large organizations).
• Multiple Z39.50 querying capabilities.
• Tutorials hosted on YouTube.
• Improved UTF-8 loading (as in Faster).
• ‡biblios.net proof of concept Plug-in.

It sounds like a great program just got even better!

found via Catalogablog

LibraryThing has implemented the start of a solution for the problem of distinguishing authors with the same names.

This has been a challenge for libraries since the beginning of cataloging.  The accepted solution thus far has been Authority Records.  I like that LibraryThing has found a simple, elegant solution that matches what people think and say when distinguishing between two authors with the same name.

I also like that they will be following the Disambiguation model used by Wikipedia; it works well and oftentimes leads users to serindipitous information.

OCLC announced the members of the Review Board of Shared Data Creation and Stewardship yesterday, save for a member yet to be announced from the European National Library:

• Christopher Cole (FEDLINK): Associate Director for Technical Services, National Agricultural Library
• Poul Erlandsen (EMEA): Head, Document Access Services and Collection Management, Danish University of Education, National Library of Education
• Pat French (OCLC Western): Manager, Collection and Technical Services, Multnomah County Library
• Clifford A. Lynch: Executive Director, Coalition for Networked Information (CNI)
• Brian E. C. Schottlaender (OCLC Western): The Audrey Geisel University Librarian, UC San Diego Libraries
• Ted Schwitzner (ILLINET): Head, Bibliographic Services Division, Illinois State University, Milner Library
• Roberta Shaffer (FLICC/FEDLINK/LC): Executive Director, Federal Library and Information Center Committee, Library of Congress
• Lamar Veatch (COSLA/SOLINET): State Librarian, Georgia Public Library Service—University System of Georgia
• Elsie Weatherington (SOLINET): Dean, University Library, Virginia State University
• Jennifer Younger (INCOLSA): Edward H. Arnold Director of Hesburgh Libraries, University of Notre Dame

I do not know anyone from this list, nor do I know of them, but I like the that they are drawn from a fairly wide range of libraries.  At this point I have every confidence that they will approach their duties with the best of intentions.  Theirs will be a challenging task, and one which will be watched and commented on closely.

In the same announcement, OCLC posted an e-mail address for questions and comments:  reviewboard@oclc.org .  I encourage everyone who has an interest in how the records are to be licensed and/or used to compose their views and send them to the board.  Every viewpoint, every arguement, every communication sends a message.  The library community created and nurtured OCLC as it exists, the library community created and nurtured the bibliographic records that are at the heart of this matter; the library community should make its wishes known.

found via ResourceShelf

Karen Coyle wrote an excellent post about OCLC’s delayed implementation of the records licensing policy.  An exerpt:

Those of us who promote open access must use this time wisely.

• First, we need to get some solid legal advice. It’s clear that OCLC can propose any kind of conditions in a contract and hope to get signers; it’s less clear that OCLC can impose a contract on members 1) without their explicit agreement 2) that covers data created before the contract becomes valid 3) that binds third parties to the contract.
• Next, anyone who has bibliographic data should release it “into the wild” as quickly as possible. Once the data is circulating, it will not be possible to withdraw it. One solution is to create database dumps and to upload these to the Internet Archive. They will be there for downloading by others, and some of the data may end up in the Open Library. Assuming that bibliographic records cannot be covered by copyright, all of this data ends up in the public domain to fuel innovation and creativity.

If enough people take advantage of this extra time to better understand the copyright issues as well as to provide the data stored in their systems to open repositories, the message that will be sent not only to OCLC but everyone involved with libraries will be this:

We are more interested in services and sharing than in ownership.  Our values and our culture are built from this premise.  Organizations and companies that wish to work with us need to understand this, and they need to provide services and sharing as their top priority.  Since this is what we value, whis is what we will reward.

We are now one month away from the implementation of OCLC’s new records policy.  Tim Spaulding at Thingology has compiled seven arguments why libraries should resist the license.

Even if you don’t feel that OCLC intends to take a hard line approach towards libraries (members or not), recognize that we just don’t know who will be making specific decisions about enforcing this policy in five, ten, or twenty years.  OCLC is not static and unchanging; they don’t have to enforce all of the terms at every moment, but those terms can be enforced in the future.

These records will become more, not less, important over time, and the more involvement by the library community in their use and regulation, the better.  We don’t have to agree to the license terms, and should make an effort to create agreements that are in the best interest of all concerned.

found via LISNews

I wrote a recommendation, on request, about the impact to my workplace of the OCLC license policy changes that are scheduled to start in February.  I am posting an exerpt here, not because I feel it brings anything new to the debate or that I feel it is a solution for libraries in general, but because it is an example of how I am applying what I think and feel about an issue to our real-life situation.

Note that I do not set policy for my library, and do not feel that my suggestions are the end-all be-all of what we should do, and I certainly am not stating any of this as anything but my own opinion.  I view my role as putting ideas into the discussion with the hope of achieving what is right for us as a library and for everyone involved through collaboration and debate.  In that spirit, I decided to post part of what I wrote:

I have been following this debate with a fair amount of interest, and there are actually a couple of answers to your query:

1) In the near-term, the OCLC licensing policy changes do not have a direct impact on what we do or how we do it.  One of the first changes they made in response to library bloggers (and perhaps others who responded via other channels) was to make the retention and/or addition of the license link into the 996 field, as well as retaining the OCLC number, a request rather than a requirement.

This makes the cataloging and other MARC-related activities relatively unchanged, although I have a recommendation in regards to this, which is located below.

2) In the longer view, the OCLC licensing policy changes has the potential, if OCLC is able to successfully defend them legally, to create problems for us and many other libraries.  One result of this is that services such as OpenLibrary (22 million records – http://www.openlibrary.org/ ), LibraryThing ( http://www.librarything.com/ ), and the brand-new biblios.net ( http://www.biblios.net/ ) would all have to obtain OCLC’s permission for any records that have passed through WorldCat, regardless of actual ownership (likely the creating institution) or copyright status (data in the records, like Major League Baseball statistics, are considered public domain – though this has never been tested for MARC records).

More chilling is the possibility that any service that duplicates an OCLC service, and that uses records that have passed through WorldCat, must obtain permission.  I see this as an issue for any union catalog such as OhioLink ( http://www.ohiolink.edu/ ), Georgia Pines ( http://gapines.org/opac/en-US/skin/default/xml/index.xml ), etc.  This specific clause seems to have been removed from the latest version of the license, but seems to be implied throughout the document.

However, one aspect of the license is that the records do not fall under the license that exists at the time they were uploaded to WorldCat, but fall under whatever the current form of the license happens to be.  OCLC is the sole arbiter for the contents of the license and can change it whenever and however it sees fit, with the changes affecting all records and all users of those records instantaneously.  This is not a nice situation for a co-operative membership organization.

My recommendations:

1) When the 996 field begins to be used in February, we should delete the license link from every record we import; we should resist adding the field to any of our existing records as well.  [Our cataloger] assures me that this process will fit into our current cataloging process very well and will not add any appreciable time or effort to our cataloging.  This will allow us to continue with the same status of our records and allow us to see where this will lead (i.e. changes to the policy, legal challenges, effects of other players in the library world, etc.).  OCLC may very well change the “request” back to “requirement” at some point in the future; we can re-evaluate it then.

2) We should examine ways to make it known to OCLC that they are the best at what they do, and that any organization that would replicate them at their scale would still face many of the same issues they are facing.  OCLC is defending its territory, a reasonable thing for any organization to do.  However, they are acting very “defensively” in regards to the license policy, and we would be much better served by their focusing on making their services so comprehensive and quality-driven that we have no desire to look elsewhere.  OCLCs acting defensively has inspired many people to examine their options, and this may signal the beginning of a new effort to create record depositories outside of WorldCat.  Encouraging OCLC to be more “open” will actually strengthen them as an organization, while at the same time improve everyone’s interactions with them.  Defensive legal positions will only serve to alienate their users.  OCLC needs to understand all of this in order to continue their dominant role; it is in our best interest to help them to understand this.

3) We should investigate and determine the ways in which the newer, open services can benefit us, and how we may benefit them (including our providing records).  At the very least, the competition will encourage OCLC to be more open, and may help to reduce our payments (or at least reduce the increase in payments) to OCLC in the future.

I will stress that much of what appears above contains my opinions and attitudes; I have mixed feelings about OCLC (as I do for any tiger defending its territory, or any 800-pound gorilla) and earnestly hope that they open up their services and records in a way that will be beneficial to everyone involved.

Another installment in the exploration of the effects of OCLC’s licensing policy changes, this one an examination of various Federal Library records by Thingology’s Tim Spaulding.