[Eg-oversight-board] Agenda suggestion: Research if EG community can use OCLC records

[Dan Wells]

Hello all,

For what it's worth, I'm not reading things the same as Rogan.  The licensing page [1] mentions that OCLC "recommends that the Open Data Commons Attribution (ODC-BY) license be used by OCLC members who want to release their library catalogs under an open data license structure."  If a member can make their entire catalog available for download by providing attribution, I imagine any member could make several hundred RDA records available, provide said attribution, and not have any problems with this policy whatsoever.  This interpretation assumes the RDA records in question are for things the library actually owns; pulling arbitrary records out of OCLC for this purpose would be considerably murkier.

Also, while OCLC sets aside the OCLC number as unique, they do so to make it more open.  The same licensing page says "the OCN can be treated as if it is in the public domain and can be included in any data exposure mechanism or activity as public domain data."  This is really just a footnote the conversation, but I thought it worth clarifying.

Dan


[1] http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/community/record-use.en.html
Also see: http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/community/record-use/data-licensing.en.html


Daniel Wells
Library Programmer/Analyst
Hekman Library, Calvin College
616.526.7133