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

[Dan Wells]

I hope others weigh in, but I’m considering this (relatively) new OCLC policy through the lens of the old policy [2].  The goal of both policies, stated frankly, is to make the data usable to libraries in any reasonable way without making it easy for a third party to use the data to create a WorldCat competitor.  This has been a hard balance for them, and it leads to a lack of clarity as to what is required and what is merely recommended.

The old policy was very explicit in saying that, for members, “all transfers of records of their own holdings may be made without restriction, excepting only certain transfers to commercial organizations.”  I’m not sure if the new policy specifically mentions anywhere the “own holdings” restriction, but I think the spirit is still that membership entitles you to download records you need for your collection, and once you have those records, to use them in any way which is non-commercial and doesn’t compete with (and thus devalue) WorldCat as a whole.

It is my opinion that adding a set of OCLC RDA records to Evergreen for the purpose of improving the software is well within OCLC’s stated goals, and particularly if done with attribution, would be of no concern.  I would also volunteer to host any such record set if others are less comfortable with adding the records to the main repository.

Dan


[2] http://library.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15003coll17/id/108

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