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

[Rogan Hamby]

I can easily imagine confusion playing a significant part in this.  But, if
the policy Yamil pointed us to does in fact supersede the old one in full
then it's the one we have to make a decision based on in terms of it being
OCLC's position.  Context is valuable but in legal matters only when
there's ambiguity in terms of an agreement to show intent or if there is an
attempt to show a party acting in bad faith.

Their FAQ further tightens down on their intent pretty clearly.
http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/community/record-use/policy/questions.en.html

#10 on their FAQ further clarifies what is implied elsewhere that "[OCLC]
does not claim copyright ownership of individual records."  The
conservative legal thing to do would be to gain access from a library who
owns said records to use them.

However I do a possible avenue in question 7 "A nonmember or agent
(commercial or noncommercial) is seeking permission to harvest or receive a
copy of our catalog that includes our extracted WorldCat data so it can
incorporate the data into its product or service."  This would include the
subset in question though it would only include instances where the library
had holdings associated with those records.  Neither descriptions 1 or 2
would apply to the Evergreen project as a legal entity.  However,
description 3 of type of nonmember or agency lists criteria for allowing
entities excluded by 1 or 2 and among the terms lists terms "comparable"
(which lets a lower legal standard) and allows it when it further's OCLC's
public purpose, there are limitations that essentially prevent it from
harming WorldCat and additional exchange of value.  Note, that this does
not have to be approved by OCLC and only has to be comparable (which is why
I'm not quoting whole sections).  While there is not an exchange of
services there is a comparable exchange of value based on improved ILS QA.
 The limitation would be the limited amount of records used.  Clearly, we
don't need enough to come anywhere near to duplicating WorldCat for test
data.  And OCLC's public purpose states that "we will work together to
improve access to the information held in libraries around the globe" which
I think Evergreen and Koha both do as open source projects.

Now, would I feel comfortable going forward with this argument?  I would be
but I also tend to lean strongly towards the side of "information wants to
be free."



On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 9:21 AM, Dan Wells <dbw2 at calvin.edu> wrote:

>  The new policy does supersede the old, but I still feel the old provides
> important context.  The original version of the new policy was much more
> severe, and raised quite a stir, and the language we have now was meant to
> be a compromise to the many (myself included) who felt we were losing
> significant freedoms the old policy allowed.  Of course, in the process,
> the language became quite complicated, and I doubt even OCLC itself truly
> knows what is allowed and what is not (and hence their apparent
> unwillingness to give a straight answer).
>
>
>
> Dan
>
>
>
>
>
> Daniel Wells
>
> Library Programmer/Analyst
>
> Hekman Library, Calvin College
>
> 616.526.7133
>
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> eg-oversight-board at list.evergreen-ils.org
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>
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