Comments on: It Ain’t Easy Being OCLC

By: Working together « (d)atalog(ue)

Working together « (d)atalog(ue) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:16:08 +0000

[...] that customer by about 1000%. There has been (and continues to be) very animated discussion and reflection about these issues on a number of prominent library blogs with plenty of [...]

By: Doug

Doug — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:08:48 +0000

I’m just waiting for the “who’s Anita Bryant?” comment…

By: MJ Ray

MJ Ray — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:58:07 +0000

I know an organisation which asked how to join OCLC. No reply yet, as far as I know. The member/democracy really needs some attention.

By: K.G. Schneider

K.G. Schneider — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:20:35 +0000

Dave, yes, the view from a university library with a tiny collection and no current means of sharing resources beyond OCLC ILL (and we haven’t begun doing that yet!) is very different from a library in a 28-member system on a shared catalog. Essentially YPOW is a self-contained cloud.

By: Dave Whisenant

Dave Whisenant — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:12:43 +0000

I guess I just don’t see the OCLC side of this argument very well. I’ve been dealing with libraries who batchload their holdings for the past 15 years (between my present job and previous ones.) Batchloading has always been an option for libraries who do not catalog on OCLC but want to participate as group access members for ILL. And the cost for that service has been around $.23 per record. We currently have five colleges who don’t have OCLC cataloging privileges, but who send additions and deletions to OCLC once a year. Until recently, they even received a credit for the deletions. These colleges do not have universal access to ILL. They can only borrow directly from a specific group of librarias, otherwise they must refer their request to the State Library. And maybe that is the rub: maybe MSU wants full access to resource sharing which only comes with being a full participatory member. I always feel that I don’t have the full story on both sides of this controversy.

As far as the issue of whether OCLC services are “worth it,” I acknowledge that my view is somewhat skewed as I work in a shared system environment where most of our libraries are either finding records from other colleges on our system or getting them from a vendor via outsourcing. If I worked in a single system academic library, my OCLC connection might be much more valuable.

By: K.G. Schneider

K.G. Schneider — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:50:38 +0000

Hmmm,sorry my replies are not inline! Hope the direction of my responses is clear.

By: K.G. Schneider

K.G. Schneider — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:03:42 +0000

Well, that may just be pragmatism. Actually, I’m glad OCLC is that direct.

I frankly spend a lot of my time explaining why my goal is not to reduce the cost of library operations but to improve the quality of services. Not just in this job, either… for the last twenty years, it feels like. Maybe that’s because I’m a Democrat, and I believe in the taxation model. I LIKE paying taxes, when it results in schools and libraries and so forth.

By: K.G. Schneider

K.G. Schneider — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:58:58 +0000

It’s the raw end of the deal now, because we’re in such pain across the board. When the economy picks up again, the subscription model will be advantageous. In fact, I would bet that the subscription model initially benefited most OCLC participants. I would not like to see a return to pay-as-you-go. But I would like to see OCLC more transparent and more responsive to what’s happening in libraries. They could be leveraging this massive downturn toward building OCLC loyalty.

The subscription model has other advantages, particularly for smaller libraries… it’s like the cop I knew who would tell people he pulled over, “No, I don’t have a quota… I can issue as many tickets as I want!” It creates an incentive to contribute records. It’s also easy to manage: predictable, budgetable.

Note that for MPOW, becoming a full OCLC member has tremendous benefits. Not the least of which is the right to chunk rocks at the OCLC board’s collective behind

By: K.G. Schneider

K.G. Schneider — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:52:45 +0000

I’ll make a note directly in the post, but factored across the various costs, basically they are pricing batchloading to eliminate cost-savings from using a competing utility, on a dollar-per-dollar basis. All they had to do to make that happen was look at Sky River’s pricing. I’d be curious to know at what point you’d consider the OCLC pricing good enough for your budget, and whether this is just about the money.

By: Daily Digest for March 8th at Unusual Snack

Daily Digest for March 8th at Unusual Snack — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:46:06 +0000

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