An interesting kerfuffle has been brewing in LibraryLand. Some library organizations have been using alternative utilities to catalog their resources, and now one of them expects their intended savings to be wiped out because OCLC wants to charge them a higher rate for batchloading than for those of us who pay OCLC for cataloging. Meanwhile, [...]
(Note, I am alone Christmas Eve, but Sandy joins me tomorrow–so excuse the holiday post!) Though I hate the slog of air travel per se, I do love flight, and my favorite moment is when the plane lifts above cloud level, with the sky above us and the cloud stretched out underneath in an infinite [...]
Note: be sure to read this post if you AREN’T going to ALA Annual — because there’s some free (as in zero-cost) participation opportunities here. For this conference’s LITA Top Technology Trends, I am part of an online team honchoed by Cindi Trainor that will facilitate a concurrent online discussion. I will post to here, [...]
Quite a few people have asked me my take on OCLC’s new policy about record-sharing. I’ve been quiet on this for three reasons: I’m insanely busy, I am still digesting my thoughts, and I have been concerned that whatever I say may reflect back on MPOW (My Place Of Work) — though no one at [...]
(And if you’ve never heard that term…) The Big O‘s long-awaited report on “sharing, privacy and trust” begins by pointing out that lots of people use the Web, and adds (the far more interesting point) that people increasingly build the Web. “We have moved from an Internet built by a few thousand authors to one [...]
Sarah Houghton had a highly readable, far less stream-of-consciousness summary of Michael Porter’s class, which she attended the day after I did. I note her comments re Open Worldcat: “Michael showed us Open WorldCat, including the ‘Reviews’ tab for each item where people can add their own reviews. This feature isn’t being used much yet, [...]
Lorcan Dempsey responds to Tom Dowling’s critique of Open Worldcat by saying that the Big O will make Open WorldCat OpenURL-compliant “in due course. … The current syntax is simple, human-readable, and human-constructable. We will complement it with OpenURL-based access which will allow additional service possibilities.” I’m glad Lorcan addressed the question head-on, but I [...]
