7 thoughts on “OCLC, WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities, and Open Data Licensing”

  1. Is my reading of this blog post correct that OCLC is saying that it would be permissible for my library to releases the bibliographic records in our catalog — including the WorldCat-derived bibliographic data — so long as it is under an ODC-By license?

  2. It is not “WorldCat metadata”, it’s just metadata, created by OCLC’s customers who have, for a fee, uploaded it to WorldCat.

  3. Jim,

    While ODC-BY sounds good, it simply isn’t practical. I explain this in my blog post:

    “A bibliographic database is made up of records and data elements that can have uses in many contexts. In addition, the same bibliographic data may exist in numerous databases managed by members of entirely different communities. Someone may wish to create a new database or service using data coming from a variety of sources. At times someone will want to use only portions of records and may mix and match individual data elements from different sources. Any kind of constraints on use of the data, including something as seemingly innocuous as allowing all non-commercial use, require the user of the data to keep track of the source of each record or data element. Practically this means that an application using the mix of data is effectively constrained by the most strict contract in the mix.”

    I can’t imagine that OCLC is claiming that one needs attribution on individual author names or titles of resources. If OCLC’s concern is mainly about whole MARC21 records, rather than individual data elements, perhaps the record use policy needs to state that.

Comments are closed.