[okfn-discuss] LCSH site is taken down

Mon Jan 5 17:49:57 UTC 2009

On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 12:28 PM, Jonathan Gray <jonathan.gray at okfn.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 12:10 PM, Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org> wrote:
>> I hadn't seen this -- really interesting. Would be nice if it were
>> clearer why it had been taken down: is it IPR issues or just the fact
>> that the LoC saw it as competition for their own free services?

/me delurks

It was actually a mixture of the two. The latter was the initial
impetus for shutting it down, since there are folks at loc.gov who
would like to host the service (or something like it).  At first I was
just going to let it keep running until said service was live and
redirect, since lcsh.info was registered by me, and ran on a physical
machine I owned. But others at LC had questions about the IPR issues
(is it public domain? what does this mean? etc) ... and I was
encouraged by them to shut it down for that reason as well. That's
when I caved.

While lcsh.info was running I got several questions about what sort of
license there was on the data, and I always just shrugged and mumbled
something about how everything the Library of Congress does is in the
public domain. One nice thing about turning lcsh.info and doing the
same sort of thing at loc.gov is that it'll result in getting these
IPR issues ironed out. If you've got ideas about what the IPR should
be definitely let me know.

//Ed