[okfn-discuss] LCSH site is taken down

Wed Jan 7 19:01:57 UTC 2009

On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 5:49 PM, Ed Summers <ehs at pobox.com> wrote:
> 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

Much appreciated :)

> 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.

Very understandable and well done for doing it in the first place.

> 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.

If you mean what the IPR situation actually is it's all a bit unclear
:) The best understanding I/we have is summarized on:

<http://blog.okfn.org/2008/03/06/open-bibliographic-data-the-state-of-play/>

Regarding what the IPR situation *should* be I'd argue that licensing
the data openly (apply an OD conformant license -- see [1]) would be
the best approach way forward for the LoC for the sorts of reasons set
out in:

<http://okfn.org/wiki/FutureOfBibliographicControl>

Well done again for all your efforts so far.

Regards,

Rufus

[1]: http://www.opendefinition.org/licenses/