[open-bibliography] comprehensive bibliographic database of "open" resources?

Fri Aug 27 08:55:05 UTC 2010

James wrote about identifying a record that had been 'touched' in some way
by OCLC. I wonder if there is some scope for some work (or possibly
crowdsourcing) around this to help libraries understand where their
catalogue records have come from.

I'm not at all convinced that simply containing the OCLC number means that
the record comes from OCLC, but agree it could be an indicator

Can any cataloguing/MARC gurus confirm that in theory the 040 and 008/39 to
identify the source of cataloguing (as far as is possible)? What would be
really good is if we could start to compile a list of 'rights' or licensing
across those organisiations that can appear in 040? (perhaps even persuade
LoC and other agencies this should be added to organisational records which
have valid MARC21 Organisation codes in
http://www.loc.gov/marc/organizations/org-search.php and equivalent national
lists)

I realise that to be exhaustive would be a huge amount of work, but think
that to cover the main sources of records in a country wouldn't be too hard?

This could also help inform choices about where libraries who want to
publish open data get their bib data from?

Does this have any legs or is it pointless/too much work?

Owen

> Identifying WorldCat as the source of data that has been transferred or
> made available downstream of the initial extraction from WorldCat can
> sometimes be complex. A combination of the following data elements in a
> bibliographic record can help determine if the record was initially
> extracted from WorldCat:
>
>    * An OCLC Control Number along with
>          o the 001 field that includes value characters "ocm" or "ocn"
> and/or
>          o the 035 field that includes the value "(OCoLC)" and/or
>          o the 994 field"
>
> I think all this must be read together. Even though your library is not,
> and has never been, an OCLC library, you may still be in possession of what
> is defined here as "WorldCat Data" and therefore subject to this policy.
> This also clearly includes single records. Although I am not a lawyer, from
> what I read here, it seems that once something has touched OCLC in any way
> at all, and no matter what you have done with it, OCLC claims ownership
> (i.e. that it is WorldCat Data) and that it falls under this policy.
>
> How this deals with, e.g. a record created by the Library of Congress,
> perhaps even as CIP (i.e. public domain), then being downloaded and updated
> by another library, finally, I would take this record directly from e.g.
> Yale, through Z39.50 and update it myself, according to this, this record
> would still fall under OCLC's policy.
>
>
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