[open-bibliography] OKFN blog: Bibliographica, an Introduction

[Tom Morris]

On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 6:56 PM, Jo Walsh <jo at frot.org> wrote:

> The alternative looks like one ring to rule them all, right, scary things
> like http://viaf.org/ , and power to the publishers...

I don't see a license either on the VIAF web site or in the data
stream, so it's a little hard to judge how scary this is.

Anyone know what the licensing is?

BTW, one of the nice things about the web is that it's pretty hard to
establish and maintain "choke points" of control.  VIAF will be just
one of many federated sources of bibliographic data, which is good
because even national libraries aren't either omniscient or infallible
(cf LCSH "Lincoln, Abraham, 1806-1865--Assassination--Pictorial
works." when he was born 1809).  In this future, data is judged on its
quality, not its source.

Tom