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Category: News

The New New OCLC

Published by Iris on Friday, April 24th, 2009

Just when you thought you’d gotten to know the new OCLC, it shakes things up again. OCLC is now in the ILS business and WorldCat Local is now free to FirstSearch subscribers.

My first thought on reading about all of this yesterday was that all those pilot WorldCat Local schools must be steamed that this is now free.

My second thought was almost equal parts pleased and worried. I’m pleased that this is yet another competitor against the current lumbering giants in the ILS market, and I like the idea that (if I understand correctly) this will add a hosted option to the ILS market. (Hosted options aren’t always the best, but I like the idea of having it available as a choice for people.) On the other hand, this means that that pesky new policy on the transfer and use of OCLC records really wasn’t just about protecting a bunch of member-produced data after all. There were bigger plans afoot, and these plans involved leaning even farther toward the vendor model rather than the service model. And if OCLC is a vendor rather than a service, that new policy feels even more like a land-grab rather than an effort to protect member investments.

My third thought, on further reflection, will hopefully be less nebulous and conflicted and more grounded in fact and reasoning.

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Shoving and Making in 2009

Published by Iris on Monday, March 23rd, 2009

The first annual (I hope) LSW Shovers & Makers awards are being announced as we speak, and I’ve got to say, it’s inspiring.

We all know that we do a lot of good work in this profession, and that it takes a village, and all that. This is tangible expression that these things we know must be true in theory really are true. I’ve been sitting here refreshing the site and getting inspired anew by what I’ve read there, and I hope that each of you will take the time to write up a little bit about what you’ve done lately that you’re proud of. I know a few of you and can’t wait to see you post about the work that you do, and I’d like to hear what those of you I don’t know so well have been up to.

P.S. Here is my profile on the site.

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Canadian Census Data More Widely Available

Published by Iris on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

It has historically been kind of a pain to get our South Of The Border hands on Canadian census data online. Students kept getting thwarted by the “yes you can have access if you just pay us” messages, and if we didn’t happen to have the right standing order to the right compendium, there was a good chance we’d have to stop there.

A couple of months ago, though, there appeared a small but significant change to the E-STAT interface (which is an online tool that grants access to the Census of Population and to other socioeconomic data collected by Statistics Canada). What is this change? Well, the main page now features a blessedly short click-license that basically says that if you’re a student or on the staff or faculty at an educational institution, you can access the site and it’s content for the purposes of research and study. Alleluia.

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