Pass it on
I know that there has been a lot of discussion already around the Karen Calhoun paper The Changing Nature of the Catalog and its Integration with Other Discovery Tools. I have just been re-reading the paper and in particular Appendix C which provides excellent insight. Two quotes in particular stuck out for me, under the section entitled Cataloguing Tradition and Catalog Data.
Many recognize that the MARC communications format created much that was unique but is now out of date, and that the future lies in the convergence of MARC data within the global information network.
...one interviewee argued that "libraries should be using their cataloging data more aggressively than in the past, processing it more, passing it around more."
We've talked about this in the context of liberating your data and not "holding your data hostage" on a couple of occasions already. But, after my entry yesterday where we discussed the issue of "who owns the record?" And libraries questioning, "is it mine to give?" I think this issue is only going to get more attention in the future.
We have some experience of this in the context of Talis Base. Here we have a cooperative cataloguing service providing high-quality MARC records to participating libraries. And, many of those libraries participate in other initiatives like COPAC and SUNCAT too. Restricting the flow of those records that may have been derived in Talis Base ultimately restricts the opportunity that libraries have to pursue their own agendas, be they research, subject, regionally or nationally based. We woud prefer instead to have a common understanding with the domain that the flow of data is necessary if we are to deliver services that can take advantage of the next wave of technologies.
So, when does a catalogue record cease to be an item that can have ownership exerted over it, and start to become a collection of facts that can be re-purposed in multiple contexts?
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