OCLC offers their interpretation of the mashup competition

The Ohio-based Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) have announced a competition of their own, and you have until 15 September to submit an entry. The OCLC competition has some similarities to Mashing up the Library, and some unfortunate differences.

The OCLC competition carries a prize of US$2,500 and a trip to OCLC's headquarters in Dublin, Ohio. The competition web site describes the challenge as;

"to use an OCLC resource to create a Web service that does something interesting, innovative, and useful to libraries.

...At a minimum, contest entries must make use of one of the OCLC resources."

It's great to see OCLC supporting innovative approaches to library data in this way, and they certainly have some significant resources that the sector continues to benefit from. It strikes me as unfortunate - and unnecessary - that they have opted to force entrants to use OCLC resources, though. Is it one further indication of an increasingly out-dated attitude to libraries, library data, and the place of both in the wider world of information discovery, use, and reuse? Or is it just a silly mistake that they could fix before the closing date?

For more, see a longer post on panlibus...