This past week I heard rumors about pending changes to OCLC’s policy governing use of records contributed to WorldCat. There was every reason to be concerned about these changes even before the details of what they contain were “leaked.” I just finished reading a post by Terry Reese on this topic, and Terry makes very [...]

Thanks to a discussion on the oss4lib list, I was made aware of this post by Karl Fogel about the importance of insisting “that bibliographic data be license-free.” His comment is in the context of the recently released draft report of the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control. Karl recommends that [...]

Several times over the past year or so, I have offered up criticisms of OCLC. OCLC is a staple of the library world, especially here in the U.S., but its reach is global and it is expanding all the time. The simplest or most concise way of expressing my criticisms is to say [...]

I have been sick for a week now and I am sick of it. I wish there was a way that I could build up my immune system. All of the kids except Keegan have been sick — for the second time in as many weeks — as well.In other news, in the [...]

Call me cranky. Say I am just not willing to write anything positive about this organization. Whatever. I inwardly cheered when I read Tim Spalding’s (LibraryThing) critique of OCLC’s latest report. It is right on target. By way of contrast, Andrew Pace gushes about how “this is our report; we [...]

A few people including Sarah Houghton-Jan (Librarian in Black) and Carol Ou commented on a recent post I wrote comparing OCLC to Microsoft. Roy Tennant responded to this post on the hangingtogether blog, written by former RLG - now OCLC employees. Roy also responded to Carol Ou’s idea about FRBRizing local library catalog [...]

Ann Ercelawn, a dear friend and co-moderator of the SERIALST discussion list, posted a survey on that list yesterday that asked for responses to a series of questions relating to how we keep current within the LIS field. Below is the response I sent her. It’s not as detailed or complete as it [...]

Recently Roy Tennant joined OCLC and explained his reasons for taking this step in a post on the Library Journal: Digital Libraries blog. Roy is someone whom I admire and respect, a visionary and great communicator about technology and libraries. He has done, and continues to do, a huge amount of great things.
When I saw [...]

[Updated 5/29/2007: I did something unbelievably stupid and deleted the original version of this post accidentally. Here it is again thanks to Google's cache.]
This morning, Walt Crawford made public the fact that he no longer has a job with OCLC. I fail to understand the whys and wherefores here. All I know is, I wish [...]

Like many others I am really intrigued by the recently unveiled WorldCat Identities project (http://orlabs.oclc.org/Identities/). Just for fun I entered a few family members’ names. For example, works by or about my grandfather, Stanley McCallum, are mentioned here and ones by my brother, Kevin, are shown here. Ok, maybe it’s just a [...]