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From the end: > We do want to give a genuine shout-out to the Worldcat team. Even though it was a small tragedy that your data was locked up, you did an amazin

by raybb 3y ago

From the end: > We do want to give a genuine shout-out to the Worldcat team. Even though it was a small tragedy that your data was locked up, you did an amazing job at getting 30,000 libraries on board to share their metadata with you. I wonder what the story is behind Worldcat getting so many libraries across the world on board? I don't know much about the software but it must be pretty compelling.

kinos 3y ago
they probably have a good interface for personal library tracking
- gmcharlt 3y ago
  It's not a LibraryThing or GoodReads; it's meant for libraries that are institutions. That said, I don't think there is anything stopping an individual person signing up and entering their collection, but there would be no point in paying the fees unless you had (say) a unique scholarly collection and wanted to lend books to other libraries - and if so, in the long run you'd likely be better off seeing if a library wanted to acquire your collection.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
justaguitarist 3y ago
Disclaimer, I was a Linux admin at OCLC for a few years. The WorldCat database has been around since the early 70s, so I think that helps the numbers a bit. I don't have any insight into their marketing/sales/end user experience though.
gmcharlt 3y ago
It's not the software per se, which is generally fit for purpose but not amazing, but the traditions and economics underpinning how libraries maintain their bibliographic metadata. Libraries sharing metadata for their catalogs has a long history, dating back to at least 1902 when the Library of Congress started selling catalog cards for use by other libraries. In the 1960s, the Library of Congress embarked on various projects to computerize their catalog, leading to the creation of the MARC format as a common metadata format for exchanging bibliographic records. (And there is a straight line between how card catalogs were put together and much of how library metadata is conceptualized, although that's been (slowly) changing.) One problem is that bibliographic metadata from the Library of Congress is mostly generated in-house, and LoC does not catalog everything; not even close. In the late 1960s, OCLC, the organization behind Worldcat, was started to operate a union catalog. The idea is that libraries could download bibliographic records needed for their own catalogs ("copy cataloging") and contribute new records for the unique stuff they cataloged ("original cataloging"). Under the aegis of OCLC as a non-profit organization, it was a pretty good deal for libraries, and over time led to additional services such as brokering interlibrary loan requests. After all, since Worldcat had a good idea of the holdings of libraries in North America (and over time, a good chunk of Europe and other areas), it was straightforward to set up an exchange for ILL requests. Tie this with a general trend over the past couple decades of libraries decreasing the funding and staffing for maintaining their local catalogs, and need for sharing in the creation and maintenance of library metadata has gotten only more important. However, OCLC has had a long history of trying to control access and use of the metadata in WorldCat, to the point of earning a general perception in many library quarters of trying to monopolize it. To give a taste, Aaron Swartz tangled with them back in the day. [1] One irony, among many, is that the majority of metadata in Worldcat has its origins in the efforts by publicly-funded libraries and as such shouldn't have been enclosed in the first place. OCLC also has a focus on growing itself, to the point where it does far more than run Worldcat. Its various ventures have earned itself a reputation for charging high prices to libraries, to the point where it can be too expensive for smaller libraries to participate in Worldcat. (Fortunately for them, there are various alternative ways of getting MARC records for free or very cheap, but nobody has a database more comprehensive than Worldcat.) That said, OCLC does do quite a bit itself to improve the overall quality of Worldcat and to try to push libraries past the 1960s-era MARC format. But one of the ironies of the scraping is that it's not going to be immediately helpful to the libraries who are unable to afford to participate in Worldcat. This is because the scrape didn't (and quite possibly never could have) capture the data in MARC format, which is what most library catalog software uses. While MARC records could be cross-walked from the JSON, they will undoubtedly omit some data elements found in the original MARC. [1] http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/oclcreply http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/oclcreply
- wayathr0w 3y ago
  If you liked the comment-length analysis OCLC & want more, there's a whole essay on the subject. [1] >But one of the ironies of the scraping is that it's not going to be immediately helpful to the libraries who are unable to afford to participate in Worldcat. This is because the scrape didn't (and quite possibly never could have) capture the data in MARC format, which is what most library catalog software uses. While MARC records could be cross-walked from the JSON, they will undoubtedly omit some data elements found in the original MARC. While it would have been ideal to get all the data in MARC & as many other formats as possible, I wonder how true this is worldwide - many libraries don't use MARC or have a digital catalog at all. Maybe there are some ways the data could be processed that make it easier to integrate into such places, but of course local needs/desires will vary widely. [1] https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/11883899.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/11883899.pdf - it was also published in this book: https://archive.org/details/radicalcatalogin0000unse https://archive.org/details/radicalcatalogin0000unse
  - gmcharlt 3y ago
    > While it would have been ideal to get all the data in MARC & as many other formats as possible, I wonder how true this is worldwide - many libraries don't use MARC or have a digital catalog at all. Maybe there are some ways the data could be processed that make it easier to integrate into such places, but of course local needs/desires will vary widely. Indeed, MARC is not universal (and for that matter, it wouldn't surprise me if at this point the majority of records in Worldcat were _not_ derived from MARC sources), and there are certainly non-MARC library catalog platforms out there. That said, as the growth of Koha shows, for better or worse MARC has become a close to a global baseline for a lot of libraries.
    - ahi 3y ago
      Worse, definitely worse.
- greenie_beans 3y ago
  > (Fortunately for them, there are various alternative ways of getting MARC records for free or very cheap, but nobody has a database more comprehensive than Worldcat.) what are some of these sources? isbndb and open library? proquest?

by raybb 3y ago

kinos 3y ago

they probably have a good interface for personal library tracking

gmcharlt 3y ago
It's not a LibraryThing or GoodReads; it's meant for libraries that are institutions. That said, I don't think there is anything stopping an individual person signing up and entering their collection, but there would be no point in paying the fees unless you had (say) a unique scholarly collection and wanted to lend books to other libraries - and if so, in the long run you'd likely be better off seeing if a library wanted to acquire your collection.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

justaguitarist 3y ago

Disclaimer, I was a Linux admin at OCLC for a few years. The WorldCat database has been around since the early 70s, so I think that helps the numbers a bit. I don't have any insight into their marketing/sales/end user experience though.

gmcharlt 3y ago

It's not the software per se, which is generally fit for purpose but not amazing, but the traditions and economics underpinning how libraries maintain their bibliographic metadata. Libraries sharing metadata for their catalogs has a long history, dating back to at least 1902 when the Library of Congress started selling catalog cards for use by other libraries. In the 1960s, the Library of Congress embarked on various projects to computerize their catalog, leading to the creation of the MARC format as a common metadata format for exchanging bibliographic records. (And there is a straight line between how card catalogs were put together and much of how library metadata is conceptualized, although that's been (slowly) changing.) One problem is that bibliographic metadata from the Library of Congress is mostly generated in-house, and LoC does not catalog everything; not even close. In the late 1960s, OCLC, the organization behind Worldcat, was started to operate a union catalog. The idea is that libraries could download bibliographic records needed for their own catalogs ("copy cataloging") and contribute new records for the unique stuff they cataloged ("original cataloging"). Under the aegis of OCLC as a non-profit organization, it was a pretty good deal for libraries, and over time led to additional services such as brokering interlibrary loan requests. After all, since Worldcat had a good idea of the holdings of libraries in North America (and over time, a good chunk of Europe and other areas), it was straightforward to set up an exchange for ILL requests. Tie this with a general trend over the past couple decades of libraries decreasing the funding and staffing for maintaining their local catalogs, and need for sharing in the creation and maintenance of library metadata has gotten only more important. However, OCLC has had a long history of trying to control access and use of the metadata in WorldCat, to the point of earning a general perception in many library quarters of trying to monopolize it. To give a taste, Aaron Swartz tangled with them back in the day. [1] One irony, among many, is that the majority of metadata in Worldcat has its origins in the efforts by publicly-funded libraries and as such shouldn't have been enclosed in the first place. OCLC also has a focus on growing itself, to the point where it does far more than run Worldcat. Its various ventures have earned itself a reputation for charging high prices to libraries, to the point where it can be too expensive for smaller libraries to participate in Worldcat. (Fortunately for them, there are various alternative ways of getting MARC records for free or very cheap, but nobody has a database more comprehensive than Worldcat.) That said, OCLC does do quite a bit itself to improve the overall quality of Worldcat and to try to push libraries past the 1960s-era MARC format. But one of the ironies of the scraping is that it's not going to be immediately helpful to the libraries who are unable to afford to participate in Worldcat. This is because the scrape didn't (and quite possibly never could have) capture the data in MARC format, which is what most library catalog software uses. While MARC records could be cross-walked from the JSON, they will undoubtedly omit some data elements found in the original MARC. [1] http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/oclcreply http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/oclcreply

wayathr0w 3y ago
If you liked the comment-length analysis OCLC & want more, there's a whole essay on the subject. [1] >But one of the ironies of the scraping is that it's not going to be immediately helpful to the libraries who are unable to afford to participate in Worldcat. This is because the scrape didn't (and quite possibly never could have) capture the data in MARC format, which is what most library catalog software uses. While MARC records could be cross-walked from the JSON, they will undoubtedly omit some data elements found in the original MARC. While it would have been ideal to get all the data in MARC & as many other formats as possible, I wonder how true this is worldwide - many libraries don't use MARC or have a digital catalog at all. Maybe there are some ways the data could be processed that make it easier to integrate into such places, but of course local needs/desires will vary widely. [1] https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/11883899.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/11883899.pdf - it was also published in this book: https://archive.org/details/radicalcatalogin0000unse https://archive.org/details/radicalcatalogin0000unse
- gmcharlt 3y ago
  > While it would have been ideal to get all the data in MARC & as many other formats as possible, I wonder how true this is worldwide - many libraries don't use MARC or have a digital catalog at all. Maybe there are some ways the data could be processed that make it easier to integrate into such places, but of course local needs/desires will vary widely. Indeed, MARC is not universal (and for that matter, it wouldn't surprise me if at this point the majority of records in Worldcat were _not_ derived from MARC sources), and there are certainly non-MARC library catalog platforms out there. That said, as the growth of Koha shows, for better or worse MARC has become a close to a global baseline for a lot of libraries.
  - ahi 3y ago
    Worse, definitely worse.
greenie_beans 3y ago
> (Fortunately for them, there are various alternative ways of getting MARC records for free or very cheap, but nobody has a database more comprehensive than Worldcat.) what are some of these sources? isbndb and open library? proquest?