RE: OCLC's New License for Bibliographic Records

["Hamaker, Charles" <cahamake@uncc.edu>]

E. additional provisions 9:

"Policy shall be governed by and interpreted in accordance with 
the laws of the state of of Ohio and the United States of 
America, without regard to principles of conflict of laws, except 
(i) as otherwise provided in a separate agreement with OCLC which 
incorporates this Policy; or (ii) as otherwise required by 
applicable law"

This section alone makes this a license that my library cannot 
agree to at all. Venue as, OCLC should know if they'd talked with 
many member libraries, is non-negotiable for many state 
institutions.

Chuck Hamaker
UNC Charlotte
Atkins Library
Charlotte, NC



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of
richards1000@comcast.net
Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 12:15 AM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: OCLC's New License for Bibliographic Records

Colleagues:

Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but I don't believe the list has
discussed OCLC's recent attempt to adopt a license agreement to
govern its members' uses of OCLC bibliographic records. I'd be
interested to hear listmembers' views. I think this issue is
significant because of the potential consequences of using
licenses to restrict downstream use of metadata (among them the
possibility that OCLC member libraries will be barred from
contributing their catalog records to search engines), and
because I think university counsel and licensing personnel will
want to review the proposed OCLC license carefully before
acceding to it. The proposed license,
http://www.oclc.org/us/en/worldcat/catalog/policy/recordusepolicy.pdf,
has been controversial for several reasons, among them its
retrospective application, its breach provisions, and the
substantial penalties for noncompliance. A summary of the
proposed license appears at
http://www.oclc.org/us/en/worldcat/catalog/policy/default.htm,
and a FAQ at
http://www.oclc.org/us/en/worldcat/catalog/policy/questions/default.htm.

OCLC's Karen Calhoun discusses the proposed license at
http://community.oclc.org/metalogue/archives/2008/11/notes-on-oclcs-upda
ted-record.html.
The existing policy governing members' use of OCLC records (to be
replaced eventually by the proposed license) appears at
http://www.oclc.org/us/en/support/documentation/worldcat/records/guideli
nes/default.htm.
On January 13, OCLC announced,
http://www.oclc.org/us/en/news/releases/20092.htm , that it would
postpone implementation of the proposed license until the third
quarter of 2009, and set up a committee to receive additional
feedback and perhaps propose amendments. The Guardian of London
recently featured an article discussing this matter:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jan/22/library-search-engines-
books.
http:Some criticism of the proposed policy appears at
http://www.librarything.com/thingology/2009/01/why-libraries-must-reject
-oclc-policy.php,
http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/OCLC_Policy_Change, and
http://watchdog.net/c/stop-oclc. The preceding comments are not
offered as legal advice, and do not in fact constitute legal
advice.

Rob Richards

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Robert C. Richards, Jr., J.D.*, M.S.L.I.S., M.A.
Philadelphia, PA
richards1000@comcast.net
* Member New York bar, retired status.
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