After Latest Revision, OCLC Record Use Policy To Go Live August 1
By Josh Hadro Jun 21, 2010After more than a year and a half of proposals, withdrawals, and revisions, OCLC's final updated policy governing the usage of WorldCat records is set to go into effect on August 1.
The document, an update to the currently prevailing "Guidelines for Use and Transfer of OCLC Derived Records" (from 1987), is written in the form of an agreement on "Rights and Responsibilities" governing both OCLC Cooperative members and the steward organization itself.
This commitment-driven approach is a departure from OCLC's previous attempts, criticized for being opaque and for featuring severe legalistic language.
The current iteration has been repeatedly described as "a code of good practice," and stresses cooperative member libraries' vested interest in maintaining WorldCat as a viable and self-sustaining resource for catalog records and other services.
Changes to the document
As expected, the version recently approved by the OCLC Board of Trustees largely resembles the version submitted for draft review in April.
A comparison of the changes made since the release of that draft policy and the version to go into effect August 1 is available on the Record Use Policy site, as is a document recording the input solicited by the Community Forum during the comment period.
Many of the changes amount to tweaks of phrasing. For example, one section heading previously titled "Addressing Inappropriate Use of WorldCat Data by Members" now reads "Addressing Disputed Use of WorldCat Data by Members." Another involves the change from a section titled "WorldCat's Viability and Value," versus "WorldCat's Value and Sustainability."
New additions add up to roughly 100 words—or 4.5%—of the new policy's 2200 words, excluding glossary and appendices.
Community response
According to an email sent by the OCLC Record Use Policy Council—a body appointed in September 2009 to devise a more inclusive policy in collaboration with member libraries—a wide net was cast for feedback.
Our 12-member Record Use Policy Council undertook a detailed investigation of the issues and drafted a new policy that we introduced for community review In April 2010. More than 275 comments were gathered via e-mail, phone, meetings and letters, in an online forum, and by monitoring blogs, listservs and Twitter. Your comments resulted in additions and changes to the draft. At the end of May 2010, we submitted our revised policy statement to the OCLC Board, which approved the document during its June meeting.
As far as published criticisms are concerned, OCLC's efforts to engage the community seem to have proven effective. Whereas past versions of the guidelines prompted an outpouring of blog posts and analyses, only a handful followed the revision issued for comment in April.
