Tim Spalding: Would challenge Roy’s assertion that only OCLC can do ‘web scale’ or ‘do a deal with Google’ – if you put stuff on the web, you are webscale

Diane Hillman: Need open data

Roy Tennant: Worldcat has been built ‘by you’ – it is a collective asset – need to think about how it can be used – OCLC is a membership collective – if the membership decides to open it up, then they need to OCLC

Martha Yee: Cataloguing data is ‘gold’ – took intellectual effort, and mustn’t ‘throw it away’ (can tell it is a cataloguing audience – this the only point so far that has been applauded)

Robert Wolven: Need to think about how metadata flows around – what controls are needed etc.

If you find out about things that you can’t get, then it is frustration. But, you can usually get stuff if you really want. How do we decide on scope of what we present to people?

RT: We need to do better job of presenting options to users. Users should know how difficult it is to get their hands on something – this is a set of concentric circles – what is local, what is regional, what is further afield (delivery times – immediate, days, weeks, etc.) Also can present purchase options – may be quicker and cheaper than ILL to buy on Amazon.

JB: XC looking at a facet for ‘availability’ – so that users can easily narrow search by how quickly they can get stuff, or by the amount of effort involved to them. But need to be able to get this information out of the ILS – some vendors better than others to work with on this.

RW: Is there a ‘local user’ anymore?

JB: Local may not be the right word – but users that ‘your institution cares about’

DH: We often don’t define ‘local’ very well. About user relation to the collection – if you do digitised photos of a geographic area, the ‘local’ users include the people who lived in the area at the time the photos were taken, even if they are no longer ‘geographically’ local.

RW: Local is a matter of ‘interest’ as well as ‘placement’

TS: Centralisation has suppressed ‘the local’. What goes into the ‘local’ catalog record can be there for the ‘local’ use – doesn’t have to necessarily be shared by everyone (although can be shared as widely as you like)

RW: Should we look at aggregating data at the ‘instituional’ level – e.g. bringing in museums, archives etc. from the wider institution (e.g. a University) – what levels of aggregation make sense between the library and the ‘network level’

RT: We need to separate out ‘inventory’ from ‘access’ – library systems are currently inventory and we have confused it with a list of ‘accessible’ resources. We could be pointing people off to GBS and OCA digitised books etc.

DH: Massive amounts of digitised material – funded by Google, Microsoft etc. But most of it is not available to us OR we haven’t integrated it into our systems. Even the people who funded it don’t seem sure what to do with it. Perhaps they have underestimated the problems?

I think I disagree (speculatively) with Diane on some of this. I think the point of the Google work was ‘lets do it, and deal with the problems later’ – essentially, there is a bottom line belief by the people at Google is having this stuff digitised is better than not – as long as you believe this then you may as well get on with it. Possibly Google also need to say ‘having it digitised is better than not, and we believe there will be profit in it’ – I’m not convinced about this.

MY: Making point that libraries have cataloguing backlogs, and digitisation increases the problem

DH: Need to get stuff out in the stacks by whatever method – fast cataloging, publisher data etc. We can always go back to stuff it needs to be refined later. Need to get rid of the idea that items are only touched once

RW: Who should invest in preserving stuff? e.g. Internet Archive providing access to stuff that no one seems to ‘own’