 |
| Property iStockPhoto.com |
It appears that not all documentation about BibFrame is being shared openly, nor are the opportunities to engage in actual experiments using early BibFrame data. For instance, if you review this document you'll find a list of institutions that are "experimenting" with Bibframe. This list includes: British Library, Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, George Washington University, National Library of Medicine, OCLC, and Princeton University. LC says in the document that: "this section reflects these observations that are based on a combination of personal experiences working with these initiatives..". That certainly seems to imply they are working directly with these organizations.
The problem here is that it's not clear how these institutions were selected. I can find no open call on the LC website, or the Bibframe Listserv asking for an expression of interest to be considered as an experimenter. There is no list of criteria an organization must meet to qualify as an experimenter. So, it appears this happened by "invitation". While I personally find the lack of transparency in this process deeply disturbing, the larger problem I see is the inclusion of OCLC. On one hand this might seem entirely logical. On the other it screams unfair competition for those privately held companies that must compete with OCLC in order to sell their products and services. Let me detail that concern.
Let's just say you're a company competing against WorldShare, OCLC's library services platform. As I've noted in other posts, many of these library services platforms are being newly created and as such, represent major investments and risk on the part of the companies developing them. OCLC, of course, as a non-profit entity, already has an advantage the other firms do not have available to them, i.e. no taxes to pay. But now, it would appear that they might well be getting another major new advantage, courtesy of the U.S. Government. For instance, let me just speculate for a moment on what that might look like. As many of you will likely know, there is a lot of work going on in the schema.org area my guess would be, if you look at this page that OCLC’s interest in schema.org is directly related to getting ready for Bibframe.
So, if you’re a vendor competing with OCLC’s WorldShare, you might think: I’d better be sure I’m all up-to-speed on BibFrame and prepare a path forward for my product to handle this as well. To do that, you might want to see all the documentation. Good luck.
Note this message posted just this week by an OCLC staffer:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject:[BIBFRAME] Newspeak
Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2013 21:05:18 -0500
From: Young, Jeff
Reply-To: Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative Forum
In the original MARCR mockup, “Book” was defined as a sensible class:
http://marcr.org/vocab/Book
This was carried over into the BIBFRA.ME mockup:
http://bibfra.me/vocab/Book
In the BIBFRAME.ORG mockup, though, “Book” appears to be gone:
http://bibframe.org/vocab/Book
What’s going on?
Note: If you click on that first link for vocabulary and you’ll be greeted with a request for a username/password login.Jeffrey A. Young
Software Architect
OCLC Research, Mail Code 410
OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc.
6565 Kilgour Place
Dublin, OH 43017-3395
www.oclc.org
Voice: 614-764-4342
Voice: 800-848-5878, ext. 4342
Fax: 614-718-7477
Email: jyoung@oclc.org
----------------
Jeffrey asks: “What’s going on?” Indeed. I too ask: WHAT’S GOING ON? Why is this information not available to all?
If you ask LC for access to this documentation, as numerous people have done on the listserv, there is NO reply. WHY?? If as an earlier experimenter, OCLC is gaining advance knowledge of BibFrame that they’ll be able to use with WorldShare as well as their numerous bibliographic services, isn’t this giving OCLC a very serious competitive advantage?? If so, this would seem blatantly unfair to the other firms that are developing competing products.
I think I’m strongly on record as stating that OCLC is an important and necessary part of the library ecosystem. However, at the same time, they should be made to compete fairly and openly with private and publicly owned firms. What’s happening here smells strongly of unfair competition. It lacks complete transparency and openness.
Both librarians and competing organizations should raise their voices in protest of what is happening here. It simply isn't right. Now maybe I’m not correct and I’ll be glad to have someone tell me why that might be the case. However, if I am correct, this is setting librarianship up to deal with products and services developed in an unfair and uncompetitive environment.
We know how those kinds of situations usually turn out for the buyers, in this case libraries. It isn’t good. This needs to be corrected. Immediately.
NOTE: Please be sure to click on the link for the comments below and read those comments as additional information has been supplied by key involved parties!
Are there vendors other than OCLC who are experimenting with BIBFRAME? I didn't attend ALA, but hope that someone went around the exhibit hall asking them this (quite logical) question. Or is this like some of the MARC changes where everyone is waiting to see what LC and OCLC will do, and then plan to follow them? Has anyone had this conversation with their vendor?
ReplyDeleteKaren, I attended ALA, and went around the exhibit hall asking this exact question. I did this 6 months ago at ALA Annual as well.
ReplyDeleteExcept for the folks at VTLS, BIBFRAME specifically and Linked Data in general don't seem to be anywhere on their radar. As we know however, the booth staff don't always reflect the internal strategy of the company, but I used it as an opportunity to both gauge as well as start the dialog.
I except to to follow up again at ALA annual in Chicago. Hopefully we'll see if there is a change.
Carl, regarding "Now maybe I’m not correct and I’ll be glad to have someone tell me why that might be the case.", in short, you are not correct.
ReplyDeleteConspiracy theories aside, there is no hidden agenda to give any company or library an edge. Jeff Young cited private Zepheira servers which he simply was not authorized to do (accidents happen). These machines served as rapid prototyping and staging areas for what now, in part, is found on the Library of Congress' http://bibframe.org site. Jeff's message cited in particular a term from a draft linked data vocabulary that Zepheira developed to support BIBFRAME and complement the draft model. This draft vocabulary has a bias of being web-centric and looks ahead to more general cataloging of future resources. By the very nature, this vocabulary is speculative and experimental. When publishing the bibframe.org site, the decision was made to present only a subset of a vocabulary that is reflective of more traditional MARC based cataloging (and thus far less speculative). We expect to fold these together in the near future based on continued testing by Early Experimenters and feedback by the the larger community.
BIBFRAME is still at the very early stages of development. The process behind the development of BIBFRAME, presented briefly by the Early Experimenters at ALA, is an agile, sprint based approach that initially has brought together organizations that have been focused on Linked Data and library experimentation. I expect this group to grow.
This process while relatively new to the library community, is the basis for how many Web standards have in fact have started (and, in part, how MARC was originally created). Sprint based design along with "rough consensus and running code" helps make it clear that we're interested in practical, working systems that can be quickly implemented. I applaud the Library of Congress' decision to move forward with this methodology and have been amazed at the progress the library Early Experimenters have made in such a short time. While the process has been very effective in terms of formalizing the model, your remarks highlight in my mind the need for better communication of the process. So noted.
Zepheira has been involved in designing BIBFRAME for 6 months and while there has been a interest from libraries, museums, archives and linked data communities, the traditional library system vendor space has been relatively quiet. One possible positive aspect of your post may be that traditional library vendors may pay more attention now.
While its still too early for vendors implementation, at least some degree of attention would be a very good thing.
Eric:
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your response and points of clarification. However, with all due respect, I note that a couple of key questions I posed remain unanswered by your response. Those were: 1) Why were Early Experimenters (EE) selected in a manner that was so naïve to the realities of the marketplace and, 2) Can other vendors, if interested, indicate such and automatically be included in the EE group?
As I said in my original post, the fact that OCLC is the dominant player in the bibliographic record arena, makes their selection somewhat logical. But to invite them to be an Early Experimenter without understanding the tension and competition that exists in the marketplace between them and other privately held firms is, as I said above, simply naïve. They ARE a competitor to those organizations and any action which even hints of giving them preferential access should be seriously rethought and revised so as to remove that doubt.
Secondly, if the answer to my last question above remains "No" then my concerns remain based on a firm foundation and contrary to your statement, I remain correct. You can claim such a concern is "conspiracy theory", but for those major players that are companies forced to compete with OCLC, be it SkyRiver, Serials Solutions, Ex Libris or others, I doubt they'll weigh it as lightly as your phrase would indicate.
Finally, I note you say that you expect the Early Experimenter group to grow. Please, if that happens, suggest that LC either be totally open to interested parties or else, outline the criteria for inclusion in an open way and issue a call for those interested to apply for selection.
Then we can all devote our attention where it is needed -- to helping make BibFrame successful. Again, thank you for your clarifications and response.
Carl
Eric,
ReplyDeleteWe at Ex Libris are glad you are opening this up.
Instead of focusing on why this did not happen in the past, lets focus now on how we can together deliver the next generation bibliographic framework to the market.
Ex Libris, as vendor, has a proven track of market innovative solutions for the library community's benefit. We believe that only through cooperation and collaboration will 1000s of libraries get a working solution that incorporates the advantages of the new paradigm into actual library scenarios.
Shlomo Sanders
CTO
Ex Libris
To provide a non-vendor perspective, having been involved very early in this initiative but not as an Early Experimenter, I have not seen any barriers to participation from vendors or anyone else. The documentation is fully accessible at bibframe.org (marcr.org is an abandoned name so the access failure to that site was a red herring). And I've also asked a few vendors, including Ex Libris, about their interest in LOD and BIBFRAME and gotten a big "we'll wait and see".
ReplyDeleteI take your point about OCLC's participation, since they're now in the odd position of being both a dominant player in the bibliographic data field *and* a major vendor to the library community. But that potential conflict of interest should not taint every bibliographic data initiatives that they participate in or we won't get very far with any of them.
In summary, I very much hope that vendors do start taking an interest in LOD and BIBFRAME since they are the direction we need to be moving. Participating in the BIBFRAME listserv is the most transparent way to do that, and there is nothing magic about Early Experimenters except that they put up their hand and got busy.
MacKenzie Smith
University Librarian
UC Davis