[DCRM-L] Interest in having a conversation about IRs and other rare book issues with OCLC staff?

[Dooley,Jackie]

Greetings, DCRMers--

John Chapman—who is the OCLC lead for development of metadata systems development for OCLC, which includes both Connexion and Record Manager--and I tentatively are planning to offer an informal gathering at ALA (date/time/place TBA) with the objective of having a productive conversation about the range of issues related to WorldCat and rare book catalog records—which range far beyond IRs and LBDs. There is no RBMS meeting that's appropriate as a venue for this discussion, since the Tech Services Discussion Group isn't meeting this year.

John and his colleagues who work on metadata products and services genuinely want to know what the needs are. Specific promises aren't feasible at the outset, but they definitely want to understand the issues. IRs are open for discussion, but we would prefer not to rehash the territory that has already been thoroughly hashed on this list. We know that LBDs don't replicate the IR functionalities. John is open to hearing about additional fields that might be added to LBD scope, however.

For my part, I'd like to work actively with RBMSers to identify ways in which we can clarify and document a variety of issues (e.g., bib input standards, deduplication, and whatever else).

We fully understand that there seems to be a prevailing attitude of cynicism within the rare book cataloging community about OCLC in general. We'd like to find ways to reduce that within the constraints of the possible. You can perhaps appreciate that OCLC has little choice but to make cost-effective systems development decisions that will benefit the members of the cooperative in the aggregate. DCRM-L conversations that have featured the idea that WorldCat can't be all things to all constituencies are on target.

It would be very helpful to know whether any of you would be interested in attending such a session. Please respond to me either privately or via this list, as you prefer.

Many thanks— Jackie

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Jackie Dooley

Program Officer , OCLC Research

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