I do wonder if the incubation of SkyRiver can be traced back to the November 2008 policy change announced by OCLC. More than “OCLC horning in on III customers”, Jerry might have sense an opportunity to start this new venture to service over-served or un-served members of the library community (from the perspective of OCLC’s bibliographic utility services). That, in and of itself, would be a characteristic of a Christensen-defined disruptive innovation that may succeed. The backlash to the OCLC record policy could be read as a public indication of disenfranchisement with OCLC and readiness by the community to look at something else. That SkyRiver seems to be making a point of saying its records will not be bound by license agreements points to this.

I’ll be interested to hear about the subscription pricing policy and how the SkyRiver bibliographic utility will interact with existing ILSs (both Millennium and non-Millennium). That plus the added workflow and cost to set holdings in OCLC for those libraries that want to continue in OCLC resource sharing (which, I presume, will be most existing OCLC members that look at SkyRiver) will dictate how feasible this offering is. I’m looking forward to seeing more on their website Friday.

In one sense, III is creating opportunities for alternative catalogs by giving poor service and charging high prices. Is OCLC doing the same thing for bibliographic utilities?