This is the just-in-time-for-the-holidays edition of DLTJ Thursday Threads. The U.S. House Judiciary Committee suspended work on SOPA, and there was much relief from the technology community. The Palo Alto Public Library announced plans to lend Chromebooks (laptops with Google’s cloud-based operating system) to patrons. And OCLC announced a rebranding and expansion of its webscale activities with the WorldShare Platform.

Inclusive of all holidays of the season I wish you a safe, restful and happy celebration.

Feel free to send this to others you think might be interested in the topics. If you find these threads interesting and useful, you might want to add the Thursday Threads RSS Feed to your feed reader or subscribe to e-mail delivery using the form to the right. If you would like a more raw and immediate version of these types of stories, watch my FriendFeed stream (or subscribe to its feed in your feed reader). Comments and tips, as always, are welcome.

A Status Update on SOPA from Washington

Prospects: mixed. On the one hand, it’s looking likely that it will pass out of committee. Proposed amendments voted down 2-1 in HJC when the manager’s amendment was marked up. Unless something changes, I expect SOPA to emerge largely unamended, particularly with respect to that relates search engines and use of DNS for enforcement, the most controversial aspects of the bill for the tech community.

On the other hand, there have been significant cybersecurity concerns raised about the bills because of what it would do to DNSSEC, including by DHS officials. The committee might take a classified briefing so that the government’s own geeks from Sandia Labs and DHS and other “Three Letter Agencies” could explain to the legislators) who somehow neglected to bring in any technical experts before the committee to testify) why SOPA won’t work and why it’s a terrible idea to try to DNS for enforcement. If that happens before markup, it could change the bill that heads to the House floor — and House leadership might want to address security concerns before bringing it to a full vote.

- A Status Update on SOPA from Washington, by Alexander Howard on Google+

Remember the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)? It is the proposed bill that would force internet service providers to block DNS name-to-address translation and force revenue-generating systems (advertisement networks and payment intermediaries) to cut off service to a “foreign infringing site”. The bill was on the fast track to go through the final markup process through the Judiciary Committee last week when debate on dozens of proposed amendments ran out the clock on this year’s congressional session. That is where O’Reilly Media technology writer Alexander Howard picks up the story with his summary excerpted above. Alexander’s post is a great synopsis of the history, status, players-to-watch, and people to watch for updates. For a view on why the technology community was alternating between sobbing and anger, see the aptly titled “Dear Congress, It’s No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works.”

Silicon Valley Library Lends Google Chromebooks

In a first-of-its-kind pilot project, the Palo Alto, California Library will soon be loaning Google Chromebook computers to library patrons for as long as one week at a time.

The program highlights the Chromebook’s ability to operate as a kind of “disposable computer,” as Google puts it. With the Chromebook, most all data and applications reside on the Web — not the local machine — so it can easily be passed from person-to-person. It’s a very Googly setup, and the search giant hopes it will reinvent the way businesses use computers.

- Silicon Valley Library Lends Google Chromebooks, Wired.com Enterprise blog

Cloud computing meets equipment circulation. I remember a time when libraries used to offer VCR and DVD players to patrons for check-out. Now that service is coming to computers. Since everything on the computer is replicated to Google’s servers, it is easy to wipe the individual patron’s files on the machine when the next person logs in. One just needs a Google account to make it work, and that is — of course — one of the distinguishing factors between lending Chromebooks and lending VCR and DVD players. Will patrons mind the Google account requirement? Should libraries educate patrons on the privacy and information-harvesting/using practices of Google before lending a device?

OCLC Introduces OCLC WorldShare

The OCLC WorldShare Platform facilitates collaboration and app-sharing across the library community, so that libraries can combine library-built applications, partner-built applications and OCLC-built applications. This enables the benefits of each single solution to be shared broadly throughout the library community.

- OCLC introduces OCLC WorldShare

Reaching back a little bit, earlier this month OCLC announced the WorldShare Platform — a roll-up of the existing Webscale Management tools with the ability to insert third-party applications into a single bibliographic view. This is potentially a game-changer in how libraries work with bibliographic data. Similar in concept — although quite different in technical implementation — to next generation library automation systems like Kuali OLE and Ex Libris Alma and Evergreen, WorldShare views back-room bibliographic description, acquisition, and materials-handling workflows as a series of choreographed processes that can be mixed and matched to meet a library’s particular needs. It turns the traditional approach of information processing inside out — the data is in a superior position to the computer program. The WorldShare Platform is sort of like Facebook. Just as Facebook introduced ways for outside developers to “integrate into the core Facebook experience“, WorldShare platform enables external providers to supply applications that can use the data residing in the platform.

Unless I’m not reading the right places, the WorldShare introduction has landed with somewhat of a thud among the library technologist community. Aside from Marshall Breeding’s post on InfoToday, I haven’t seen any discussion of it. And that seems odd.

Today was the second day of the Open Repositories conference, and the big highlight of the day for me was the panel discussion on using Fedora as a storage and service layer for DSpace. This seems like such a natural fit, but with two pieces of complex software the devil is in the details. Below that summary is some brief paragraphs about some of the 24×7 lightning talks.

Fedora inside DSpace

Here are some of the questions and responses from the panel. I hope I’m representing everyone’s views as intended; comments and clarifications are welcome.

Will adding DSpace on Fedora make DSpace even more complex? Matt: It is an opportunity to revisit the design assumptions “and clean up your work.” This is an example of where the transition will create the opportunity to tidy up the complexity and make DSpace simpler while gaining the flexibility of Fedora. Mark: The complexity of DSpace isn’t in its content model, it is in trying to use the existing content model to do things DSpace wasn’t designed to do. For instance, Islandora has more complex atomistic content models, particularly with science data, than DSpace’s content model. Bradley: Acknowledged that there is a risk here, but “if it becomes more complex we are doing it wrong.”

There is concern from the DSpace because it may have to change to accommodate Fedora, but Fedora will not need to be changed. Bradley: New ideas are sources of concern. It is difficult to categorize DSpace developers as a whole. Any time you move a major application on top of another component you may find the underlying APIs need to change.

At what level do we align DSpace and Fedora? Do we really need an intermediary format (AIP)? Bradley: If all we do is find a way to graft the existing DSpace workflows onto a Fedora that is very specific to DSpace and can’t be used with other Fedora tools, then we haven’t moved very far. The end goal is to find those places where DSpace is not formally specified enough and get it formally specified. Mark: Islandora hooks Drupal into Fedora. 80%-90% of the time we work with the Drupal-Fedora API — a simple PHP wrapper around Fedora API. It transforms calls into appropriate actions into Drupal. Another option comes from an Italy project that created a synchronization of Fedora objects and Drupal Nodes; it copies information from Fedora into the Drupal RDBMS. Other applications like Omeka have a Fedora plugin. DiscoveryGarden has also looked at things like WordPress with Fedora underneath. As repository services become more intelligent about microservices it would take even less time to make these integrations.

What benefit does Fedora receive? Richard: For the Fedora community, DSpace alignment would provide a rich IR content model for Fedora. Ryan: DSpace was designed as an IR and nothing else; it has that at its core. The problems that people have with DSpace are when people try to make it do something outside that vision. Having a Fedora repository and have a DSpace interface for those IR use cases and something like Hydra or Islandora for people using those use cases. Matt: There has never been a large cohesion of IR workflow in Fedora; having this workflow satisfy the IR use case. Bradley: DSpace with Fedora inside is a repackaging with a slightly different set of existing components. DSpace across its lifetime has tried to become more modular; integration with Fedora will make this clearer. Mark: Would agree that one of the main things DSpace brings to Fedora is the workflow tool and also the back-end data transformation workflows. But he has also never been a fan of the DSpace workflow because the staunch requirement to fill out a lot of metadata is a mistake. Working with science data, researchers want to ingest 100K microscope images without metadata then go back and add metadata with time. Ryan: (Agreeing) Some of the requirements of the native installation of DSpace is difficult to work with in other use cases. Started with configuring the workflow as much as could be done with config file, but then created a new workflow process that still used many of the underlying tools.

The way I think of the motivation is that DSpace on Fedora will have the same easy setup with access to the underlying APIs for customization. Bradley: Yes — that is an aspirational goal. The practical realities mean that we will have to take steps there one at a time. And given the time scale the question comes whether we will get there before we decide to do something else. One of them — sort of unsaid — is to take a look at EPeople and see how that would migrate. Ryan: Unlocking the data is one thing, but unlocking the underlying datastreams as a API. DSpace storage API is opaque. You can rebuild everything from the underlying storage. [Ryan also calls out an old DLTJ post: A key advantage of DSpace with Fedora inside. "Why Fedora? Because You Don’t Need Fedora".]

Lightning Talks

Mark Phillips talked about a PREMIS Event Service. He needed a way to log events that occur during the life of digital objects (virus checks, ingest, fixity check, replication) — when they occur and their outcomes. So he built a microservice based on AtomPub. Each repository component sends outcomes of an event to this service, a central event collector. Uses the PREMIS Event and Agent Modules. Events metadata include: event_identifier, event_type, event_timestamp, event_outcome, outcome_detail, agent_identifier, object_identifier, and event_detail. Agent metadata includes details about the software, human or organization triggering the event. An AtomPub feed for each object returns all events for that object. The system includes a basic search interface to see all events of a particular type and enables a feed to be set up on those searches. There is the ability to harvest all events via OAI-PMH and Atom. It is built with Django and Python and will be release on the MetaArchive Google Code page.

Peter Sefton talked about The Fascinator & Fedora Commons: A Toolkit Tour. Fascinator is a java-based platform targeting repository solutions. It is open source (GPL), a plugin-based platform, and highly customizable. It was first used as an aggregator of data from various sources into a discovery service. They tried doing the same thing on the desktop computer (something a researchers could put on a personal computer, index data, group/describe it). He thinks of the process as a conveyor belt: harvest digital objects, transform them, store them, index them and find them. Harvest: draw into your digital ecosystem files, databases, online resources. Transform: be ready to present and share. Real web stuff — not PDFs. Video and image previews. Multiple renditions for a multi-platform world. Storage: Store originals and their friends; basic filesystem storage or use Fedora Commons. Index: Apache SOLR index. Find: Faceted search interface. Web previews (turn Word into HTML and PDF for preview, same for video transcoding). Easily customizable UI (Jython and Velocity). It is used by REDDBOX, Mint (described at a session yesterday), and a library of university policies (policies sent from Microsoft Sharepoint and transformed into HTML and PDF).

Rich Rogers talked about Publishing Large, Data-Rich Collections on the Web with Exhibit3. We collect and we like to share what we collect. Nowadays we live on the web, so how can we share out collections there? Exhibit is all I need to publish my collection to the web: no backend database, no server application; it will even convert a spreadsheet into usable data on the web. Originally created by the SIMILE Project at MIT, Exhibit is an entire data publication platform with ‘list’ and ‘tabular. views. There is also a rich library of additional views. If temporal data, scrollable interactive timeline. If geospatial data, interactive mapping displays. Numerical data, scatter or time plots. It is installable by HTML configuration and uses a browser-resident RDF database in JSON.

Geri Ingram and Carol Godby talked about Sustaining Collaboration Among Open Access Repositories focused on the WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway. WorldCat broadens exposure to digital object collections; end users click through to the hosting repository server from WorldCat.org. Metadata from OAI-PMH-compliant repositories are regularly harvested to WorldCat through the Gateway; digital objects remain on local repository server. The gateway includes a translation service that allows repository managers to create mappings from Dublin Core (or selected other metadata schemas) to MARC.

It has been the longest of weeks and the shortest of weeks. Longest because of a working weekend with the ALA Midwinter conference in San Diego. Shortest because the activities leading up to, during, and after the conference didn’t leave much time for reading items to prepare a DLTJ Thursday Threads article. This edition has three short pointers: a report from Midwinter on a project from OCLC to offer a basic website for every library, why governments are coming around to liking open source software, and a discussion of measurements of reliability.

If you find these threads interesting and useful, you might want to add the Thursday Threads RSS Feed to your feed reader or subscribe to e-mail delivery using the form to the right. If you would like a more raw and immediate version of these types of stories, watch my FriendFeed stream (or subscribe to its feed in your feed reader). Comments and tips, as always, are welcome.

A Web presence for every library

We are ready to share our work to date on a very early, experimental service aimed at providing a low cost and easy-to-use Web site service for small and rural public libraries and are looking for feedback and direction from the library community.

Late last year — just about a week before ALA Midwinter — came an announcement of a project by OCLC’s Innovation Lab to offer an inexpensive website to every small library. At a price of about $5 per month, a library could have a basic desktop and mobile website. At about $40 per month, the library could have a simple inventory and circulation module. You can see what is possible at the Loremville, TN public library sample site and read more information about the project in my write-up of the public demonstration.

A Walled Wide Web for Nervous Autocrats

At the end of 2010, the “open-source” software movement, whose activists tend to be fringe academics and ponytailed computer geeks, found an unusual ally: the Russian government. Vladimir Putin signed a 20-page executive order requiring all public institutions in Russia to replace proprietary software, developed by companies like Microsoft and Adobe, with free open-source alternatives by 2015.

The move will save billions of dollars in licensing fees, but Mr. Putin’s motives are not strictly economic. In all likelihood, his real fear is that Russia’s growing dependence on proprietary software, especially programs sold by foreign vendors, has immense implications for the country’s national security. Free open-source software, by its nature, is unlikely to feature secret back doors that lead directly to Langley, Va.

Despite the backhanded slight to open source software advocates (“fringe academics and ponytailed computer geeks” — really?), this Wall Street Journal article talks about how being able to inspect the source of software used by governments can reduce the likelihood that other governments can eavesdrop on computer activity.

Why Internet Services Aren’t Achieving Ma Bell’s Reliability

AT&T’s dial tone set the all-time standard for reliability. It was engineered so that 99.999 percent of the time, you could successfully make a phone call. Five 9s. That works out to being available all but 5.26 minutes a year.

Can we realistically expect that such availability will ever come to Internet services?…As more and more Web services companies acquire years of experience, we’ll see more consistent reliability — it’s just a matter of time and learning. Attaining Four-9s availability will become routine. That means available all but 52.56 minutes a year.

As for moving to 99.999, well, that may never come. “We don’t believe Five 9s is attainable in a commercial service, if measured correctly,” says Urs Hölzle, senior vice president for operations at Google. The company’s goal for its major services is Four 9s.

Ever heard the phrase “five nines”? It is a mystical measure of reliability where, as this New York Times article points out, one would only see roughly five minutes of downtime a year. You’ll hear computer people talk about five-nines — 99.999% uptime — but now you can come armed with information about what today’s most popular internet service companies are doing to try to achieve it (and ask if the company promising you five-nines is doing the same thing).

On a side note, the article also has a paragraph about Amazon’s Simple Storage Service, or S3, cloud-based disk service: “‘We talk of durability of data — it’s designed for Eleven-9s durability,’ says James Hamilton, a vice president for Amazon Web Services. That works out to a 0.000000001 percent chance of data being lost, at least theoretically.” This topic came up at presentation I gave during ALA Midwinter on Options in Storage for Digital Preservation. With digital preservation, we don’t have a good way of thinking about probability. Is eleven-9s durability good enough for the long-term preservation of our digital archive masters?

Screenshot of Sample 'Web Presence for Small Libraries'

They created a sample library called Loremville, TN public library to demonstrate key aspects of the service. I did not ask them how long that particular example will be around, so you may follow that link at a later date and not find it.

This “Library Website in a Box” is a concept that has been around for many years, and the latest trigger to try something was a resolution from the last OCLC Members Council to make scaled-down versions of OCLC services for “small and rural libraries.” The Innovation Lab group conducted some research about the existing state of public library web presences by sorting the IMLS-reported data from 2008 by number of volumes held and number of library staff. They looked at the lowest quartile (roughly 20,000 volumes or less and staff size in the low single digits) and found that there was generally no web presence for these libraries. In the second quartile there were instances of library websites, but they did the library no credit (outdated, poorly constructed, incomplete information — as was said at the meeting, these libraries had a presence on the web but probably shouldn’t). Some had automation systems supplied by large groups, but others didn’t have evidence of an automation system. So the project charter was to find an easy and inexpensive way for a library in these quartiles to create a desktop and mobile device web presence.

One of the unique aspects of the project development was to first set the approximate lower ($5/month) and upper ($40/month) price boundaries and find a way to provide the highest level of service possible at those price points. The Innovation Lab team tried techniques such as a farm of WordPress sites but found they couldn’t make the revenue-versus-cost equation to work. In the end they constructed a custom database-driven content system in PHP. Institutional data is initially pulled from sources such as the WorldCat Registry, and there will be some process for a library to “claim” its site. There might also be a way for a library to create a site for itself if no registry data yet exists.

There are four levels of site authorization: public (unauthenticated) viewing, a registered patron, a staff member, and an administrator. Content from the pages are edited by the administrator at the subscribing library with a WYSIWYG¹ editor. There are content boxes for the library’s location, staff/volunteers listing, events calendar and news, hours and phone number, policies, and service information. The library’s address is fed into a Google Maps service to display a map of the area surrounding the library.

The dynamic parts of each library’s website could have a list of books from various sources like the New York Times and Oprah’s book group. The service also envisions offering a “default digital collection” using public domain works in text, PDF, and mobile reading device formats from sources such as Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive.

The inventory and circulation module is simple and straight-forward. Each item has only eight full-text fields with the intention that the description will likely be done by a volunteer without professional library training. Cataloging can be done by typing in the information or scanning the ISBN with an app on a mobile device; item information is pulled from WorldCat if found. The cataloging application does not attach holdings to WorldCat, but the OCLC number is kept and might be used to facilitate offloading MARC records in cases where a library outgrows this simple circulation module to a more functional integrated library system. The circulation functions are check-in, check-out, renew, place hold and cancel hold. There are no financial functions in the system.

At these price levels, the system needs to be highly automated and self-supporting. The cost to OCLC of one call to a customer support phone number could easily run through all the revenue OCLC would receive from the subscribing library in a year. A widely adopted implementation at the targeted price points means that OCLC could dedicate one or two technical staff to support and upgrade the system in addition to the hardware and support service amortization.

One unresolved issue is domain names — what is the URL that will be used for each library’s site. OCLC is investigating options such as partnering with a domain registrar company (someone like GoDaddy), becoming a domain registrar themselves, or putting all the sites under one domain. The economics of each of these options will be a factor. The sometimes cumbersome aspects of migrating domain names from one service to another may make that activity cost-prohibitive as well.

Mike Teets noted that this was at a “project” stage, not a “product” stage. My paraphrasing of what this distinction means is that the technology to create a product is largely done, but the decisions on the final formative pieces of the technology and the surrounding support infrastructure — is not yet done (and might never be done). There isn’t even a formal name for it yet; it is being called “A Web Presence for Small Libraries.” One desired additional feature is to add e-mail boxes for library staff/functions to the site. Those in the room, including me but more importantly others who are more closely aligned with the target “small and rural” public library population, were pretty excited about it and wanting to talk further about if what we saw could be made a reality.

Personal Impressions

Like others in the room, I came away impressed by the project demonstration. It is definitely fits the bill as a basic library website and even a starter inventory and circulation management system. I see that libraries could start with something like this for the cost of a couple of books added to the collection (roughly estimated at $60/year). At this price level, OCLC thinks they could sustain the costs of operations plus have some left over for investment in incremental improvements. I also think that because a library would pay a minimal fee for it, they would feel a tangible sense of ownership over the site and would keep them up-to-date. From this a library could “graduate” to another service — their own Drupal or WordPress site, to a shared ILS or Webscale Management Services.

The content areas seemed the most appropriate for the target audience. The web page design is modern, and I could see options for future enhancements as time and revenue permit such as providing limited options to personalize the template (change colors, adding picture — or adding links to pictures that might be stored on services such as Flickr).

One attendee at the session suggested that rather than OCLC prepopulating a digital content library of all public domain content that the set be limited to those that are the most downloaded so as not to overwhelm the user with a lot of unused (and/or unusable) digital content. That sounds like a good suggestion to me.

OCLC Staff are looking for feedback on this project. They say that the system is “production ready” with all the software controls and data recovery features of OCLC behind it. What they think is missing is community support to have local engagement with the targeted libraries to show them what is possible. That is an area where OCLC needs help. (I can only imagine the shocked silence of a volunteer at a small library to get a call from OCLC — if they even knew what OCLC was — with an offer to create a website for the library. “Only $5/month…sign up now and we’ll throw in a second one for free!”) There is an e-mail address — innovation@oclc.org — that goes to all the OCLC Innovation Lab members, and a WebJunction group for public discussion.

About the Innovation Lab

For this project, the Innovation Lab sought out cooperation from OCLC staff to build prototypes and components of the service in their spare time. Each Monday the self-selected group would get together to show what had been built and discuss ways to move the project forward in the following week. In this way they rapidly iterated over ideas to come up with what was ultimately proposed.

The text was modified to update a link from http://expreimental.worldcat.org/ to http://experimental.worldcat.org/ on January 12th, 2011.

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.webjunction.org/923 to http://www.webjunction.org/923 on January 12th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://www.clicweb.org/e_discover/e_discovermarc.html on June 9th, 2011.

Footnotes

1. What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get, meaning as you edit the document with styles like bolding, underlining, and bulleted lists, what you see in the editing interface is exactly how it will appear in the viewing interface.

A last-minute change to my plans for ALA Midwinter came on Tuesday when I was sought out to fill in for a speaker than canceled at the ALCTS Digital Preservation Interest Group meeting. Options for outsourcing storage and services for preserving digital content has been a recent interest, so I volunteered to combine two earlier DLTJ blog posts with some new information and present it to the group for feedback. The reaction was great, and here is the promised slide deck, links to further information, and some thoughts from the audience response.

Slide Deck and References

To examine the similarities and differences in costs, let’s use the OhioLINK Satellite Image collection as a prototypical example. It consists of about 2 terabytes (2TB) of high-quality images in TIFF format, with about 7.5GB of data going into the repository each month. In the interest of exploring everything that S3 can do, there is an assumption that approximately 4GB of data will be transferred out of the archive each month; OCLC’s Digital Archive does not have a end-user dissemination component.

The point of showing this scenario is to show the widest range of costs — from a storage-only solution like Amazon S3 to a soup-to-nuts service like OCLC Digital Archive. A word about the redacted costs. Some of the numbers for OCLC’s Digital Archive response (from 2008) came from a confidential quote, so the numbers were removed from the public table. For the numbers that are publicly listed, the values come from Barbara Quint’s article.

The articles and blog posts I referenced in the course of the presentation were:

Iglesias, Edward and Wittawat Meesangnil (2010). Using Amazon S3 in Digital Preservation in a mid sized academic library: A case study of CCSU ERIS digital archive system. The Code4Lib Journal, issue 12, retrieved 5-Jan-2011 from http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/4468

Murray, Peter (2008). Long-term Preservation Storage: OCLC Digital Archive versus Amazon S3. Disruptive Library Technology Jester. Retrieved 5-Jan-2011 from http://dltj.org/article/oclc-digital-archive-vs-amazon-s3/

Murray, Peter (2009). Can We Outsource the Preservation of Digital Bits?. Disruptive Library Technology Jester. Retrieved 5-Jan-2011 from http://dltj.org/article/outsource-digital-bits/

Quint, Barbara (2008). OCLC Introduces High-Priced Digital Archive Service. Information Today. Retrieved 5-Jan-2011 from http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/nbReader.asp?ArticleId=49018

• Amazon S3. Retrieved 5-Jan-2011 from http://aws.amazon.com/s3/
• Chronopolis. Retrieved 5-Jan-2011 from http://chronopolis.sdsc.edu/
• DAITSS. Retrieved 5-Jan-2011 from http://daitss.fcla.edu/
• DuraCloud. Retrieved 5-Jan-2011 from https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/duracloud/DuraCloud
• Iron Mountain. Retreived 5-Jan-2011 from http://www.ironmountain.com/news/2009/impr02232009.asp
• OCLC Digital Archive. Retrieve 5-Jan-2011 from http://www.oclc.org/us/en/digitalarchive/
• Private LOCKSS Networks. Retrieved 5-Jan-2011 from http://lockss.stanford.edu/lockss/Private_LOCKSS_Networks

Some Thoughts

One of the baffling elements I’ve found in discussions of the history of OCLC is that of its tax exempt status under Ohio law. The latest example of this comes from documents filed in the SkyRiver/Innovative-vs.-OCLC case that make disparaging remarks about how OCLC got its state tax-advantaged status. (The text of the remarks in those documents are included below.) I was curious about this a while back and so did some research on the topic. I had set it aside and forgotten about it until this latest lawsuit brought it up again. So, to set the record straight, here is at least one version — hopefully written from a neutral perspective — of what happened nearly three decades ago.

A couple of notes before we begin. First, the title of this post purposefully starts with an indefinite article. This is not the story; this is a story that I have managed to piece together. I don’t do legal research and legislative history for a living, but I did have a class in those topics during library school. (Hi, Professor Wise!) This should not be considered a definitive version…it is as best as I can piece together.

Second note. Many of the documents come from LexisNexis Academic Universe. Even though the documents themselves are in the public domain (being of government origin), I’m not sure the LexisNexis versions can be openly published because they contain information from the LexisNexis editors. ¹ I could publish the raw documents if I were to go to the various governement offices that have this information and make copies, but that — quite frankly — is more effort that I’m willing to put into this project. So you’ll either have to take my word for it or look up the citations (provided in the text below) yourself if you have access to LexisNexis Academic Universe.

Third note. This post only deals with the tax status of OCLC as it relates to Ohio law. In other words, the taxes that OCLC would owe to the State of Ohio. OCLC’s exemption from federal income taxes under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Service Code is another matter entirely. I’m sure there is a paper trail to that as well (part of which includes the IRS Form 990 declarations from which details of the SkyRiver/Innovative complaint are drawn), but I don’t know how to get to it.

The Origin

On January 23, 1980, appellant, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (hereinafter referred to as “OCLC”), filed an application for real property exemption pertaining to certain land located in Dublin, Ohio, together with the five-story building and other improvements thereon, relating to the tax year 1979 and thereafter. The Commissioner denied OCLC’s application for exemption. OCLC has appealed from such denial to this Board.

On September 3, 1981, the Ohio Tax Commissioner denied the appeal. I don’t have a copy of that decision, but the decision at the appellate level includes the text of the appeal from OCLC. Based on that text, it seems like the denial was based on the “fact that Appellant’s real property is not used exclusively for charitable purposes” as defined by the Ohio Revised Code (sections 5709.12 and 5709.121, if you must).

There are numerous references to case law in Ohio that OCLC used in its appeal that I won’t list here, but there are two references to what I would offer are core values of OCLC that were refuted by the Ohio Tax Commissioner:

The Commissioner erroneously held as a matter of law and fact that Appellant OCLC failed to establish its uniquely charitable purpose of furthering the growth of human knowlege. The Commissioner’s narrow focusing upon and findings regarding Appellant OCLC’s provision of services at a cost savings improperly ignored other substantial elements of Appellant OCLC’s charitable purpose and interactivity with its library members.

The Commissioner erroneously held as a matter of law and fact that there is nothing unique in the nature of Appellant OCLC’s services that would make it an unlikely service to be engaged in by private enterprise. The essence of Appellant OCLC is the cooperative sharing of the bibliographic records of all its member libraries and the completeness of the resulting data base in which all its library members have a beneficial right of ownership and use and without which Appellant OCLC as a national library resource would not exist. It is an accident of fate that the resource is physically located in the subject real estate.

The Appellate Court Decision

An institution which has as its essential purpose the accumulation of bibliographic catalog data supplied by members organizations which is then made available to and for the use of its member organizations is not a “public college,” “academy,” or “public institution of learning” as such terms are used in [Ohio Revised Code Section] 5709.07. While it may by true that OCLC may actually teach individuals concerning the nature of the data stored in OCLC’s computer data base and how to use OCLC’s equipment in obtaining such data information through the use of OCLC’s equipment, such teaching process primarily subserves OCLC’s fundamental purpose of providing information as to the existence, owner and holder of particular books and other educational materials and a means to make arrangements to obtain such educational materials, if desired.

In the last analysis, OCLC is not an institution having a teacher-student character. OCLC is in the business of selling, leasing or renting equipment and facilities capable of providing information and access to written information, primarily in form the of books, held in public or private libraries of OCLC’s member organizations. The providing of such information by OCLC in the form of printed bibliographic catalog cards or via telephonic terminal connections with OCLC’s computer facilities, is primarily, if not solely, for members contracting with OCLC and for an established per transaction price paid by the member organization obtaining such information.

[...]

Although a laudable purpose, the business of providing a computerized library network, the storing of library related bibliographical catalog data, and the selling or licensing the use of equipment necessary to gain access to such stored data or to communicate with member organizations having a contractual relationship with OCLC, is not a charitable purpose. There are many data processing corporations providing data storage capabilities for the benefit of its users. The providing of date storage or data processing services and equipment for an established price, whether for profit or otherwise, is not a charitable purpose or activity.

The fact that the particular users of data storage or data processing services may be charitable institutions that may benefit, in terms of cost, in obtaining information from a data storage or data processing organization below what would otherwise be involved, in terms of time and cost in obtaining like benefits, does not thereby make the supplier of such services and facilities a vicarious charitable institution merely because the facilities supplied are so immediate, intertwined and necessary to the efficient conduct of the users’ charitable activities.

…The subject real property is used to house, maintain and sell its computerized services and equipment to its member library organizations. Such services and facilities are not sold directly to the general public nor made available by OCLC directly to the public. Such sales are made only to member organizations having a contractual arrangement made with OCLC under which the member organizations agree and provide bibliographic data pertaining to their own library holdings of books and related materials and agree to pay a per transaction cost for use of OCLC’s data and system. OCLC does not offer or provide its services and facilities directly to the general public or offer or provide the same except upon a contractual arrangement and an obligation to pay therefor….

The evidence does indicate that OCLC has in fact produced a “profit” in the sense that it has accumulated operating revenues in excess of operating expenses although, by virtue of being a non-profit corporation, such profits are not directly distributable as such to its member organizations.

Although OCLC contends that the Commissioner’s findings of fact and conclusions of law are erroneous, upon review of the Commissioner’s findings and conclusions of law we find that they are reasonable and proper in all respects.

The Board of Tax Appeals finds and determines upon the record as a matter of law that all specifications of error are without merit.

IT IS ORDERED that the Commissioner of Tax Equalization’s final determination, rendered by Journal Entry, dated September 3, 1981, here involved, should be, and hereby is, affirmed.

The Ohio Supreme Court Decision

OCLC’s membership consists of one hundred eighty-four academic and public libraries in Ohio, and over two thousand six hundred libraries throughout North America. Its services are not directly available to the public at large. Members are charged a fee, and in return they receive terminal equipment for online access to OCLC’s computer facilities via dedicated telephone lines. OCLC further provides personnel and equipment in order to service and maintain its customers’ computer terminals and other associated computer hardware. The bibliographic holdings of member libraries are entered into the data base for access by all other member libraries, thus facilitating the location of books and materials held by member organizations, and simplifying procedures for inter-library book transfers.

OCLC also provides cataloging information to member libraries. For example, when a library purchases a book already owned by another member library, a search of OCLC’s data is made and, because the bibliographic record already exists in the data base, a catalogue record can be generated at a greatly reduced cost.

In addition to the aforementioned services, OCLC has engaged in research for companies, including Bank One of Columbus and Warner Amex QUBE, a cable television company. On one occasion, OCLC performed research for a telecomputing firm and, in return, was offered fifty percent of the firm’s stock for an additional price of one dollar.

The Commissioner of Tax Equalization (hereinafter “commissioner”) denied the exemption on the basis that OCLC is neither a “public college or academy” or “public institution of learning,” as those terms are employed under R.C. 5709.07, nor was the property found to be used “exclusively for charitable purposes” so as to entitle OCLC to an exemption under R.C. 5709.12. On appeal, the Board of Tax Appeals affirmed. In its appeal to this court, OCLC has abandoned its argument for an exemption as a public institution of learning in conjunction with R.C. 5709.07, and, as such, contests only the board’s determination that it failed to meet the qualifications for a charitable exemption under R.C. 5709.12.

Some excerpts from the legal reasoning in deciding the case:

OCLC submits that because it serves libraries, which in turn benefit the general public through the dissemination of knowledge for the edification and improvement of mankind, it qualifies as an institution furthering human knowledge and, therefore, is a charitable institution. This argument, however, simply constitutes an attempt by OCLC to obtain a vicarious charitable exemption by virtue of the activities of its customers.

In Joint Hospital Services v. Lindley (1977), we rejected a similar vicarious charitable exemption theory. In that case, a group of hospitals pooled their resources and established a laundry and linen service for their members, as well as for several other non-profit organizations.

As in the present case, the taxpayer relied upon the charitable status of its customers as the basis for seeking a charitable exemption. The court observed, however, that notwithstanding the charitable nature of the institutional customers who obtained the laundry and linen services, it is the charitable activities of the taxpayer seeking the exemption which must be considered when reviewing an application for a charitable exemption. Although a laudable purpose, the taxpayer’s laundry and linen service neither improved health nor alleviated illness and, accordingly, the exemption was denied.

So, too, in the instant cause, the record demonstrates that OCLC’s activities more closely resemble those of a publisher of library materials or a data base firm specializing in information retrieval, such as Lexis or the New York Times Information Bank, rather than that of a library. Although OCLC’s service may greatly enhance the ability of libraries to better serve the public, OCLC essentially offers a product to charitable institutions, for a fee exceeding its cost, and, as the board concluded, is not itself a charitable organization.

In addition, OCLC fails to address the effect that its commercial fee paying research endeavors have upon its status as an organization seeking a charitable exemption. … Such commercial research endeavors have previously been determined by this court to preclude the issuance of a charitable tax exemption. Moreover, although OCLC may have originated as a charitable organization upon its creation in 1967, the organization, which now operates throughout North America for any library willing to pay its fee, and which engages in fee paying research projects for the private gain of commercial industries, has since transcended the realm of a charitable institution.

For the foregoing reasons, the decision of the Board of Tax Appeals, being neither unreasonable nor unlawful, is affirmed.

The New Law

Section 5709.72. Library technology development exemption

All tangible and intangible personal property shall be exempt from taxation if the following conditions exist in the year for which exemption is sought:

1. The owner is a nonprofit corporation that is exempt from federal income taxes under the provisions of section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, as amended, and the owner’s primary purposes are conducting research and development in library technology and providing computerized or automated services to public, charitable, or educational libraries;
2. The property is used in any of the following:
   1. Furnishing services to libraries and to similar information resource agencies or institutions whose activities directly benefit libraries, provided at least eighty per cent of the owner’s revenues from furnishing those services are paid by libraries, agencies, and institutions that are public, charitable, or educational;
   2. Conducting research and development in technology specifically for use in libraries, the majority of which are public, charitable, or educational;
   3. Providing products, internal support, or auxiliary services related to activities described in divisions (B)(1) and (2) of this section.

Section 5709 of the Ohio Revised Code contains the various types of organizations exempt from reporting personal property for the purposes of taxation. The legislative history of how this section came to be added to the Ohio Revised Code is probably lost in the mists of time; we don’t know who proposed it or why.

The Link to the “SkyOCLC” Case

OCLC argues that because the Complaint alleges that OCLC has abused its tax-exempt status, the interests of the Ohio court are greater than the interests of this California Court. The purported reason given is that the court’s decision may have an impact on other Ohio nonprofit corporations. This Court, however, is not going to determine OCLC’s state or federal tax-exempt status nor would an Ohio court. Moreover, OCLC has not explained how any impact on other nonprofits involved in other unrelated activities would result whether this case is tried in California or Ohio. Nor has OCLC explained why a federal court decision will affect only nonprofits in Ohio. In fact, the Supreme Court of Ohio in 1984 determined that OCLC was engaged in commercial activities and upheld an Ohio Board of Tax Appeals’ decision denying OCLC an exemption from property taxes. See OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. v. Kinney, 11 Ohio St. 3d 198, 464 N.E. 2d 572 (1984), 1984 Ohio LEXIS 1136…. Apparently, OCLC had the political clout in Ohio to have the Supreme Court’s decision nullified legislatively.

OCLC, in its response, gets in its two cents as well (emphasis added):⁶

OCLC established in its Motion that Ohio courts have a stronger interest in the issues raised by this lawsuit because, among other concerns, Plaintiffs have raised allegations that OCLC is improperly exercising its non-profit status. In response, Plaintiffs cite a 1984 Ohio Supreme Court case which found that OCLC was not exempt from real estate and property tax under then-enacted Ohio law. In reality, as a result of that lawsuit, the Ohio Legislature demonstrated that it was concerned with OCLC’s non-profit mission by creating for OCLC a statutory exemption from the property tax requirements. Indeed, the language of the statute reinforces OCLC’s argument that the State of Ohio has a particularly strong interest in OCLC’s tax-exempt mission…. Plaintiffs’ unsupported claim that the Ohio Legislature acted because OCLC improperly exercised “political clout in Ohio” is an unwarranted attack on the Ohio Legislature and its members. Surely, Plaintiffs are not suggesting that the judges in the Southern District of Ohio would be unable to adjudicate fairly a lawsuit brought by an out-of-state litigant, or that they would improperly favor OCLC.

A Brief History of the State Support of Libraries in Ohio

State Support

Beginning in 1933, public libraries in Ohio were supported almost entirely from revenues from the intangible personal property tax. This was a tax levied on individuals’ holdings of intangible assets – mainly stocks and bonds. Though the tax was state-imposed and applied uniformly throughout Ohio, it was collected locally. The revenue remained in the county of origin, where it was distributed to library systems in that county in accordance with “need.”

This system of library finance, unique in the United States, had several results. Some counties, because of large holdings of taxable intangible property or vigorous local tax enforcement efforts, realized great revenue. Others received very little. By the late 1960s some of Ohio’s largest library systems were justly renowned for the strength of their collections, the breadth and variety of services offered, and their qualified professional staffs. However, there were many areas of Ohio where public library service was virtually nonexistent. In Adams County, with a 1970 population of about 19,000, the public library consisted of two small local libraries that received a total of only $19,100.

Library and Local Government Support Fund

In 1983, the Ohio General Assembly repealed the intangible tax based on recommendations from a bi-partisan study of the state’s entire tax system.
Governor Richard Celeste then created the Public Library Financing and Support Committee, consisting of members of the House and Senate, public library directors, the dean of the Kent State University School of Library Science, teachers, and financial experts, to determine how the state should replace the intangible tax funding for public libraries.

This committee determined that the loss libraries experienced through the repeal of the intangible tax was equal to 6.3% of Ohio’s personal income tax revenue. Therefore, 6.3% of Ohio’s personal income tax receipts were earmarked for the [Library and Local Government Support Fund].

The Public Library Finance and Support Committee set forth two goals for the state’s library fund distribution plan: 1. To preserve excellence in existing service, and 2. To improve library service in under funded and underserved areas. To accomplish these goals, the distribution formula divides the LLGSF among all of the state’s 88 counties in two ways. First, the formula guarantees each county the amount of revenue received from the fund in the preceding year plus an adjustment for inflation. This part of the distribution is called the “guarantee share.” Second, if any money remains in the fund after paying each county’s guarantee share, then that remainder is distributed according to an “equalization ration.” The equalization aspect of the formula distributes the excess over the guarantee in inverse proportion to per capita funding levels among the counties – those counties which received less per capita in the guarantee share, receive more in the equalization share. Thus, over time, the distribution to counties begins to balance.

Footnotes

1. See this discussion of FriendFeed to get a sense of the frustration in trying to figure out the LexisNexis Academic Universe Terms and Conditions.
2. OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc., Appellant, vs. Robert R. Kinney, Commissioner of Tax Equalization, Appellee. CASE NO. 81-D-602 (REAL PROPERTY TAX) STATE OF OHIO — BOARD OF TAX APPEALS. 1983 Ohio Tax LEXIS 162. October 11, 1983.
3. For instance, the decision from the appellate court says:
   

   On February 3, 4, 5, and 8, 1982, a hearing was held for the purpose of permitting the parties hereto to provide additional evidence, as authorized by R.C. 5717.02. Both parties were represented by counsel. A transcript of such proceedings (pp. 1 – 730, comprising 4 volumes) was subsequently filed.

   …to which I say, “Wow! 730 pages of transcripts!”

4. OCLC ONLINE COMPUTER LIBRARY CENTER, INC., APPELLANT, v. KINNEY, COMMR., APPELLEE. No. 83-1713 Supreme Court of Ohio. 11 Ohio St. 3d 198; 464 N.E.2d 572; 1984 Ohio LEXIS 1136; 11 Ohio B. Rep. 509
5. SkyRiver Technology Solutions, LLC et al v. OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc., Document #20, page 13 line 21 through page 14 line 5
6. SkyRiver Technology Solutions, LLC et al v. OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc., Document #25, page 11 lines 6 through 24

Within the span of a recent week we’ve had two views of the OCLC cooperative. In one we have a proposition that OCLC has gone astray from its core roots and in the other a celebration of what OCLC can do. One proposes a new mode of cooperation while the other extols the virtues of the existing cooperative. Both writers claim — independently — to “talk to librarians” and represent the prevailing mood of the profession. Can these two viewpoints be reconciled?

“Too Many Cooks?”

I spend quite a bit of time talking both to librarians and industry partners–publishers, booksellers, Web-technology providers, search engine companies–all kinds of people doing interesting things in our space. And in those talks, there is often a discussion of one of the following: content, technology or community. What I’ve come to realize, though, is that the best results come from places where all three come together.

Chip’s post is short but clear in its view that the community of OCLC members is something special and that it adds value to member libraries.

“The Cooperative We Need”

It appears to me that the interests of the OCLC we know today do not appear to be in total alignment with the needs and interests of its overall actual membership. Perhaps they are in alignment with the interests of the Board, Council, and other governing and administrative arms, but the feeling I get in talks with librarians is that it is not in alignment with what they want. As I talk to librarians, across the country today, I hear that what they want is an organization, a cooperative that is focused on developing and providing open and collaborative library content and services that are widely accessible by all in order that they (the librarians) can focus on re-establishing and/or maintaining the value of libraries in our society.

Carl goes on to propose the creation of a utility that aggregates the ratings and rankings of individual users into a database that can enhance the relevance ranking of the emerging generation of discovery layer products.

My Thoughts

Carl describes the problem in his post. When a not-for-profit vendor acquires a significant number of for-profit companies (and spins them back out again), how can we (members, vendors, and the library community in general) understand how the mix of commercial and non-commercial interests are playing out at the management level? Can the OCLC that is the bibliographic utility, the metadata switch between bibliographic-based services, and the R&D braintrust co-exist with the for-profit businesses, motivations, and operations? Or, to put it more sharply, does the negotiation of H.W. Wilson content for use on the subscription-based WorldCat database hinder the evolution of discovery layers that being developed by companies that don’t have the tax-advantaged not-for-profit status? (And don’t forget about the allegations of anti-competitive behavior in the SkyRiver/Innovative-versus-OCLC lawsuit.)

In closing this section, I want to pull out and emphasize another quotation from Carl’s post:

In the end, all of these business initiatives, and now resulting lawsuit, strongly work against OCLC being able to do what it does best—building collaboration, content, and related services as a non-profit entity to serve the larger profession.

Agreed.

Carl’s Grand Idea

I highly recommend reading Carl’s post and thinking about ways of answering the question “What Do We Want From OCLC?” I commend Carl for his courage and vision in articulating his points and proposing something new for the profession to drive towards.

On September 9th, OCLC filed its first substantial response with the court to the antitrust lawsuit file by SkyRiver and Innovative Interfaces. And in a motion where OCLC requests a change of venue from the Northern District of California to the Southern District of Ohio — something seemingly mundane — they certainly pulled no punches:

Through a lengthy recitation of inaccurate facts, Plaintiffs allege six claims against OCLC. In short, Plaintiffs allege that OCLC, a forty-year old non-profit entity, is making it difficult for Innovative and its one-year old sister-company, SkyRiver, to compete and gain market share in the ILL, ILS, and the online cataloging library world. Through a variety of uncited references in their Complaint to “prominent library-related internet blogs,” unnamed commentators, and unattributed articles and reports, as well as through creating an anti-OCLC website, Plaintiffs have levied a propaganda war on OCLC simply because Plaintiffs have been unable to compete successfully with OCLC’s membership base and bibliographic data which OCLC earned through forty years of dedicated service to its member libraries.SkyRiver Technology Solutions, LLC et al v. OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. Filing: 16. Page 4. Retrieved from Justia Docs on 18-Sep-2010. (link added)

The question at hand seems to be a bit more than a propogada war between SkyRiver and OCLC. But the court is not yet at the meat of the matter.

The text accompanying the motion for change of venue, though, does not deal with the issues raised in the lawsuit. Instead, it requests the California court “transfer this action from this District to the Southern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, located in Columbus, Ohio.”

“Litigation should proceed where the case finds its center of gravity.” The “center of gravity” is determined by the location of key witnesses and documents. Here, the “center of gravity” is plainly the Southern District of Ohio, for these reasons:

• OCLC’s headquarters and virtually all of the key witnesses and documentary evidence are located in or near Central Ohio.
• OCLC has a relatively small presence in California, as compared to its much larger and longer-established presence in Ohio.
• OCLC made all decisions and actions operative to the allegations of Plaintiffs SkyRiver Technology Solutions, LLC (“SkyRiver”) and Innovative Interfaces, Inc. (“Innovative”) (collectively “Plaintiffs”) in Ohio.
• The State of California does not have an interest in this lawsuit beyond the fact that Plaintiffs are residents of California, whereas the State of Ohio has a great interest in this lawsuit because Plaintiffs have alleged that one of Ohio’s non-profit entities is abusing its non-profit status, an allegation that can impact other Ohio non-profit entities.

For these and other reasons discussed in more detail below, all parties and the Court will be better served by transferring this case to the Southern District of Ohio, Eastern Division. In making this Motion, OCLC reserves any defenses that it may have against Plaintiffs’ claims.SkyRiver Technology Solutions, LLC et al v. OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. Filing: 16. Pages 1-2. Retrieved from Justia Docs on 18-Sep-2010. (Legal citations removed from text.)

The last point is probably the most interesting to the layperson watching this epic battle unfold. Pages 12 and 13 contain these statements:

The state of Ohio’s interest in adjudicating this matter within its borders also militates towards transferring this case. OCLC’s relevant policies and practices were developed and implemented in Ohio and the most important witnesses and evidence are located there.

Further, Plaintiffs have stated serious, albeit unfounded, allegations regarding OCLC’s non-profit status. Plaintiffs have stated that OCLC is “abusing its status as a tax exempt, non-profit entity and unfairly competes with for-profit companies, such as Innovative and SkyRiver, by using its non-profit status as leverage to monopolize the library services industry….” These baseless allegations could create serious implications for other Ohio non-profit entities, and Ohio courts have a greater interest in litigating these issues. While Ohio courts also have more experience applying Ohio’s laws, more importantly, they also have more experience with the routine customs and practices of non-profit entities in Ohio. In addition, the Ohio Attorney General has oversight over Ohio non-profit entities and would likewise have an interest in this lawsuit.

In contrast, California does not have an interest in litigating this action because none of the operative actions occurred in California. Though Plaintiffs asserted California state law claims, as explained below, Ohio courts will be equally skilled at applying and interpreting those laws.SkyRiver Technology Solutions, LLC et al v. OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. Filing: 16. Pages 12-13. Retrieved from Justia Docs on 18-Sep-2010. (Legal citations removed from text.)

The question of OCLC’s tax exempt status is one that bubbles up on occasion. It would seem like OCLC’s legal team is willing to take this head on.

Accompaying the motion to transfer is a declaration by Bruce Crocco, Vice President, Library Services for the Americas for OCLC, and this is a more interesting document. It goes into the history of OCLC — its founding in 1967 on the Ohio State University campus, how OCLC revolutionized the production of paper cards for card catalogs and the movement into online catalogs, and the evolution of the WorldCat brand name.

Earlier this week, the judge in the case set this schedule for hearing from the parties on the motion:

This matter is set for a hearing on October 29, 2010 on Defendant OCLC Online Computer Library Center’s motion to transfer venue. The Court HEREBY ORDERS that an opposition to the motion shall be filed by no later than September 27, 2010 and a reply brief shall be filed by no later than October 4, 2010.

If the Court determines that the matter is suitable for resolution without oral argument, it will so advise the parties in advance of the hearing date. If the parties wish to modify this schedule, they may submit for the Court’s consideration a stipulation and proposed order demonstrating good cause for any modification requested.

To refresh your memory, the lawsuit was filed on July 28, 2010, and was assigned to Judge Jeffrey S. White on August 6, 2010. On August 12th, Judge White set a Case Management Conference for January 14, 2011, and on August 13th lawyers for OCLC filed a notice with their intent to request a change of venue. Stay tuned for an update as the case moves on…

This year the ALCTS Forum at ALA Midwinter brought together three perspectives on massaging bibliographic data of various sorts in ways that use MARC, but where MARC is not the end goal. What do you get when you swirl MARC, ONIX, and various other formats of metadata in a big pot? Three projects: ONIX Enrichment at OCLC, the Open Library Project, and Google Book Search metadata.

Below is a summary of how these three projects are messin’ with metadata, as told by the Forum panelists. I also recommend reading Eric Hellman’s Google Exposes Book Metadata Privates at ALA Forum for his recollection and views of the same meeting.

ONIX Enrichment at OCLC

Renee Register, Global Product Manager for OCLC Cataloging and Metadata Services, was the first to present on the panel. Her talk looked at a new and evolving product at OCLC on the enhancement of ONIX records with WorldCat records, and vice versa. ¹

As libraries, Renee said “our instincts are collaborative” but “our data and workflow silos encourage redundancy and inhibit interoperability.” Beyond the obvious differences in metadata formats, the workflows of libraries differ dramatically from other metadata providers and consumers. In libraries (with the exception of CIP and brief on-order records) the major work of bibliographic production is performed at the end of the publication cycle and ends with the receipt of the published item. In the publisher supply chain, bibliographic data evolves over time, usually beginning months before publication and continuing to grow for months and years (sales information, etc.) after publication. Renee had a graphic showing the current flow of metadata around the broader bibliographic universe that highlighted the isolation of library activity relative to publisher, wholesaler, and retailer activity.

Diagram of the Process of Enhancing ONIX Records, from OCLC Services for the Publisher Supply Chain Webinar, August 2009

In her experience, Renee said that libraries need ways to enable our metadata to evolve over time and allow for publisher-created metadata to merge effectively with library-created metadata. The bibliographic record needs to be a “living, growing” thing throughout the lifecycle of a title and beyond. In concluding her remarks, she offered several resources to explore for further information: the OCLC/NISO study on Streamlining Book Metadata Workflow, the U.K. Research Information Network report on Creating Catalogues: Bibliographic Records in a Networked World, the Library of Congress Study of the North American MARC Records Marketplace, the Library of Congress CIP/ONIX Pilot Project, and the OCLC Publisher Supply Chain Website.

From MARC to Wiki with Open Library

Karen said right at the start that the Open Library project is different from most of what happens in libraries — it is “someone outside the library world making use of library data” — although the goal is arguably the same as others — “One web page for every book ever published.” As such, the Open Library isn’t a library catalog as librarians think of it in that it is not a representation of a libraries inventory. It has metadata for every book it can know about and a pointer to places where the book can be found, including all of the electronic books in Internet Archive (Open Content Alliance, Google Public Domain, etc.) as well as pointers back to OCLC WorldCat. Karen’s role for the project is that of “Library Data Informant.” The Internet Archive decided that they needed someone who understood library data in order to try to use it. From Karen’s perspective, she is trying to be a resource for project but not give them any guidance on how to implement the service. She is curious to see what the project would do when bibliographic data is viewed from a non-librarian perspective. If they have questions, or if they have assumptions about data that are wrong, then she intervenes.

Karen went on to briefly describe the Open Library system. Open Library doesn’t have records; rather, it has field types and data properties. In this way, it uses semantic web concepts. “Author” is a type, “Author birthdate” is another type, and so forth. There are no set field types, so if the project gets data from source for which a type doesn’t yet exist, it can create a new one. Each type can have data properties such as string, boolean, text, link, etc. Nothing is required and everything is repeatable. Everything — types, properties, and values — gets a URI (a URI is an identifier like a URL, but conceptually a superset of the universe of URLs). Titles, authors, subjects, author birthdates, and so on have URIs. Lastly, the underlying data structures are based on wiki principles: all edits are saved and viewable, anyone can edit any value, anyone can add new types or properties, anyone can develop their own displays, etc.

The data that is now in Open Library came from a variety of sources. They started with a copy of books from the Library of Congress, and continue to receive the weekly updates. They performed a crawl of Amazon’s book data. They have gotten some from publishers, libraries, and individual users. The last is perhaps the most interesting because it is mainly people outside the western world who are otherwise having trouble getting their works recognized.

Problems, Issues, Challenges, and Opportunities with the Data

Names -

“These library forms of names? Honestly no one but us can stand them.” Even something as simple as the form of last-name-comma-first-name is troublesome. No one else uses this form of the name: Amazon, Wikipedia, etc. In processing these, any information between parenthesis has been deleted, birth and death dates move into separate field types.

Titles -

In working with the Open Library developers, this is one place that Karen tried insisting on applying a library practice: knowing the initial article. For us, this is important for sorting books in alphabetical order. The developer response — why do we have to sort in alphabetical order? “Where else but library catalogs to we see things sorted in alphabetical order? Not in Google, not in Amazon, not anywhere. Alphabetical order is not in the mindset anymore.” They also found that the title might include extraneous data. Amazon, for instance, appends the series title in parenthesis to the main title. This is a demonstration of how other communities are not as concerned about strongly typing and separating information into fields. Amazon, of course, has reasons for series information into the main title: it helps sell books.

Product dimensions -

Publishers and distributors need to know characteristics of an item such as height, width, depth, and weight; they, of course, need to put it in a box and ship it. Libraries, concerned about placing the item on the shelf, record just height. Recording pagination is different, too: libraries use odd notations “ill. (some col)” and “xv, 200p.” versus simply “200 pages.”

Birthdates -

Librarians use birthdates to distinguish names; if there is no need to distinguish a name, birth and death dates are not added. Someone looking at this from the outside would ask ‘Why don’t all authors have birth and death dates?’ This can be useful information for viewing the context of an item, not just to distinguish author names. Open Library ran author names against Wikipedia to pick up not only birth and death years, but also the actual dates.

Subject headings -

Open Library using Library of Congress Subject Headings was out of the question. In processing the data, the Open Library developers just broke them apart into segments and used them. But because they were able to do data mining on the subject field types, they did find statistical relationships between the disassembled precoordinated headings and were able to present those to the user.

The View of the Data -

Rather than a traditional library view of long lists of author-title, the Open Library (in its next version coming in February) will have several different views into the mass of data: Authors; Books (what we would call FRBR ‘manifestations’); Works; Subjects; and eventually places, publishers, etc. For example, when searching for an author one would get the author page. On it would be all of the works from the author as well as other biographical information. It looks similar to a WorldCat identities page, except it is the actual user interface built into the system. Similarly, every work will have a page, and at the bottom of it one will see all of the editions of the work. Also, each subject will have a page, and one will see a list of works with that subject as well as authors who write on that subject. As Karen said, “The subject itself becomes an object of interest in the database, not just something that is just tacked on to the bottom of the library record.”

Data mining -

With the data in this format, it is possible to perform data mining actions against it. For instance, simple data mining such as country of publication, popular places that appear, etc. When they had the problem of author names — knowing when to reverse surname and forname — they ran the names against Amazon and Wikipedia and retained the ones where they found the order of the entry was the same. The Open Library developers are also experimenting with data mining to find publisher names. Publisher names, of course, vary dramatically, but by using ISBN prefixes they can pull together related items into a “publisher” view.

Karen suggested watching the Edward Betts’s site, one of the developers of the Open Library project with an eye on the data mining aspects. She said it is fun to look at our data when it can be viewed from this different point-of-view. She also said to watch out for a new version of the Open Library website coming in February.

Google Book Search Metadata

On the input side, Google is getting bibliographic metadata from over 100 sources in a variety of formats. MARC records are coming from libraries, union catalogs, commercial providers (OCLC), publishers/retails (one publisher supplies records in MARC format). Google also gets ONIX records from commercial providers (such as Ingram and Bowker), publishers, and retailers. Google is especially interested in data from non-U.S. retailers because it is a source of information about books published outside the United States; it helps facilitate discovery of items that they may not otherwise encounter in the publisher and library programs. Google also receives records in a variety of “idiosyncratic formats” — for example, publisher-contributed metadata (via the Publisher Partner Program); information associating books with jacket images; name authority records (from LC); reviews; popularity signals (sales data as well as anonymized circulation data from some library partners, useful for feeding into the relevancy ranking algorithm); and internally-generated metadata (for instance, whether a book is commercially available or not). Google processes all of this information to come up with a single record that describes a book. At this point they have over 800 million bibliographic records and one trillion bits of information in those records.

All of these records from all of these sources are processed and remixed with Google’s parsing algorithms about twice a week. The first step is to transform the incoming records into a “less verbose format” for storage and processing. It is a SQL-like structure that allows elements of the metadata to be queried. Records are then parsed to extract specific bits of information, transform the bits as necessary, and write the information to an internal “resolved records” data structure (a subset of the data coming from the input formats). In the presentation, Kurt had examples of how making inferences from data coming from both MARC and ONIX can be troublesome. Parsing also involves extracting “bibkeys” from the records to aid in matching across sources of data. Four types of identifiers are extracted from bibliographic records: OCLC numbers, LCCNs, ISBNs, and ISSNs. They provide usually useful signals when matching bibliographic and help with assertions that two records describe the same manifestation. Google also tries to parse item data when present in records representing multi-volume works, enumeration and chronology. They will also treat barcode as a form of a “bibkey” if they get it from a library. The parsing algorithm will also split records containing multiple ISBNs representing different product forms (e.g. hardback, paperback, etc.).

With all of this data parsed into records, Google starts its clustering process where records are examined and attached to each other. Bibkeys provide significant evidence for relating records to each other, but bibkeys are not always present in a record (non-U.S. records and older records frequently contain no bibkeys). The algorithms then fall back on text similarity matching using title, subtitle, contributor and other fields such as publisher and publication year. The results are clusters of records representing the same manifestation. An algorithm then attempts to derive the “best-of” record for a single cluster from all of the parsed input records. This is done in a field-by-field voting process based on the trustworthiness of individual fields from record sources.

Kurt went into some of the challenges facing the team building the clustering and best-of record creation algorithms. For instance, in dealing with multivolume works they know of 5 numbering schemas with 3 number types in 15 different languages. Enumeration is now showing in the public display, but the development team is still working with unparsable item data due to inconsistent cataloging practices between institutions…and sometimes inconsistencies within an institution. Another problem is non-unique identifiers. In the current data set ISBN 7899964709 is shared by 75 books and ISBN 7533305353 is associated with 1413 books. There are also poor quality or “junk records”. Kurt said his favorite was “The Mosaic Navigator” by Sigmund Freud published in 1939. These are hard to identify with an algorithm, and they rely on reports of problems that enable the developers to go in and “kill” the troublesome record. Another example is a book by Virginia Woolf where the incoming record had conflicting information; it had two 260 fields that contained different dates (1961, correct, and 1900) with fixed field information that strongly suggested that 1900 was the single date of publication. When the data problem is systematic, they can identify it and compensate for it. Kurt’s example for this case was “The United States Since 1945″ published in 1899. This one was highlighted in Geoffrey Nunberg’s criticism of Google Books metadata. In this case, there was a source of metadata from Brazil that when they didn’t know the date of publication would use 1899. When Google went back and looked at the date distribution of books there was a huge spike in 1899. Once Google knew about it they were able to go in and kill that information from that source of records. ³

In closing, Kurt said that Google is committed to engaging with the library community on improving metadata and metadata processing.

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.niso.org/publications/white_papers/Stream lineBookMetadataWorkflowWhitePaper.pdf to http://www.niso.org/publications/white_papers/StreamlineBookMetadataWorkflowWhitePaper.pdf on January 19th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://www.oclc.org/speakers/bios/register_renee.htm on February 11th, 2011.

Footnotes

1. For those not familiar with ONIX, it is a suite of standards promulgated by EDItEUR for the interchange of information on books and serial publications. It is primarily used as the communication channel between the publishing industry through distribution chains to retail establishments.
2. By the way, it seems like BISAC is an acronym for “Book Industry Systems Advisory Committee”, the former name of the Book Industry Study Group.
3. A side note: Google isn’t the only one tripped up by this. If one searches for the ISBN of the item, 0195038487, you get to more than one site that has the same incorrect publication date. At least Google is attempting to clean up the data!

Jay Jordan’s remarks during the OCLC Update Breakfast and the discussion at the Developers Network table at that breakfast generated further fuel for my previous philosophical thoughts on “Who is a member of the OCLC Cooperative?” In the context of things like Developer Network API keys¹ this question of who is a member of OCLC the cooperative and who is not meets the on-or-off, ones-and-zeros nature of computers. One can’t “kinda” have an API Key unless that capability is programmed into the software (or a human chooses to override the established rules for who has a key).

The discussion around the table after Jay’s remarks tested some of the “edge cases” to the established hard-and fast rules. OCLC Governance, at least as I understand it, surrounds institutions who are members of the OCLC Cooperative. By implication, the benefits (and also the responsibilities) of membership in the OCLC Cooperative transfer to staff employed at those member institutions. People who work for governing (institutional) members of OCLC can get Developer Network API keys to create services for their library. And except for the fuzzy notion explored previously whether individuals are members of the OCLC cooperative, this all seems pretty clear.

But what about individuals in the employment of a library that is not a member of OCLC that want to create applications that benefit library users. Further, following Jay Jordan’s definition of partners OCLC wants to work with (as expressed during the OCLC Record Use Policy Council Update), that non-institutional-member individual can return value back to the cooperative (by contributing the ideas to the Developer’s Network Showcase, by contributing working code to a software repository, etc.). Isn’t that returning value to the cooperative? Should this person be granted a Developer Network API key even though their institution is not a member? Can we conceive of a process and guidelines by which this could happen? (Has it perhaps already happened in the human-created fuzz of OCLC-the-stewards overriding the established rules?)

I’ll state here that I would support the creating of a process by which anyone — from a member library or a consultant doing work on behalf of a member library or a 12-year-old kid) can request a Developer Network API key. What is needed is a clear understanding that those who get such keys gain some kind of adjunct membership in the OCLC-the-cooperative, and as so are expected to return value to the cooperative through their work with the API key. (There would need to be transparency from OCLC-the-steward on who in this category is getting keys, who is not, and for what reasons — at least in summary.) The area of consultants or other agents doing work on behalf of a library is an area that would need further exploration. I would offer that it is okay for one such agent to use an API key to help a particular client, but I also agree with Jay that it is not okay for that same agent to use that key to derive revenue from helping non-OCLC members with the same key. The latter fails the renumeration-back-to-the-cooperative test (either financial or intangible benefit) that Jay remarked on during Saturday’s Record Use Council session and one that the Record Use Council seems to be struggling with.

These are tough but interesting issues. We’ve left the days where the benefits of membership were tied to the delivery of shelf-ready cards and dedicated terminals for online original and copy cataloging. OCLC seems to be transforming itself from a library-used service to a world-used service. I give OCLC-the-stewards credit for listening to OCLC-the-membership about appropriate ways to make use of the shared resource that is WorldCat, and credit to OCLC-the-membership for pushing OCLC-the-stewards into creating ways to expand access to that shared resource.

The text was modified to update a link from http://dltj.org/article/alamw10-oclc-record-use to http://dltj.org/article/alamw10-record-use-policy/ on December 31st, 2010.

The text was modified to update a link from http://dltj.org/article/alamw10-oclc-record-use to http://dltj.org/article/alamw10-record-use-policy/ on December 31st, 2010.

Footnotes

1. “API” is an acronym for Application Programming Interface. In summary, an API is the set of rules by which one program can task another program for data or to perform a service. An “API key” is the mechanism through which a requesting application establishes the right to be able to use data and services of another application. In this context, the holder of an OCLC Developer Network API key can access the wealth of data and services being offered by OCLC.