Last week, The Guardian newspaper in the U.K. published a story on the proposed OCLC record use policy and the controversy surrounding the proposal. As the first story on the controversy to reach the mainstream press, it spawned a flurry of discussion in the blogosphere.

Yesterday The Guardian posted …

At ALA Midwinter, ALCTS sponsored a panel discussion about sharing library-created data inside and outside the library community, with a particular focus on cataloging data. I was honored to be ask to speak on the topic from the perspective of a consortial office. This is the second and final post …

At ALA Midwinter, ALCTS sponsored a panel discussion about sharing library-created data inside and outside the library community, with a particular focus on cataloging data. I was honored to be ask to speak on the topic from the perspective of a consortial office. This is the first in a series …

I'm sitting in the Denver airport (and quite pleased to have remembered my note to myself about tunneling through ad-laden interception proxy) with lots to think and blog about after this year's Midwinter meeting. It was a very productive meeting, but I am still in "travel mode" so I thought …

United Airlines, along with many other carriers, has instituted a policy of charging for checked luggage. For United, the first bag is $15 and subsequent bags are $25 each. If you check-in for your flight online between now and January 31st, however, you can save $3 on each the first …

Dr. Michael Wesch, a cultural anthropologist dubbed “the explainer” by Wired magazine, will give the keynote address “Mediated Culture: Tales from New Guinea, New Media and New Experiments in Learning” on Monday, March 2, at the University System of Ohio’s Learning, Libraries & Technology Conference 2009.

Using examples from fieldwork …

A non-librarian colleague forwarded a link to an essay by Mark Pesce called The Alexandrine Dilemma. From the context of one of the comments, I think it might have been the text of a keynote given at New Librarians Symposium in Australia last month. It is a thought-provoking piece that …

As part of our winter holiday activities, our family has been busily clearing out the basement to set up a play area for the kids. In doing so, we created a stack of old electronics -- monitors, printers, stereo receivers, and such -- that are of questionable working condition and worth. In …

I try to do the "right thing" in postings on DLTJ. In the context of this discussion "right" is an attempt to be progressive: including hCalendar microformat markupfor postings that include mention of events. The latest example of this was yesterday's posting of the Learning, Libraries and Technology Conference …

Why does Google do what it does? A report by the faberNovel management consulting firm describes Google's "key success factors" and how it goes about achieving them. The report talks about "Google as platform" and goes on to describe how it makes money serving the network effects of that platform …

Earlier this week, LITA announced its unconference event: LITACamp. The meeting is scheduled for May 7-8, 2009 at the OCLC Conference Center in Dublin, Ohio. (Map of conference center and surrounding facilities.)

For those that don't know, the unconference meeting format is one where the topics are picked by those …

The Google Book Search Settlement Agreement includes two points where library consortia come into play: discounts for institutional subscriptions and receipt of digitized books by members of a consortium. The Google Book Search Settlement calls such consortia "Institutional Consortia" and the definition of that phrase and the places in the …

On Friday, OhioLINK released an addendum to its inquiry for a comprehensive discovery layer that answers questions submitted from potential bidders. This is a distilled version of that addendum -- posted here with the desire to reach others that may be interested in submitting a bid. Please note that this posting …

The Associate Press reported on Monday evening that the court has given preliminary approval to the settlement negotiated between Google and book authors and publishers over the use of copyrighted materials in the Google Book Search Library project. In giving preliminary approval, Judge John E. Sprizzo authorized the publication of …

Coming out of the face-to-face meeting in Rutgers earlier this month, the OLE Project has posted a number of announcements for upcoming events. The first is a webcast on Nov. 20, 2008 from 3:00pm to 4:30pm Eastern Standard Time, US, free of charge and open to anyone. The …

One of the very relevant aspects of the Google Book Search Settlement Agreement to libraries is the provision that allows for free public access to the full text of books in public and academic libraries. The Notice of Settlement summary says: "Google will provide, on request, 'Public Access' licenses for …

Update

On the Code4Lib IRC channel Thursday afternoon, Roy Tennant, Senior Program Officer at OCLC Programs and Research, said that there is absolutely no connection between the policy change and the Google Book Search settlement.

The Original Post

Two big and seemingly unrelated things came to light on Tuesday of …

Beyond the public pronouncements of the Google Books Settlement ((See the bottom of this earlier post on DLTJ for a complete list)) are the documents that form the meat of the agreement. The full text of the proposed settlement agreement is 141 pages plus another 162 pages of appendices. The …