Free Library Data?

As library materials are catalogued by public organisations and librarians are active promoters of the principles of open access, one would expect library data to be freely available to all. Yet this is not the case. Why then do so few libraries make their data available free of charge? This article...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Raymond Bérard
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: openjournals.nl 2011-02-01
Series:Liber Quarterly: The Journal of European Research Libraries
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.liberquarterly.eu/articles/10.18352/lq.7997/
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spelling doaj-0e499de57aea4a2091f3738f896a9f862021-10-02T19:15:50Zengopenjournals.nlLiber Quarterly: The Journal of European Research Libraries2213-056X2011-02-01203-432133110.18352/lq.79977952Free Library Data?Raymond Bérard0N/aAs library materials are catalogued by public organisations and librarians are active promoters of the principles of open access, one would expect library data to be freely available to all. Yet this is not the case. Why then do so few libraries make their data available free of charge? This article reviews the diverging, often restrictive policies and the interests (commercial and strategic) at stake. It presents a panorama of the current situation, the actors and interests involved. It addresses the legal aspects and the obstacles and it shows how data produced by libraries can be made freely available to other knowledge organisations while retaining and developing the collective organisations and services built by library networks over the years. The aim of the ‘free the data movement’ is to share and reuse bibliographic data in a new ecosystem where all the actors are involved, both users and providers, not just librarians.http://www.liberquarterly.eu/articles/10.18352/lq.7997/bibliographic recordslibrary dataopen accessWorldCatOCLC
collection DOAJ
language English
format Article
sources DOAJ
author Raymond Bérard
spellingShingle Raymond Bérard
Free Library Data?
Liber Quarterly: The Journal of European Research Libraries
bibliographic records
library data
open access
WorldCat
OCLC
author_facet Raymond Bérard
author_sort Raymond Bérard
title Free Library Data?
title_short Free Library Data?
title_full Free Library Data?
title_fullStr Free Library Data?
title_full_unstemmed Free Library Data?
title_sort free library data?
publisher openjournals.nl
series Liber Quarterly: The Journal of European Research Libraries
issn 2213-056X
publishDate 2011-02-01
description As library materials are catalogued by public organisations and librarians are active promoters of the principles of open access, one would expect library data to be freely available to all. Yet this is not the case. Why then do so few libraries make their data available free of charge? This article reviews the diverging, often restrictive policies and the interests (commercial and strategic) at stake. It presents a panorama of the current situation, the actors and interests involved. It addresses the legal aspects and the obstacles and it shows how data produced by libraries can be made freely available to other knowledge organisations while retaining and developing the collective organisations and services built by library networks over the years. The aim of the ‘free the data movement’ is to share and reuse bibliographic data in a new ecosystem where all the actors are involved, both users and providers, not just librarians.
topic bibliographic records
library data
open access
WorldCat
OCLC
url http://www.liberquarterly.eu/articles/10.18352/lq.7997/
work_keys_str_mv AT raymondberard freelibrarydata
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