Some Rights Reserved: The Environment for Data Sharing

Some Rights Reserved: The Environment for Data Sharing

Karen Calhoun, Vice President,OCLC WorldCat and Metadata Services

13 August 2008

Libraries andWeb 2.0

Discussion Group

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Context for Data Sharing: A “Seamless” User Workflow from Discovery to Delivery

Context for Data Sharing: A “Seamless” User Workflow from Discovery to Delivery

Library user studies suggest that users expect finding and getting information they want, when and where they want it, to be easy and convenient.

These users’ tolerance for barriers to easy andconvenient discovery and delivery is limited.

“A colleague … sang the praises of the digital world to us. He can now, he told us, get direct access to information … His enthusiasm had screened out an enormous array of people, organizations, and institutions involved in this “direct” touch. The university, the library, publishers, editors, referees, authors, the computer and infrastructure designers, the cataloguers and library collection managers, right down to the students working their way through college by [working in the library] had no place in his story.”

Brown, John Seely, and Paul Duguid. 2000. The social life of information. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

3

The (invisible) cloud of

complexity onthe global

metadata network

The (invisible) cloud of

complexity onthe global

metadata network

The Invisible Cloud of ComplexityThe Invisible Cloud of Complexity

TextPrintLicensedDigitalArchival

DataImagesSoundVideoMultimediaObjectsMore

Expectation:Easily Find It AND Easily

Get It

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Content (and Metadata) Are NOT FreeContent (and Metadata) Are NOT Free

“The creation of content … can be a costly proposition, typically in proportion to its worth. One of the biggest challenges facing aggregators of all types is how to support the ecosystem of collectively valuable content that information users no longer individually value.”

Outsell, Inc. “Search, Aggregation and Syndication: 2007 Market Forecast andTrends Report,” p. 41.

5

OCLC’s critics …

“OCLC is trapped in an increasingly inappropriatebusiness model—a model based upon the value in thecreation and control of data. Increasingly, in this interconnected world, the value is in making dataopenly available and building services upon it.  Whenpeople get charged for one thing, but gain value from another, they will become increasingly uncomfortablewith the old status quo.”

Wallis, Richard. “OCLC and ROI.” Panlibus Blog (Talis),December 11, 2007. http://blogs.talis.com/panlibus/archives/2007/12/oclc_and_roi.php

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Then and Now: A Time of TransitionThen and Now: A Time of Transition

THEN:

“A model based upon the value in the creation and control of data”

NOW:

A model based upon the value in the exchange and linking of data

Janus, guardian of doors and gates

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Environmental ScanEnvironmental Scan

• Evaluated policies and licenses related to use and re-use of metadata and content

• Commercial and non-commercial data providers

• Prevailing opinion in the blogosphere:

• “Data should be free and open”

• Reality:

• Nearly everybody has terms and conditions that impose some degree of restriction on data re-use and transfer

NO RIGHTS RESERVED SOME RIGHTS RESERVED ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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Sample Terms and Conditions for Metadata/Content (1) Sample Terms and Conditions for Metadata/Content (1)

• Amazon – Amazon Associates Web Service

• Purpose of data access is to drive traffic to Amazon; any user of data must link back to Amazon

• ProQuest MARC Records

• For use by purchasing institutions only; loading records into shared cataloging system not permitted

• All Media Guide/AllMusic

• For use online only and solely for personal, non-commercial use; all other use and transfer prohibited

• Twitter

• Twitter data can be shared on other Web sites; pages on other Websites that display Twitter data must link back to Twitter

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Sample Terms and Conditions for Metadata/Content (2) Sample Terms and Conditions for Metadata/Content (2)

• Wikipedia

• GNU Free Documentation License makes documents free to copy, distribute, modify, for commercial or non-commercial use; requires attribution of original author’s/publisher’s work

• OCLC

• Free non-commercial use of WorldCat.org data; conditions for data re-use and transfer; non-library uses/transfers require agreements between OCLC and user/transferee(s)

• Sherpa/RoMEO

• Free to interested parties with conditions for re-use; re-use governed by Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License; RoMEO logo must appear on public pages

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Creative Commons Licensing: Some Rights ReservedCreative Commons Licensing: Some Rights Reserved

Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States

You are free:to Share, to copy, distribute, display, and perform the workto Remix, to make derivative works

Under the following conditions:Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the authoror licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your useof the work).

Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes.

Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, your may distributethe resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

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Financial Viability: Balance Between Where the Money Comes From and Where the Money Goes

Financial Viability: Balance Between Where the Money Comes From and Where the Money Goes

Public Sector – “Government goods at zero price”

• The fact that goods/services are furnished free of charge does NOT mean that the cost (inc. the opportunity cost) of producing them is zero

Social Sector – Non-profits – 3 principal categories (US):

• Public charity (direct or indirect income from general public or government)

• Private foundation (most income from investments or endowments—used to provide grants)

• Private operating foundation (devotes most earnings and assets to pursuit of its public purposes, rather than providing grants)

Private Sector – Profit is the reward for owners who incur the risks of going into business – profit is a cost of production

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The Strange Economics of Web Start-UpsThe Strange Economics of Web Start-Ups

From Ten Rules for Web Startups:

“The most likely end game if you’re successful is acquisition”

----------------------------------------

•Unprecedented rise in venture capital investment

•"We'll monetize when the time is right. We raised enough money [$22 million] to get to that point through experimentation.“—Jack Dorsey

•Are Web startups “built to flip” or “built to last”?

Evan Williams at Twitter OfficeDecember 2007

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Williams_(blogger)

http://money.cnn.com/2008/08/06/technology/true_meaning_of_twitter_lashinsky.fortune

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The Three Sectors of an Economy in a Market System: And One More?

The Three Sectors of an Economy in a Market System: And One More?

Source of

Income

COLLECTED

EARNED

PurposeMAXIMIZESOCIAL BENEFIT

MAXIMIZEBENEFIT TOOWNERS

Government

PUBLIC SECTOR

Non-Profits/NGOs/HE

SOCIAL SECTOR

For-Profits

PRIVATE SECTOR

Web Start-Ups

Sherpa/RoMEO

Wiki-pedia

OCLC

Amazon

Pro-Quest

Twitter

AllMusic

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Perspective on “Open Data” Correlated With …Perspective on “Open Data” Correlated With …

• Economic self interest

• How financial viability is achieved

• What is the degree of dependence on revenue from content, metadata, or content/metadata-based services?

• Amazon – majority of revenue from online sales

• Google – majority of revenue from ads

• Wikipedia – almost all revenue from donations to Wikimedia Foundation

• Sherpa/RoMEO – public and social sector funding

• OCLC – a cooperative – relies on recovering costs of services based on member-contributed metadata

• All Media Guide/AllMusic – revenue comes from licensing the content and metadata it creates to others

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A Landscape Rich in “Lessons in Contradiction”A Landscape Rich in “Lessons in Contradiction”

Other people’s data should be free

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Summary – The Landscape for Data SharingSummary – The Landscape for Data Sharing

•Information seekers expect seamless connections between metadata and content, regardless of source

•The information industry is being driven to a data sharing model based upon the value in the exchange and linking of data

•Nearly all organizations have terms and conditions for data sharing (documented or not)

•There is no such thing as “free” content or metadata

•There is no such thing as “free” content or metadata services

•“Where the money comes from” directly impacts data sharing policy

•This is a painful transition, esp. for those organizations directly dependent on revenue from content, metadata, or content/metadata-based services

•The present landscape is rich in contradictions

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What’s Right for Libraries?What’s Right for Libraries?

•Help them lower their operational costs for data creation and management

•Help them expose their data and collections in as many places as possible on the Web

•Drive traffic from the Web to libraries

•Drop the rhetoric

•Partners not adversaries

La Grande bibliothèque nationale du Québec Attribution: Uploaded on May 8, 2005by Master Long http://flickr.com/photos/long/12987307/

Thank You Merci GraciasShukran Xie xie Danke Spasibo

Thank You Merci GraciasShukran Xie xie Danke Spasibo

Karen Calhoun

calhounk@oclc.orghttp://community.oclc.org/metalogue