Ti Point Tork

Good one, National Library!

My friend Aaron Swartz writes about the increasingly-evil OCLC:

Not satisfied with controlling the world’s largest source of book information, it wants to take over all the smaller ones as well. It’s now demanding that every library that uses WorldCat give control over all its catalog records to OCLC. It literally is asking libraries to put an OCLC policy notice on every book record in their catalog. It wants to own every library.

I’m on LIAC (a commission that advises the Minister for the National Library on matters digital), so I asked the CEO of the National Library of New Zealand, Penny Carnaby about this. She replied:

We signed an all of country agreement with OCLC last year with the proviso that NZ would keep its own IP, i.e. OCLC does not own the new Zealand’s National Union Catalogue the NLNZ does and therefore the crown on behalf of the people of NZ. I understand that we are one of the few countries to do this resisting the push from OCLC.

Great job, NLNZ! Amid increasing bad news for the digital freedom of NZ it’s great to see we’re ahead of the curve in keeping some things open.