2020-10-23 - Consortia SIG Notes

Link to recording

• Date

23 Oct 2020

Announcements

Attendees

• Lloyd Chittenden
• Sebastian Hammer
• Noah Brubaker
• Steve Walker
• Brooks Travis
• Rose Nelson
• Paula Sullenger
• Martina Tumulla
• Peter Sbrzesny
• Lucy Harrison
• Rick Burke
• Jill Morris
• Kirsten Leonard
• Marie Waltz
• Nicole Becwar
• Kyle Banerjee

Goals

• Draft vision document for an Open Source Bib Utility

Notes

We had a joint meeting with people from the International Coalition of Library Consortia.  Lucy Harrison gave a summary of what has been happening at ICOLC.  They have been having very similar conversations about the possibility of an open source bib utility.  They had a task force thinking about this topic for about a year.  They have had various concerns about OCLC.  They did a survey of ICOLC members to find out their issues with OCLC, and they met with OCLC at the January 2020 ALA Midwinter.  And they had a couple of folks from OCLC come and we came them and initial preview of their concerns including: pricing, quality of database, standards and interoperability, and general marketplace and culture concerns.  They thought OCLC's response was condescending.  They mostly dismissed the questions rather than answer them.  ICOLC does not think OCLC will make any changes based on this critique.  So they are starting to think about what they will do if OCLC does nothing.

Lucy shared their draft working document on this subject.  Including four areas of recommendations. 

• They complain that the pricing is not transparent, customers are required to buy things that they don't want, and they appear to be commercializing things unnecessarily.  For example, in 2017 EZ proxy cost GALILEO $30,000 a year.  Now OCLC wants $400,000 for EZ proxy for hosted.  Even non-hosted would be $200,000 a year.
• They are not happy about WorldCat database quality.  As fewer libraries can afford to keep their holdings in WorldCat, the value decreases.  They recommend that WorldCat should be open source so everyone can maintain holdings and see everyone's holdings.  It could be paid for with advertising. 
• There is a problem with standards interoperability.  WMS does not work with other resource sharing systems.  There should also be interoperability between resource sharing systems.  Holdings information should be exchanged, and there should be standard authentication protocols.
• The fourth area is marketplace and culture.  They are not living up to their cooperative values.  They are trying to be a vendor and a non-profit, but they are acting much more like a vendor than a non-profit cooperative.  Their CEO salary is now $1.67 million.  It was $260,000 in 2001.  They pay board members up to $80,000 annually.  Board members remain for 10 or 12 years.  They should separate cooperative activities from vendor activities.  Provide clear accounting of the actual costs of supporting each program and services.  Especially the core services on with they were founded.  Stop compensating board members.  Of 14 board members, 8 are appointed by the board themselves.  Only 6 are elected by members.  Elected members often only stay 4 years, while those appointed by the board often stay 12 years.  So the board is self-perpetuating.

They have considered alternatives to OCLC assuming they will not make any changes.  They have looked at now other countries do these same things.  There are already open source products that compete with OCLC such as Gold Rush.  There are others that are being developed to compete with the OCLC core areas.  Jisc in the UK is moving away from OCLC to a locally developed system.

Rick points out that ICOLC is not a legal entity.  It is an informal organization of Library Consortia.  It has no legal standing.  ICOLC has a virtual meeting of European members next month where they will talk about this.  Rick says that he has heard from OCLC that these things are issues for North American libraries, not international.  They hope to find out at the European meeting if that is correct.  OCLC does not operate as a non-profit outside of the US. 

There is no reason that we can't follow the example of OA2020.  There is enough money in the system that we can convert to another approach.  The ICOLC report makes it clear that there is enough money in the system.

Rick asks if people think there is an issue with EBSCO's involvement with FOLIO?  He doesn't think so, but if we are worried about OCLC acting like a vendor, then we go off an do something with another vendor.  Some librarians might think we are just in bed with EBSCO instead, so what's the difference?

Lloyd says that we have both been talking about the same problems.  However we didn't know the detail about how OCLC was spending it's money, we just knew it cost too much.  The Consortia SIG is currently considering placing this project in the ReShare sphere, not FOLIO.  ReShare is not as connected to EBSCO as FOLIO is.  But even with FOLIO, EBSCO has not been heavy handed at all.  They are putting their funding toward developing the parts of FOLIO that their subscribers need, but they are not pushing development otherwise.

Lucy says that they don't want to recreate OCLC.  We want to create tools that people need.  There are other ways that it could function.

Discussion items

Action items

• Invite Theodor Tolstoy to next meeting Lloyd Chittenden
• Invite Kristin Wilson Lloyd Chittenden