The Longest Now

Aaron Swartz writes a double–broadside; a petition against the “OCLC powergrab” is launched.  Phoebe is more generous to the Cooperative, and Jonathan Rochkind sums it up with comprehensive eloquence, explaining how he doesn’t actually want to destroy OCLC.

If you care about libraries, and especially if you care about archiving, catalogs, and community-generated data, this story is worth your attention.

I myself think the underlying issues are pretty black and white; many things that start as a collective soon stop being that way in anything but name and formal process, and OCLC’s processes aren’t particularly exciting to me as a community member.

I’d like to see what the new open library blog has to say about this.