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3 July 2007
OCLC consumes the remainder of Pica
Posted by Paul Miller at July 3, 2007 04:05 PM
In a press release issued today, OCLC announces that it has subsumed the remainder of European ILS vendor, Pica.
“OCLC acquired 60 percent of the Pica organization in 2000. Today’s purchase of the remaining 40 percent in OCLC PICA completes the acquisition of shares. Rein van Charldorp will remain in his current position as Managing Director of OCLC PICA.”
OCLC, famously proud of its nonprofit credentials (and tax breaks), has struggled to balance its traditional role as a predominantly US-focussed membership cooperative with a desire to generate revenue as an increasingly ambitious provider of global online services.
Dublin's ability to hold the partially owned Pica at arms length has provided a useful Chinese wall until now; Pica did the 'dirty' commercial business and channelled OCLC's absorption of Sisis, Fretwell Downing, etc, whilst OCLC could argue that the cooperative itself did not engage directly in such activities.
That is no longer the case, and we can only assume that OCLC sees sufficient value in that last 40% of Pica for it to be worth risking the ire of librarians such as those at ALA last week who seemed increasingly prepared to question the relationship between OCLC's non-profit and community good works on the one hand and its less philanthropic attitudes to control of data and increasingly commercial practices on the other.
In Europe, too, we may see existing customers of 'European' Pica looking askance at the 'American' company to which they now pay money...
The Press Release quotes OCLC President Jay Jordan as saying;
“Completing the acquisition of OCLC PICA will help facilitate the deployment of OCLC library services worldwide... This is the next logical step in a process that has fostered tremendous cooperation between Stichting Pica and OCLC over the past seven years. OCLC and OCLC PICA will be better positioned to deliver a network of integrated global, regional and local services to libraries worldwide.”
OCLC has great reach, and a real opportunity to transform the way in which libraries and their resources are exposed online. Much of that activity, to date, has been far less open than it could and should be. Does assuming total control over the least open part of the OCLC family suggest that the wayward child is to be forcefully turned toward openness, or are we peering over the edge at an abyss that seeks to swallow all of us and our data, only to sell it back to us a piece at a time?
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