Once you have used OCLC’s online systems from November 2nd 2008 you will have implicitly agreed to their new record use policy – whatever that is.

This is the gist of an email, from Patrick Cates, circulating on the AUTOCAT mailing list that has since been forwarded to NGC4LIB and is now being discussed more widely.

On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 5:08 PM,  <Cates@gts.edu> wrote:
We received the following message from NYLINK:
At the OCLC Members Council Meeting last week a revised Policy for the Use of WorldCat Records was briefly described
The new policy was previously approved by the OCLC Board of Trustees and will be issued on November 2, 2008 at which time it will become effective.
It is my understanding from the presentations at Members Council that access and use of OCLC online systems by any institution after November 2nd will be taken as acceptance of the new policy.
We will be carefully reviewing this policy along with legal counsel once it is released and I urge you to do the same prior to using the OCLC online system on or after November 2, 2008."
Does anyone know what this is about?  I’d like to know what I’m agreeing to before I agree to it.  The fact is that most of us aren’t going to stop using OCLC next Monday morning to rush to a lawyer, so I guess we’re all agreeing to it.  Let’s hope the change is a good one because there doesn’t appear to be a damn thing we can do about it either way.  Way to treat your members OCLC!

Great that OCLC are reviewing their record use policy [hopefully] relaxing some of the restrictions will benefit all libraries.  Let’s also hope all the the OCLC Membership [retrospectively] agrees.   

One can’t help wondering why OCLC feel the need to keep this secret from their membership until it has happened – maybe there is some fear that it won’t attract universal praise.

Update:

Karen Calhoun, Vice President, WorldCat and Metadata Services, has responded as reported in the comments to a Tim Spalding posting on the Thingology Blog

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