There's been a dust-up lately over a policy change announced by the Online Computer Library Center for the terms of use for WorldCat, the union catalog of bibliographic records contributed by OCLC member libraries.
It's disputed whether OCLC provides OA to the full WorldCat data: Open Library's Aaron Swartz says it doesn't; OCLC's Karen Calhoun says it does.
The new Policy for Use and Transfer of WorldCat Records supercedes the earlier Guidelines for the Use and Transfer of OCLC-Derived Records, last revised in the pre-Web era. (Karen Coyle points out that the Guidelines were themselves a response to an earlier attempt by OCLC to claim copyright in WorldCat records. The new policy avoids the term copyright, but does make an oblique reference to "the intellectual property rights [in WorldCat or WorldCat Records]".) The new policy is slated to go into effect in February 2009.
Aside from the name change (from "guidelines" to "policy", implying enforceability), key points of the new policy include prohibitions on commercial or "unreasonable" use. (An earlier version of the policy also required attribution to OCLC in each record re-used; in the latest version, the attribution requirement has been weakened to a recommendation.) The "reasonableness" standard is summarized as:
Use must not discourage the contribution of bibliographic and holdings data to WorldCat or substantially replicate the function, purpose, and/or size of WorldCat.
The restriction has drawn the ire of Open Library, which is building an OA bibliographic catalog. (In a blog post, Open Library's Aaron Swartz also claims that OCLC has "been trying to kill [Open Library] from the beginning -- threatening its funders with lawsuits, insulting it in the press, and putting pressure on member libraries not to cooperate.")
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
