Daniel, I think catalogers might take exception to the idea that they have "collected information that anybody with a lot of free time could ..." They consider what they do to be skilled professional work. Steve Fisher University of Denver On Fri, 14 Dec 2001, Daniel Sokolow wrote: > To me, the question of ownership is less important than what, exactly, you'd > be selling. If I understand cataloging correctly (assuming these are books > rather than MS collections), your catalogers have collected information that > anybody with a lot of free time could, conceivably, have collected. I.e., > anyone could sit there with the books and take down author, title, pub date, > etc. and collect it. > > So I figure what you'd really be selling, should you charge the guy for it, > is the labor and technical expertise it took to collect all that information > in a single place and make it available to the general public. The > information itself doesn't belong to you any more than it would to someone > just opening the book off the shelf. > > In a similar vein, I don't think OCLC "owns" the information they may sell > to members, they're only saving the purchaser the time & effort of > collecting it. If you feel that the work put in is worth money, and your > institution has no policy against selling that work to someone else, I guess > you could offer to sell him the records. > > DS > ______________________________________ > Daniel Sokolow, Archives Coordinator > David Taylor Archives > North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System > 155 Community Drive > Great Neck, NY 11021 > mailto:[log in to unmask] > > A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List! > > To subscribe or unsubscribe, send e-mail to [log in to unmask] > In body of message: SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname > *or*: UNSUB ARCHIVES > To post a message, send e-mail to [log in to unmask] > > Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at > http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html > > Problems? Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <[log in to unmask]> > A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List! To subscribe or unsubscribe, send e-mail to [log in to unmask] In body of message: SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname *or*: UNSUB ARCHIVES To post a message, send e-mail to [log in to unmask] Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html Problems? Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <[log in to unmask]>