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]>