Washington DC--The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Ad Hoc Task Force to Review the Proposed OCLC Policy for Use and Transfer of WorldCat Records has issued its final report, which calls on OCLC to develop a new policy to replace the one released in November 2008.
OCLC's release of the policy elicited serious concern from the ARL community, as well as the broader library community. As a result, ARL established an ad hoc task force to review the policy and identify issues of particular interest to research libraries. The task force report includes a brief overview of the policy and the task force's understanding of the policy's intent. This is followed by an explication of specific issues and the task force's findings regarding both the policy itself and the implementation process. The report concludes with recommendations for OCLC and the library community.
The ARL Board of Directors has accepted the task force's report and ARL has shared the report with OCLC for the use of its Board of Trustees and its newly established Review Board of Shared Data Creation and Stewardship.
The report is freely available on the ARL Web site: www.arl.org/bm~doc/oclc-report-jan09.pdf.
About The Association of Research Libraries
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 123 research libraries in North America. Its mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the Web at http://www.arl.org/
