Comments on: Answers to Roy Tennant’s questions

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LibraryThing in the Philly Inquirer « barbara fister’s place — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 20:45:13 +0000

[...] libraries and as a fun example of the social dimensions of reading. Now, if I could just figure out why OCLC is so expensive and LibraryThing is so free . . [...]

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Wally Grotophorst — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 14:52:58 +0000

OCLC is a nonprofit, membership organization…yes that’s true..but it does seem to be trending toward “just another vendor” status (albeit one with monopolistic advantages in the library marketplace).

I think a closer parallel might be Fannie Mae but there is a lot to like in your analogy of OCLC as Microsoft. I see one place where it breaks down: Microsoft’s customers didn’t create the core asset that sustains that corporation in the way that librarians built the database for OCLC.

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How Libraries Might Once Again Become Technology Leaders — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 16:14:06 +0000

[...] expressed in Steve Oberg’s “OCLC: the Microsoft of the Library World?” and “Answers to Roy Tennant’s questions” ring true, as do some of his readers’ comments: OCLC is a monopoly and a [...]

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Tennant V. Oberg | Library Stuff — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 18:44:00 +0000

[...] Oberg answers Roy Tennant’s questions about his (Steve’s) beefs with [...]