Library information provider OCLC, US, and Europeana, the provider of Europe's digital library, have worked together on an approach that will enable OCLC member institutions to contribute metadata derived from OCLC's WorldCat database to the Europeana.eu portal in a manner that is consistent with OCLC's WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities for the OCLC Cooperative.
This agreement aims to dispel concerns that OCLC's policies around metadata in its WorldCat database are an obstacle to complying with the terms of the Europeana Data Exchange Agreement (DEA), which places all metadata contributed to Europeana.eu in the public domain, using the Creative Commons Zero Public Domain Dedication license. While OCLC makes no intellectual property claims to individual metadata records in WorldCat, it asserts a copyright claim over the WorldCat database as a whole - which created uncertainty over contributions to Europeana.eu by members of the cooperative. Nevertheless, OCLC wishes to support participation in Europeana by its member libraries given the significance of Europeana.
In response to these concerns, OCLC requested and Europeana agreed to ask subsequent users of the metadata to give attribution to both OCLC and to the contributing institution as the source, and to make them aware of the OCLC cooperative’s community norms around data.
OCLC will continue to publicize its cooperative norms and provide advice and support to members of the cooperative who contribute metadata, while Europeana will actively encourage re-users of the metadata to uphold the aforementioned Usage Guidelines for Metadata.
