Interesting cataloging development. Take a look at Marshall Breeding's Library Journal article, New Company SkyRiver Sparks Cataloging Competition with OCLC.
A new company called SkyRiver has launched a bibliographic utility, directly challenging long-dominant OCLC. Over the last 18 years, strategic acquisitions by OCLC have narrowed competition, but SkyRiver—founded by Jerry Kline, the owner and co-founder of Innovative Interfaces—aims to expand the market and offer an alternative bibliographic utility for cataloging that could save libraries up to 40 percent off their expenditures for bibliographic services.
Notice that "quality" will be one of the hallmarks of this new service.
SkyRiver will kick off with an initial database of about 20 million records, in contrast to some 144 million claimed by OCLC’s WorldCat bibliographic database. This seed collection includes complete record sets from the Library of Congress and the British Library, and has Library of Congress Subject Headings and NACO authority records. It will grow through the current cataloging performed by librarians, receiving newly cataloged records from both libraries that participate directly in its service and others.
According to Kline and SkyRiver president Leslie Straus, the service will compete on quality, not on the size of its bibliographic database alone. They say the initial database has been populated with high-quality MARC records, omitting substandard, skeletal records that often confound cataloging processes. [emphasis added]
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