In 2008, the Library of Congress Working Group on the future of bibliographic control issued their On the Record report which indicated that cataloguing activity must be shared more broadly and equitably among all libraries and followed this with the announcement in January this year, of its investigation into the creation and distribution of bibliographic data in U.S. and Canadian libraries.
This year also, LibLime announced an open source web based cataloguing tool called biblios.net and proposes that the records catalogued using it will go into ‘The World’s largest database of freely licensed library records’.
However, the recent OCLC announcement of its new policy for re-use of bibliographic records and the subsequent withdrawal of this policy is an example of the complexity of the current situation regarding the management and best use of catalogue data. It is not surprising therefore that the JISC is now also interested in this environment and is planning an investigation into the Sharing and re-use of library catalogue records: guidance on legal issues in the web environment.
Against this background the RIN report: Creating Catalogues: bibliographic records in a networked world, is a very timely overview of the whole process of bibliographic record production for printed and electronic books, and for scholarly journals and journal articles. This report follows the production of these data from publisher through a range of intermediaries to the end user. Whilst there are pressures to make these data more freely available, each player in the process has its own motivations and business models in creating, adding to, using or re-using bibliographic data, all of which need to be considered.

We find that there would be considerable benefits if libraries, along with other organisations in the supply chain, were to operate more at the network level but that there are significant barriers in the way of making significant moves in that direction.

Creating Catalogues cannot attempt to solve all the problems in the way of making bibliographic data more freely available for re-use and innovation, or of eliminating wasteful duplication of effort. Our objective is to clarify the key issues and to stimulate debate on possible ways forward. Creating Catalogues provides a number of key recommendations and the RIN will work with the academic library community and other key stakeholders in the supply chain to raise awareness and understanding of the issues raised in this report, of the benefits to be achieved by moving to new models, and of how we might overcome the barriers to achieving them.