Vendor: 1. One that sells or vends: a street vendor; a vendor of software products on the Web.
Above is the first definition of vendor from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Why do I bring this up… Well, the answer lies in the questopn “What is OCLC?” Often, us librarians here some say that OCLC is not a vendor because the are a cooperative. Well, they may be a cooperative, but they are also a vendor. One can be a non-profit and still be a vendor – they are not mutually exclusive. Being a cooperative is a tax and legal status, not a business model.
OK, so now you are asking why do I bring this up now? The answer is because there has been a discussion that was going on in various circles the last couple of days about OCLC, most notably a discussion about a proposal to lessen the representation of member libraries on the OCLC board. Currently there are only 6 member elected representatives on the 15 member board. Now there is a proposal to lower the already too low number to 4 of 15. If OCLC wants us to think of it differently then we do traditional “commercial” vendors this is a step in the wrong direction. There is a strong argument to be made against people who complain about OCLCs way of doing things, that well, if we don’t like it, it can be changed by the libraries that cooperatively own it. But can it? Sure, the libraries that vote can put pressure, but if they only have just over 25% of the representation on the board that ultimately decides things, is this necessarily true? Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against OCLC. Overall, I think they do a lot of great things. However, if it quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, and acts like a duck, it might as well be a duck. Even if OCLC was a duck, that still doesn’t mean it is bad, or evil. It just means it is a duck.
Like Jonathan Rochkind, I really don’t see how lowering library representation on the board is a good thing for the member libraries, but I could be convinced otherwise. No matter what happens, though, the members (or maybe more accurately, our library administrators who vote) need to remember that they do ultimately own the cooperative, and if OCLC ever begins doing things that are not in the best interest of the member libraries, they need to speak up. And, the librarians in the trenches, so to speak, have the responsibility to make sure that our library administrators know when OCLC isn’t doing what is in the member libraries best interest. Again, I’m not at all trying to say that OCLC isn’t currently acting in the members interest, in fact, I believe the opposite is true. However, as cooperative members, it is the libraries that need to make sure the OCLC ship is sailing on the proper direction, now and into the future. With all of the new products, services, and recent acquisitions by OCLC, now is the time the cooperative needs to pay more attention than ever.