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Weekly News Digest
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June 21, 2022 — In addition to this week's NewsBreaks article and the monthly NewsLink Spotlight, Information Today, Inc. (ITI) offers Weekly News Digests that feature recent product news and company announcements. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today. For other up-to-the-minute news, check out ITI’s Twitter account: @ITINewsBreaks.
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Publishers Weekly Weighs In on OCLC-Clarivate Lawsuit
Publishers Weekly’s Andrew Albanese writes the following in “OCLC Sues Clarivate Over Potential WorldCat Competitor”:Nonprofit library technology cooperative OCLC (the company behind WorldCat, the world’s largest global catalog of library collections) has filed a federal lawsuit against Clarivate and its subsidiaries (including Clarivate Analytics, Ex Libris, and ProQuest) over Clarivate’s alleged misappropriation of OCLC records for its competing MetaDoor service. … [T]he filing claims Clarivate plans to freely provide WorldCat records to MetaDoor users—but the company’s intention is ‘not altruistic,’ lawyers say. ‘Instead, this is just [Clarivate’s] latest attempt to further consolidate their dominant position in the ILS/LSP … market.’ … Working with librarians, OCLC for decades has provided data experts and tools as well servers and computing power to create, enhance, and store billions of library records in WorldCat, making them searchable online. On its website, OCLC officials suggest Clarivate’s efforts to build a competing platform represents an existential threat. … London-based Clarivate is a massive global analytics company. In 2021, it completed a controversial $5.3 billion purchase of ProQuest, a deal that drew scrutiny from antitrust regulators and opposition from library advocacy groups like SPARC, which represents more than 240 academic and research library members. In a statement last year, Heather Joseph, SPARC executive director, said Clarivate’s acquisition of ProQuest ‘tilts control of the research ecosystem further toward the largest commercial players—and away from the best interests of the research community.’
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Brandi Scardilli
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