Yeah, well, OCLC will probably do the usual and suck them up. They did it with so many others, and now they are FINALLY getting around to developing their SECOND ILS. In fact, the original, 1971, goals for OCLC was to help libraries save money by automating whatever could be automated. Then in 1976 the Ohioans governing OCLC passed a really rotten document allowing OCLC to "go national" and have the Board of Trustees appoint their own successors. Fred Kilgour said, "As long as I'm with OCLC Ohio has a friend" and then Fred left....

I know; I was there. The vote to "go national" in governance was nearly unanimous -- there were three nays and one abstention -- even with the flaws in the proposed by-laws.

Were OCLC a profit-making organization instead of a 501(c)3 it would be the largest library-oriented corporation in the world. It is now, but it's non-profit....

Want the dirt on the Seventies? There's a box in my house that contains materials OCLC tossed years and years ago; my wife was on the Board of Trustees and I was on the Ad Hoc Committee on Interlibrary Loan...among other things we did back then.