RLG + OCLC = ???

Will Walt Crawford start blogging for It’s All Good? We can only think about whether that would be a consequences of the pending OCLC and RLG merger. Here is OCLC’s press release. Here is RLGs press release (note, they are the same). I’ll link to RLG’s version when I can find it, or when they write one.

According to the release, the current president of RLG, James Michalko, will get a new job title: “Vice President of RLG-Programs Development, working under the leadership of Lorcan Dempsey, Vice President of Research and OCLC Chief Strategist” The press release also notes that “Any change in RLG service offerings will be announced well in advance.” and doesn’t mention what will happen to OCLCs service offerings, presumably nothing. The press release uses nice words like “combine” a lot, an awful lot actually, but when I think of combinations, I think of how you mix butter and sugar to make something that is part both and part neither. This seems to be the sort of combination where you mix sugar and water and what you wind up with is water, sweetened. It will be interesting to see how this works out. [web4lib]

6 thoughts on “RLG + OCLC = ???

  1. Waterlilysage beat me to it; I linked to the OCLC copy of the press release because they got it up a little faster than RLG did.

  2. I think it is ironic that RLG (founded in 1974) is based in the same town as Google (founded in 1998). Although both are in the information services industry, and RLG had a head start, RLG is being acquired while Google is booming. Our profession still has an uneasy relationship with the internet. We certainly haven’t capitalized on it as much as we could.

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