Private organization, open data

Infochimps has a post about the pros and cons of opening data, from the perspective of a private organization (as opposed to governments, which have been getting a lot of attention recently). Infochimps is a nifty site:

We’ve been working since the start of 2008 to build the world’s most interesting data commons, and since the start of 2009 to build the world’s first data marketplace.

Merging and maintaining bibliographic databases

Marcive is a company that offers "bibliographic services" such as deduplication of records after multiple libraries place their records into a shared catalog, reclassification from Dewey Decimal to Library of Congress classification, enrichment of brief records, etc. Their database cleanup brochure makes fascinating reading (well, if you've been spending way to much time thinking about pooling disparate databases).

There is a definite parallel between maintaining and merging library catalogs, and what the data commons aims to do. Wish we had an equivalent of the Library of Congress...