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(Belgium) Are public libraries truly and wholly public, or is there a private ownership element to them? Can we force them to publish datasets of their catalog? (fedia.io)

submitted 10 months ago by ciferecaNinjo@fedia.io to c/opendata@lemmy.sdf.org

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Like most libraries, the public libraries in Belgium have a GUI online search page to search their catalog. The websites are often Tor-hostile. Some of them work with a text browser but it’s a bit rough going. And of course it’s impossible for offline people to search for books or media.

The Belgian gov is generally obligated under the constitution and open data laws to share their data. So does that include libraries? I think it would be interesting to have a local copy of all book and movie titles that I can search without having to be online and without whatever limitations their UI creates.

Belgian libraries are subject to some degree of enshitification because they do not implement their own tech. They outsource to private entities like Cisco. And Cisco operates as cheaply as possible. Cisco will not give support and does not care if some people are marginalised. If their captive portal is broken on your device, or you have no GSM number to verify via the captive portal, there is no recourse.

It’s a bit of a blur with libraries what is public and what is private. If the media dataset is held by some private entity, I wonder if it’s regarded as non-public and thus not subject to being liberated by open data law.

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[–] ohulancutash@feddit.uk 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Are you asking if libraries are public, or are you taking the opportunity to moan that they don’t accommodate your incredibly niche access whims?

[–] ciferecaNinjo@fedia.io 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I’m asking if they are bound by the open data law, which is effectively a question of whether the data is held by a public or private entity.

[–] protist@mander.xyz 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Just off the cuff here, but the contents of a library aren't government data. A library holds information that thousands of different people and entities hold publishing rights and copyrights over, and they loan that information to the public.

[–] ciferecaNinjo@fedia.io 1 points 10 months ago

Yeah, that’s true. The open data law does not overturn or tamper with copyright. So the material itself still has the same copyright protections. But it’s the /catalog/ of books and media that I am referring to.