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Why is BL resistant to Open Library project

An article posted in the News forum yesterday made me wonder yet again at the 'can't do' attitude so endemic in this country.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6924022.stm

Basically some people want to create an Open Library comprising the world's biggest listing of books. It's not a library per se because there aren't any actual books, but you'll at least know of their existence. At the moment the most comprehensive catalogue of books is on Amazon. The developers of the Open Library project want to do for books what Wikipedia did for encyclopedias. By compiling all the world's library catalogues into one giant catalogue they will create the largest listing of books ever published.

The first nay-saying came from the British Library. Stephen Bury, the head of European and American Collections, isn't at all keen to allow ordinary people to edit library catalogues themselves.

"I think there's a need for balance and some degree of control. You might get people maliciously changing things."

This is an elitist sort of attitude that one would hope is not shared by the rest of the Library managers.

It is well known that the BL's online catalogue is pretty poor so instead of fretting about imaginary fears, why not consider the many improvements that might be made by open sourcing the catalogue?

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It's redolent of the

It's redolent of the attitude in the Vatican library -- the Bibliotheca Apostolica -- in the 19th century. I understand that readers then weren't even allowed to consult the catalogue -- they had to ask one of the dopey staff to do it. A catalogue was compiled, very very slowly, 'so that it would be authoritative' -- so there was no catalogue anyway for decades. In the end a pope got fed up with all the bad publicity and turned the library over to some German catholics, and the library is now one of the best in Italy in these respects.

These sorts of things are examples of allowing the best to become the enemy of the good. Surely there is room for both?

Historians and academics in

Historians and academics in general are pretty conscientious when it comes to references. In fact, many of us spend a large part of our research and academic careers building bibliographies of all kinds. The question arises, who exactly is the lay public to which the management refers?

The BL's attitude towards this project is yet another manifestation of their paternalist attitude towards the collection they are privileged (!) to maintain; and which they themselves neither manage to catalogue accurately, nor productively.