copy right, copy left, and copy this down September 21, 2008
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there’s an old song by Judy… somebody “I’ve looked at life from both sides, now.” she concluded that she really didn’t know anything about anything “aaatt alllll” but she still made the best of it. Judy, dear, here we go.
I’ve worked in a creative endeavor that did not enjoy the protection of copyright. I was a choreographer in the late 70’s and early 80’s – a time when lightweight video cameras (or computers) were not in wide use. the creative process would happen, dancers would learn their parts, and after the production, the actual performance was usually filed only in the memories of those who were there. some of those were fellow artists who could take a section of choreography and use it whole-cloth for their production. I would set my work on dancers in a musical and I would see bits of it a few months later in an opera or in another show. usually it was a friendly exchange, but it DID sting to see no credit in the program for the idea. it also stung if the “borrower” got the next job with TO and the bigger paycheck while I was at TP working for free lunch and comp tickets. even if an 8mm video existed, there was no precedent for copyright infringement for movements in performance art at that time. thank goodness that’s been remedied and these are now protected and preserved.
whereas my experience cannot compare to authorship in other areas, it does touch on the reason why I have so much sympathy for those big bad thugs in publishing who hold copyrights. Yes they make money off the backs of the real creators, but they fund those creators as well. research is a particularly delicate balance of companies (pharmeceuticals come to mind) who will fund research and not worry about paying for publishing data along the way. then there is humanities research. in which publishing data along the way creates the basis for the next breakthrough – the next idea that is not worth much by itself, but can lead to the one after that, and the one after that…. if no one is supporting that endeavor by publishing and protecting it in a more permanent manner, what happens? yeah, I know, I KNOW. IRs. that’s the thought behind them. I remain skeptical. and I’m not alone. meet a guy smarter than me on intellectual property: http://www.law.gwu.edu/faculty/profile.aspx?id=3253
and here’s what he had to say on September 12, 2008 before the House Hearing on “Fair Copyright in Research Works Act”
My basic concern about the NIH proposal is that it will, sooner rather than later, destroy the commercial market for these scientific, technical, and medical journals. If this dark prophesy comes to pass, who, I wonder, will handle all of these expensive and sensitive administrative details? Some of my academic colleagues are confident that this change in the mechanics of scientific publishing will have little or no impact on the private sector, and that it will remain as robust as ever, even if the NIH freely publishes all of the NIH peer-reviewed article manuscripts shortly after private publication. Some claim that they have “evidence” that STM publishing will continue to flourish. I have not seen that evidence. To me, it suggests an element of wishful thinking. In my experience, Congress is normally reluctant to hang major legislative change in copyright policy on the thin reed of wishful thinking. With the prospect of free copies available in the near term, who in the face of experience and reality can reasonably expect that subscribers to STM journals, faced with their own budgetary constraints and needs, will not look with real favor on alternative free sources? I can’t. It is belied by common sense. Certainly, many university and industry librarians will cancel their subscriptions to these learned journals, with some estimates of a cancellation rate approaching 50 percent. With plummeting sales, how could the STM publishers stay in business? This is a critical point, and one that this committee has a special sensitivity to. It really goes to the heart of the matter, in terms of public policy.
wondering aloud September 15, 2008
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as part of the Institutional Repository group, I find myself wondering if the disparity of experience and career goals among the members may make it difficult for much consensus. it seems the only thing we all have in common is that we are in the program, albeit some are LIS and others KM. as a person planning to remain in an academic library setting, my views are naturally going to be different from someone hoping to create a knowledge collective for an accounting firm. and so are my needs… Dennis made an interesting comment once about the degree program itself and how we all have to get what we need from it since we are on such different career paths. remaining true to that inner compass while collaborating and expanding into the unknown may be the very experience that will help me negotiate between “knowledge worker” and “librarian” – my personal Charybdis and Scylla.
looking at the bright side then, here goes. Salo’s comment about the lack of prestige in a digital collection is not something I’d thought about directly, but as a print-on-paper snob myself, this is the point that looms very large in development strategy. particularly for fledgeling repository efforts, marketing such a concept to faculty is sobering. like the guy in the movie “Handcock” who was trying to get pharmaceutical companies to give away their product in the hope of a better world. a bumper sticker saying “I ‘heart’ IRs!”…. well, maybe that needs a little more punch.
even something as “simple” as an online exam bank where students could study using previous tests has proven to be very slow going. there is a whole cabinet of paper files put on reserve by faculty to allow students to view previous exams. many will not allow these to be scanned or made available electronically. why not put them online? there are those who do not want other faculty to use their questions. the sentiment from said faculty seems to be that they worked hard to encapsulate the issues of the class and they do not want to make it easy (or anonymous) for other professors to appropriate thier work. professional pride (or embarrassment) seems to keep these files safe from prying eyes – particularly those files that have to be “signed out” on a piece of paper with the peruser’s name. does a professor tracking the viewing of their tests violate privacy issues? AAAAGGGGHHHH!!! CHRYBDIS!
sailing more towards Scylla where I can sacrifice a few ideas to save the rest, what is appropriate for a digital collection? or to use Salo’s extensive experience, what is pragmatic? do IRs commonly use tracking programs so that users have to sign in and verify who they are before looking? that would be a given, right? is that information tracked/used/verified by the IR gatekeepers? is this shades of Big Brother Google? sorry if all this is boring to those who figured it out long ago. I’m still reading the stuff on hashing that was supposed to explain it better and ready to curl up in a ball with my thumb in my mouth like Sybil.
life, liberty, and the pursuit September 10, 2008
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of happiness? of a MLIS? no. of property. the original unalienable rights according to, I believe Rousseau, were “life, liberty, and property.” property rights are the foundation of Greek, Roman, and Judaic Law. they precede the American “pursuit of happiness” because the general idea was that the Aristotelian “cause for which” one pursued property was happiness. Jefferson went for the telos.
a digital discussion erupted somewhere on D2L about the legal implications of a student creating a digital collection of the articles we are supposed to read and distributing them to the class in one electronic file. convienent – omg! yes. and thank you. Illegal? I think it may be. while the discussion postings are most interesting, the fact that this was brought up within the context of our class is really interesting- and ironic. to recast the question for a public blogging forum: who owns the articles on that student’s flash drive? Permissions, so I understand, were not granted.
our Alma Mater pays for books, subscriptions and holds physical items for course reserve. as students we can print and copy (up to 50 pages) for our personal use. I’m a student. I then should be allowed to make a copy of another student’s copy. right? maybe. it’s kind of iffy. but certainly, HE really isn’t supposed to make a copy of his copy for me. it crosses the boundary of the US Code that stipulates “personal use.” even our instructor probably can’t make copies of her own published article and distribute it to our class without crossing that blurry line into the gray area of copyright infringement. the gray, blurry area really swallows the legal landscape of the digtal document. not that anyone pays much attention, but should the publisher find out and choose to make an example – well we remember the Napster Kids, right?
electronic file sharing. we all do it. well, YOU all do it because if the publishers who own the copyright to those publications come knocking, I had nothing to do with it. and neither did anyone I know. publishers make money through not-sharing.
maybe I should change discussion groups to institutional repositories. the legal thing, not to mention the faculty protecting their work thing, really interests me. and the Salo article was great.
gone fiche-ing September 6, 2008
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Grafton’s comments on microfiche and it’s discontents brings out an issue of which digital collections librarians will want to be aware before scaling the ivory towers of academia.
while working in an academic library, I wondered why in the world anyone would want to continue to buy microfiche in this day and age. it’s inconvenient, must be used on-site, difficult to read at times, slow to find the right pages, time-consuming to print, and non-searchable. the machine is a pain to service and no fun to operate. yet microfiche still arrives regularly. what is it about this stuff – other than the fact that someone long ago made a commitment to buy it for the library and we have to maintain the collection? even that seems pretty weak.
volume count. it’s how libraries compete with each other and how schools achieve accreditation points. microfiche is cheap. microfiche takes up almost no space. one set of microfiche – like 19th century legal treatises – adds thousands of items to the volume count for pennies on the dime. binding older paper journals does the same thing. the library buys a subscription on paper – there’s a journal title added to the stats. once the paper copies are about a year old, they can be gathered and sent to the bindery. the individual records for each issue are removed from the catalog – which doesn’t change the fact that the library subscribes to the title – and the bound journal is now a volume. a “book” if you will. it’s such a shell game.
so when Grafton voices his concern that paper copies are being destroyed – perhaps that is true to some extent. but he can rest assured that some college or university library has bound that in buckram and added compact shelving to store it. after all, it’s the stuff of which new wings are made….
digital collections reflections September 2, 2008
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from the article by Lee, the term “digital collections” is pretty broad. so in thinking about the three collections that have proven most useful (if not abused) to me are:
1. JSTOR – I came across this resource many years ago in a Shakespeare class taught by one of the finest English professors, Dr. Watson at TU. in a discussion of Hamlet, I threw out the possibilty that the gloomy young Dane was upset by his mother’s sexual relationship with her new hubby because Hamlet feared she might become pregnant, creating a pesky heir to his throne. Watson sat back while the rest of the class remained focused on the “fact” that Gerty would be well beyond childbearing age. after all, Hamlet looks a lot like Laurence Oliver, which means his mother must be about 85 and holding, right? JSTOR had a full-text article from the 1940’s or so titled “Not fat or 30″ which proved to be THE piece of scholarly reinforcement that I needed to write a really good final paper. In the section in which I deftly argued that Getrude’s fecund state adds to the dramatic impetus for the play, Watson wrote “ah. you’ve answered this point nicely” in his margin comments. that was it. nicely. from Watson, that’s like a ticker tape parade complete with a marching band. JSTOR provides historical perspectives on many A&S subjects. It can be limited by discipline and the advanced search can limit the results to articles or expand it to include reviews, etc. the downside, it is accessable only with a log-in, usually provided by a higher-education institution at, what I’m guessing is, a pretty steep cost.
2. the Perseus Project sponsored by Tufts has a great collection of ancient Greek and Latin texts. from the main page at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ I click on “Classics” and “texts.” many of the English translations are pretty poor, BUT the Greek or Latin sections have a really cool little feature that allows you to click on the word and have a pop-up that gives you the grammatical particulars about that word. when I am not able to find things the disciplined way (a Duckworth’s held together with rubber bands, a duct-taped intermediate lexicon, and a copy of Smythe’s Greek Grammar replete with tear stains) or when I am so confused that my scholarship BECOMES a tragedy littered with the dead bodies of bad traslations, I turn to this great resource. I then say an Act of Contrition, and apologize to Socrates for being weak and basically cheating. 
the downside? - the text is transalliterated into English alphabet. to read in the actual Greek, a plug-in is available, but I’ve not found the results to be acceptable.
3. gosh. digital collections. I use all kinds of resources, like Webster.com, often – but is that a collection? I don’t think of it that way. hmm. There IS something that I’m interested in, though “favorite” is not how I would describe it. TU has a whole world of wonder on the fourth floor of McFarlin library. For years, the items in special collections were shielded from the world and “protected” almost out of existence. No one knew just what was up there. it is still happening in fits and starts, but now there is an effort underway to bring this marvelous collection out of the dark and into the digital light. So far, there is not a lot of “there” there in comparison to other digital projects that have really gotten off the ground, particularly in images. But what potential – oh my. so, in its present form, it may be my least favorite digital collection. but it terms of the possibility that I know is there, and in the mad hope that I can learn enough to contribute to the effort and make it reflective of the fabulous treasure that it really is: http://www.lib.utulsa.edu/speccoll/
WAIT! how could I forget?!! #3. the WebMuseum- Paris! I’ve bookmarked only the artist page, but the main site probably has all kinds of cool stuff that I’ve not had time to discover. this is great for those little art emergencies that require a person to view a pertinent masterpiece or die. happens to me a LOT. bienvenue! http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/
in vino veritas? August 27, 2008
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this story was sent to me by a person who runs the local wine club:
http://www.deepglamour.net/deep_glamour/2008/08/award-winning-r.html
not only is it hilarious – it illustrates one of my major concerns with the digital environment, namely its unreliability and lack of substance. for a library spending money to procure digital collections, the problem of ownership involves not just patrons and patterns of usage, not just librarians out to provide the best to those they serve, not just library directors and not just governing bodies that accredit academic institutions. publishers. vendors. i-entrepreneurs. who is really driving this huge push and who has the most to gain?
rdf? May 14, 2008
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rodents of dyspeptic fortitude? residual detritus forgotten? this is not a bad remake of the Princess Bride, is it. time for index cards. oh, sorry – - tfic.
did you see on the tornado warnings last night that there is a small community in Oklahoma called IXL? no one seems to know what it stands for – but information-crossed lovers must live there with their insane expert language.
as the one who looks under the rocks of technology May 7, 2008
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it occurs to me that part of the reason the dire predictions about Y2K did not come to pass is largely due to the fact that people did take it seriously enough to do something about it. a few nervous types like myself began raising the hue and cry in the 1990s. people responded, demanded action and patches were put in place. SAVED! I would remind you that a crisis averted does not mean there was no crisis pending.
I bite, sting, and generally irritate. so squish me already, but at least roll over and open one eye. then consider if I deserve squishing. btw – just because the rumor of global warming was created by a California sydicate and a bunch of tree loving intellectuals does not mean that we should continue to embrace hummers as our national method of transportation. OUCH.
bang or whimper, either way is pretty bad, wouldn’t you say?
you’re welcome, oh Librarians. now put me up in the hero’s hall and bring my meals.
It has been accomplished. May 5, 2008
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Worthy is the Lamb who was slain from the foundations of the earth!
first semester is complete – only 6 more to go! ok, that last part is not so happy. but the first part is encouraging.
why taking cues from a business model to make changes in the library is a bad thing May 3, 2008
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ross perot. campaigned for president on the promise of making federal government function like a business. Strategic Planning! Fiscal Responsibility! sounds great. especially to all those mean old Republicans with all their money.
but ross forgot about the poor, the elderly, the babies and their mothers in his paradigm. he forgot about the guy who fell from a ladder while working as a painter and incurred a head injury. not to mention the artists who will NEVER turn a fast profit for the corporation of the body politic, but enrich our society in some unfathomable way all the same. as do Libraries…
all ross asked of the American public was to join him in the chant “what’s in it for me RIGHT NOW!” undoubtedly, an appealing prospect amongst the day-trading and tractor-pulling crowd. the smarter we get the dumber we fall.
the trouble with Ayn Rand – there is no compassion in her matrix. you produce, you’re the poo. you fail, well you are set out on a rock and you die.
oh, Just Librarians! look at the period of history in which all the anti-trust legislation came into vogue! the Bolshevik Revolution scared the shit out of the status quo – J. P. Morgan, Hearst, Pulitzer, Getty, Rockefeller. the American nobility. even Teddy himself - and yes, Andrew Carnegie. why do you think they jumped on philathropy for their salvation in their lonesome latter years? they made a killing in that “splendid little war.” Suddenly, it all turned on a dime.
there’s a hole in the world like a great big pit…. why did they remake Sweeny Todd in 2007 - does it not strike you as telling?
why can’t we allow libraries go down this yellow brick road? indeed, oh librarians. It Lacks Much.
