Links?

Cognitive authority. Is this the explanation for the reason that many young people today do not respect copyright and other "intellectual property" related issues? Rory Litwin points to an article which discusses this [Bad link removed 2022-02-17]. He does not totally agree with the author, but does note that it is an important observation which deserves more discussion.

Library management and "moving on up."

- ALA-APA's Library Worklife [Bad link removed 2022-02-17]

- In the Library with a Lead Pipe has a thoughtful post

- Meredith Farkas on becoming management

-Jenica Rodgers on [Bad link removed 2022-02-17] lessons learned as a manager and micromanagement

E-books, DRM, and Britain

- Andy Woodworth has a post on the current flap

- Closer to the source is a [Bad link removed 2022-02-17] post from the British Bookseller web site

- And there is a reply from a British public librarian

-[Bad link removed 2022-02-17] Thoughts from the LJ/SLJ virtual presentation by Emily Williams

- And Steven Harris on the same topic, cleverly titled "[Bad link removed 2022-02-17]I got your ebook manifesto right here!"

Meredith again (this time in American Libraries)[Bad link removed 2022-02-17] about the importance of reading the fine print of licenses.

There have been couple posts about anonymity on the web, in both blog posts and comments. Bobbi Newman has some interesting comments on pseudonyms.

And finally, one of my alma maters (my undergrad one) is now offering its alumni access to some of the Ebsco databases in a two year trial. I wonder how far this will spread? Is it because this is a private institution with a significant endowment? My other two alma maters are both state schools. It will be interesting to watch.

And adding two more items on anonymity:

First from In the Library with a Lead Pipe a long and thoughtful post about pseudonymity and anonymity. [It is interesting to read this while listening to a biography of Benjamin Franklin who wrote a great deal using both!]

Second is a [Bad link removed 2022-02-17]snarky take from Salon.com which reflects what is happening on some news web sites with comments.

Copyright (yes, more), outsourcing, and other links

Here are two more posts on the copyright/licensing/Netflix issue as covered by librarians on the web. First up is Kent Anderson who blogs at The Scholarly Kitchen which covers scholarly publishing. He notes that

While the purpose of the use may be nonprofit and educational, if the materials are entertaining movies, if they are watched or delivered in their entirety, and if the users no longer feel the need to rent or buy the movies, 3/4 of the criteria of fair use are unfulfilled. This creates huge exposure for universities, both from Netflix and from film companies.

Read the whole post which includes numerous links back to librarians on the issue.

Andy Woodworth, at Agnostic Maybe (a great title, I think), put his finger on the issue when he says "I believe that the actions of these libraries and librarians are a symptom of a larger issue for the profession: the coping (or non-coping) with the expansion of licensed content as part of the collection." He has a lot more to say, and there are some great comments.

The second topic burning up electrons among librarians is the issue of outsourcing. In this case the outsourcing of the management of public libraries. It is an issue which was hot in the late 1990s (pre-blogging), so I guess it is not a surprise to see it come up again.

On one of the discussion lists, Pat Schmann (ALA Past President and the Schuman in Neal-Scumann Publishing), sent a link to her article called: The selling of the public library: It's not just ‘outsourcing,’ it's privatization. The article appeared in Library Journal back in 1998. It is worth re-reading. (It is an eight[8] page PDF file.]

I picked up this post on the issue which is a long, and thoughtful post on the issue. There is much more in the PUBLIB archives.

I also ran across this post in another non-library blog.

Miscellaneous other links:

• I found this great blog post about how to check out a web page.
• Roy Tenant offers some thoughts on managing change. There are some insightful comments as well.
  

Copyright, copy-wrong and Netflix

First, from a month ago, some thoughts on copyright based on a composer's experience. I am not sure where I picked up this article which talks in general terms about the attitudes towards intellectual property and the rights of the creator. I was very much interested in hearing directly about a creator's experience. In this case a composer who had an online interaction (discussion is not just the right description) with someone who was giving away his creation.

As I reflect on this, I remember the whole issue with Napster and Kazaa. It is that experience that I am sure is reflected in some of the digital rights management software which is used with commercial audio and video.

Which then gets us to today and licensing and Netflix. (And may be related to libraries lending e-readers such as Kindles and Nooks, but that includes actually loaning a physical device which includes the electronic media.)

So the "Netflix "buzz'" is really more about terms of service than copyright, but it sort of is about copyright since in this case, Netflix is acting like libraries do with books, except that all the rules are much more complicated!

I picked up on this with Iris Jastram's post on terms of service. Michael Stevens had a guest post on his blog about the basic service as it is being done in one academic library. (Is this the original source?) Meredith Farkas had some insightful comments (as usual), which were picked up in several places. On the Library Law blog (a great resource for librarians who need to know about the law and libraries), Mary Minow talked about the legal issues involved.

Jessamyn includes links to many of the above, but one thing she said hit home with me: "The big issue is that Netflix is responsible to their main customers, the studios..." Hmmm, are the studios the main customers, or are we (the general public not just librarians or our libraries)?

Somehow, I wound up at The Consumerist, who adds this thoughtful bit:

Is this a violation of Netflix's terms of use? Yes. But the librarians don't particularly care, and Netflix doesn't seem to, either. Yet. As a Netflix spokesman said, "We just don't want to be pursuing libraries."

I am not totally sure what to think, other than to opine, that this is all part of the huge intellectual property/digital rights management/first sale controversy that will ensue as we move away from physical media to downloadable media.

Traditional Cultural Expression

One of the topics which is likely to hit ALA Council this session, is a resolution on Traditional Cultural Expression.

I was very confused about what happened at ALA Midwinter with this....it was proposed and then withdrawn, and at the time, given very little time to read and reflect, I was admittedly confused by the content, and therefore happy to have it taken off the agenda. That document is here (as CD#20.4, you will have scroll down).

Since then I have learned more.

Here is the document which engendered discussion, but note that it is not a resolution, but merely a statement. There is a web site, but it does not seem to have much newer than that to which I linked here.

Let's start with the definition of "Traditional Cultural Expressions" which is included in the document. In a footnote, the document explains the term.

For the purposes of this document, traditional cultural expressions are defined as, but not limited to, narratives, poetry, music, art, designs, names, signs, symbols, performances, architectural forms, handicrafts.

Wayne Bivens-Tatum, a librarian at Princeton, has written a long (almost 3,500 words) and thoughtful post which lays out many of the issues.

He starts by noting: "The basic thesis of the document is that librarians should be sensitive to the desires of indigenous communities regarding library collections of "traditional cultural expressions," i.e. objects, documents, etc. created by members of those communities." And like him, I agree with this in principle.

He has a section on philosophical objections which include his analysis of the language (which helped me understand). It ties the "cultural expressions" tightly to the creator or expressor. I think that is where I also begin to have problems.

I can't summarize or do justice to his long section on librarian objections. However, at one point he says:

Some parts of this document are utterly incompatible with such values. In the discussion, the other librarian posed the problem as possibly one of colonialist versus indigenous people's values. This is the cultural relativist perspective. But the Enlightenment perspective would pose it as a problem of universal versus local values. Who's correct here? Your position on this will probably determine your position on some of the more mystical portions of the document.

The tempting position to defend is that the values of the indigenous peoples should take precedent because they were both the victims of aggression and the creators of the "expressions." I'm tempted by this argument. However, one can be sensitive to the suffering of indigenous peoples without sacrificing universal values.

In his section with reasons to support a revised document, he has this cogent paragraph:

Returning some collections is also completely justifiable, but from the universal perspective of justice, not the local perspective of sanctity. Justice trumps even education and intellectual freedom. The important question is, how did these collections come to exist? Were they stolen? Purchased? Traded for? Acquired as gifts? The prominent libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick based his philosophy of distributive justice on the principles of justice in acquisition and justice in transfer. In other words, if property was initially acquired justly (via the Lockean proviso that enough and as good is left for others), and transferred justly, then whoever owns it in the end is the just owner. If we find at the end of the line that ownership isn't just, the principle of rectification requires us to reallocate resources in a just manner if possible.

Now, I would have gone even further and said, that if the "expression" had been legitimately (i.e. justly) obtained, then the control of it remains with the owning institution (library). It is part of why I support the return of skeletons, mummies, and the like which were pilfered from graves during the 19th and 20th centuries in the name of science and history.

My friend Melora Ranney Norman talks about TCEs with an "intellectual freedom" slant in her new-ish blog librarygist.

Her post is in a question and answer format. She is very up front about her issue in her second question:

Does it create a First Amendment/Library Bill of Rights conflict to officialize a document asserting that libraries should participate in the restriction of content when a cultural or religious group asks us to, whether by actually restricting the content in-house, or by returning it to the group so that they may do so themselves?

It was in reading this question back in early May that fixed the issue in my head...well, at least for now. If Melora's reading of the document (and I think mine, too) is that adopting the statement on TCE, ALA is suggesting that a group can control the distribution of something (folklore, stories, etc.) after it has left them, then we are allowing an outside "agency" to censor what we do. She uses an example of a group which believes that anatomically correct illustrations are abhorent, and therefore, all such depictions should be returned to them. She further cites the controversy of a couple years ago where a Danish cartoonist drew an image of Mohammed.

I have been going back to this over the past month, and still am both confused, and concerned that Melora is correct. If so, I am opposed to adopting the current version of the statement.

"We" have been promised that a task force, appointed by the ALA President will meet, listen, work on the document, and have public meetings at ALA Annual before anything comes back to Council. I hope that they can create a document which is both clear and inclusive, and that it avoids the pitfalls which Melora has identified.

At this point, what I long for is someone like Walt Crawford to gather any other relevant posts, digest them all, and offer his opinion from his perspective, which he refers to as "the radical middle." After all, this is what he often does in Walt at Random, and does incredibly well in Cites and Insights.

#450 - March Links

Here is post #450! Wow, who would have believed that I could be that prolific. This blog started in July 2005, inspired by then-Council colleagues Rochelle Hartman (Tinfoil and Raccoon -- now somewhat dormant) and Jessamyn West (librarian.net).

Here are the links I have stumbled on recently:

• Eric Hellman (one of my new favorites) had a chance to chat with John Sargent of Macmillian about e-book publishing and libraries. He does a great write up, and the comments are also interesting.
• Eric Hellman (again) forced by lack of electricity due to the weekend storm in the Northeast, went to Starbucks, and had some interesting, further thoughts on e-books and their distribution.
• Jason Giffey writes about copyright and the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act" in an interesting discussion of copyright and the DCMA on his blog Pattern Recognition.
• A college classmate, Dan Woog, wrote about the Westport [CT] Public Library and the additional services they provided during the recent power outages in the area caused by storms. My friend Maxine Bleiweis (the library director) is featured.
  

Links - Mid February

Here is the scariest news story I have seen lately: FBI wants records kept of Web sites visited

Almost as scary is this one about copyright of photographs in Britain. It is a long article, and I admit to not having either completely read it, or to understanding all the implications.

A friend of mine in Boston sent this link to an article praising librarians as "pioneers" in the digital age. (It even mentions Henriette Harriet Avram!) [Thanks to Sue Kamm for the first name correction! 2/26]

I found this brief article on assessment in academic libraries interesting.

This post from a doctoral student in language and literacy at the University of Georgia talks about the current rage for testing in schools and for tying the results of testing to teacher performance judgments. His/her name does not appear on the blog (even though there is a list of publications).

And now a series of "clipped" notes from my blog reader....

Michael Stephens noted in ALA TechSource that he has found a new "tribe" at Educause. I think it is important to have several different circles of friends. Talking only to the same people all the time creates the opportunity for groupthink, which will not lead to real progress.

The indomintable Dorothea Salvo has written a long-ish post about "pre-prints" and open access. (When I need to learn more about open access, it is to Dorothy to whom I turn.)

Current ALA Executive Board (EB) member Courtney Young posted some EB documents about the potential new ways of communicating within ALA.

Chad Haefele (Hidden Peanuts) has an interesting post about e-books, digital rights managment, and electronic publishing.

Sarah Houghton-Jan has a great post on using technology in your library to save money on technology.

A few years ago, I picked up on a blog dealing with technology and innovation for associations Principled Innovation. There is a great post on their blog with five important thoughts/trends for 2010.

There is a new blog in the library world, Quid est veritas? [I know who the author is, but have temporarily forgotten. However, it is in my blog reader now.] There is a great post on "Inputs and Outputs." The concepts of inputs and outputs, which is what we have traditionally measured, is very important as many organizations (like the Institute of Museum of Library Services [IMLS]) start to request outcomes as the measurement for grant services.

Amanda McNeil is a library school student in Boston. She writes a blog called Opinions of a Wolf which is a mix of thoughts on library school and the profession and book reviews. She wrote an interesting post "What public libraries should be."

Kim Leeder, of In the Library with a Lead Pipe, posted a year starting discussion of Learning Commons activities and rumination about the role of the library (in general). It is long but worth reading.

My final set of links is from Stephen Abram. With his recent change in employment, his blog Stephen's Lighthouse has moved. However there are seven posts to which I wish to point:

1. Social Media for Employees -- Rules? which indirectly follows up on some posts of mine. It consolidates some additional suggestions.
2. How many ways are there to visualize data? Visualization of data is something that Stephen pays attention to. I often get some great ideas thanks to his consolidation and re-posting.
3. Web searching skills recommendation is a longer article with comments from Stephen.
4. Florida Libraries Rock talks about the update to the Florida State Library's update of its ROI (Return on Investment) study. The new study shows that investment in libraries (i.e. tax support) returns $8.32 for every dollar invested.
5. 10 Fool-Proof Predictions for the Internet in 2020 reminds us some of the obvious trends.
6. Social Technology and Libraries includes a great chart showing the technologies, Sescription, stage of development, and impact.
7. 8 Things You Need to Know about Collaboration recaps a post on collaboration.