The New York Public Library Labs has built a new Rails-based usability testing tool called Infomaki. It' still a "zero-point” release, but an open source release is planned soon.
Read more about it at "Introducing Infomaki: Bite-sized Usability Testing."
As indicated in recent postings ("Fair Copyright in Research Works Act: Ten Associations and Advocacy Groups Send Letter to Judiciary Committee Members Opposing Act" and "Urgent Call to Action: Conyers Bill Opposing NIH Open Access Policy May Soon Come to House Vote"), the fight over the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act (H.R. 801) is heating up.
If you want to oppose the bill and support the NIH Public Access policy and open access, you should contact members of the House Judiciary Committee and your Representative immediately by letter, e-mail, fax, or phone. If a Judiciary Committee member is in your district, your opposition will have considerably more impact. If you are uncertain, about who your House member is, you can use the The Hill's search form to find out. The "Contact" tab for the House member's The Hill record, includes a "Contact [Congressional representative] via Web Form" function that can be used to send e-mail messages.
Below is a list of Judiciary Committee members and a draft letter from the Alliance for Taxpayer Access’ call to action.
Draft letter text:
Dear Representative;
On behalf of [your organization], I strongly urge you to oppose H.R. 801, “the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act,” introduced to the House Judiciary Committee on February 3, 2009. This bill would amend the U.S. Copyright Code, prohibiting federal agencies from requiring as a condition of funding agreements public access to the products of the research they fund. This will significantly inhibit our ability to advance scientific discovery and to stimulate innovation in all scientific disciplines.
Most critically, H.R. 801 would reverse the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy, prohibit American taxpayers from accessing the results of the crucial biomedical research funded by their taxpayer dollars, and stifle critical advancements in life-saving research and scientific discovery.
Because of the NIH Public Access Policy, millions of Americans now have access to vital health care information from the NIH’s PubMed Central database. Under the current policy, nearly 3,000 new biomedical manuscripts are deposited for public accessibility each month. H.R.801 would prohibit the deposit of these manuscripts, seriously impeding the ability of researchers, physicians, health care professionals, and families to access and use this critical health-related information in a timely manner.
H.R. 801 affects not only the results of biomedical research produced by the NIH, but also scientific research coming from all other federal agencies. Access to critical information on energy, the environment, climate change, and hundreds of other areas that directly impact the lives and well being of the public would be unfairly limited by this proposed legislation.
[Why you support taxpayer access and the NIH policy].
The NIH and other agencies must be allowed to ensure timely, public access to the results of research funded with taxpayer dollars. Please oppose H.R.801.
Postscript: ALA has issued a call to action about the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act (H.R. 801). The alert includes a link to a Web form that will allow you to e-mail a House Judiciary Committee Member from your district about the bill (will not work if your Representative does not serve on the Judiciary Committee).
The Alliance for Taxpayer Access has a Web form (with letter text) that you can use to e-mail your Congressional representatives.
The bill has been referred to the Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy.
Ten associations and advocacy groups, including AALL, ACRL, ALA, ARL, and GWLA, have sent a letter to House Judiciary Committee members opposing the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act (H.R. 801).
Here's an excerpt:
The U.S. government funds research with the expectation that new ideas and discoveries from the research will propel science, stimulate the economy, and improve the lives and welfare of Americans. Public support for science is enhanced when the public directly sees the benefits from our nation's investment in scientific research. Yet H.R. 801 would reverse the only U.S. policy for public access to research, at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and make it impossible for other agencies to enact similar policies.
Scientific research is advanced by broad dissemination of knowledge, and the subsequent building upon the work of others. To this end, the NIH Public Access Policy ensures that the results of our nation's $29 billion annual investment in research reach the broadest possible audience. The Policy requires that, in exchange for receiving federal research dollars, grantees deposit the final electronic manuscript of their peer-reviewed research results into PubMed Central, NIH’s digital archive, to be made publicly available within 12 months—and was specifically implemented in full compliance with current U.S. copyright law.
The NIH Policy achieves several notable goals: First, it ensures broad public access to the results of NIH's funded research, allowing scientists and researchers to collaborate and engage in cutting-edge research. Such access allows for greater sharing of information, speeding discovery, medical advances, and innovations.
Second, the NIH Policy ensures that the U.S. government has a permanent archive of these critical, publicly funded biomedical research results, ensuring that results can be built upon by not only this generation, but also future generations, of researchers.
Finally, the Policy creates a welcome degree of accountability and transparency, which enable us to better manage our collective investments in the NIH research portfolio and ensure the maximum possible benefits to the public in return.
At the direction of Congress, the NIH Public Access Policy, in place as a voluntary measure since 2005, was recently strengthened to a mandatory policy. As a result, the rate of eligible manuscripts being deposited for public accessibility quickly increased from 19% to 60%. This requirement proved crucial to ensuring that the more than 80,000 articles resulting from NIH funding each year are, for the first time, available to any researcher, physician, faculty member, student, or member of the public who wants them.
H.R.801 presupposes that the NIH Public Access Policy undermines the rights of the author and conflicts with U.S. copyright law. As library organizations and allies we fully respect copyright law and the protection it affords content creators, content owners, and content users. NIH-funded research is copyrightable and copyright belongs to the author. The NIH Policy requires only the grant of a non-exclusive license to NIH, fully consistent with federal policies such as Circular A- 110 and Circular A-102. This policy leaves the author free to transfer some or all of the exclusive rights under copyright to a journal publisher or to assign these anywhere they so choose. Attached please find an issue brief detailing how the NIH Public Access Policy does not affect copyright law [see the letter for the brief].
The NIH Public Access Policy advances science, improves access by the public to federally funded research, provides for effective archiving strategies for these resources, and ensures accountability of our federal investment. Given the proven success of the revised NIH Public Access Policy and the promise of public access to federally funded research, we firmly oppose H.R.801 and ask that you do the same. Thank you for considering the stake and position of the key constituencies in this discussion.
Read more about it at "Conyers Introduces H.R. 801, "The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act."
There are strong indications that Rep. John Conyers, Jr. will try to get a House vote on the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act (H.R. 801) much more quickly than previously thought. If you want to oppose the bill and support the NIH Public Access policy, you should contact members of the House Judiciary Committee and your Representative immediately by e-mail, fax, phone, or letter. This is especially important if a Judiciary Committee member is in your district.
Here's an excerpt from the Alliance for Taxpayer Access call to action to defeat the Conyers bill:
All supporters of public access—researchers, libraries, campus administrators, patient advocates, publishers, and others—are asked to please contact your Representative . . . to express your support for public access to taxpayer-funded research and ask that he or she oppose H.R.801. Draft letter text is included below. . . .
H.R. 801 is designed to amend current copyright law and create a new category of copyrighted works (Section 201, Title 17). In effect, it would:
- Prohibit all U.S. federal agencies from conditioning funding agreements to require that works resulting from federal support be made publicly available if those works are either: a) funded in part by sources other than a U.S. agency, or b) the result of "meaningful added value" to the work from an entity that is not party to the agreement.
- Prohibit U.S. agencies from obtaining a license to publicly distribute, perform, or display such work by, for example, placing it on the Internet.
- Stifle access to a broad range of federally funded works, overturning the crucially important NIH Public Access Policy and preventing other agencies from implementing similar policies.
- Because it is so broadly framed, the proposed bill would require an overhaul of the well-established procurement rules in effect for all federal agencies, and could disrupt day-to-day procurement practices across the federal government.
- Repeal the longstanding "federal purpose" doctrine, under which all federal agencies that fund the creation of a copyrighted work reserve the "royalty-free, nonexclusive right to reproduce, publish, or otherwise use the work" for any federal purpose. This will severely limit the ability of U.S. federal agencies to use works that they have funded to support and fulfill agency missions and to communicate with and educate the public.
Because of the NIH Public Access Policy, millions of Americans now have access to vital health care information through the PubMed Central database. Under the current policy, nearly 3,000 new biomedical manuscripts are deposited for public accessibility each month. H.R.801 would prohibit the deposit of these manuscripts, seriously impeding the ability of researchers, physicians, health care professionals, and families to access and use this critical health-related information in a timely manner.
All supporters of public access—researchers, libraries, campus administrators, patient advocates, publishers, and others—are asked to contact their Representatives to let them know you support public access to federally funded research and oppose H.R. 801. Again, the proposed legislation would effectively reverse the NIH Public Access Policy, as well as make it impossible for other federal agencies to put similar policies into place. . . .
Draft letter text:
Dear Representative;
On behalf of [your organization], I strongly urge you to oppose H.R. 801, “the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act,” introduced to the House Judiciary Committee on February 3, 2009. This bill would amend the U.S. Copyright Code, prohibiting federal agencies from requiring as a condition of funding agreements public access to the products of the research they fund. This will significantly inhibit our ability to advance scientific discovery and to stimulate innovation in all scientific disciplines.
Most critically, H.R. 801 would reverse the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy, prohibit American taxpayers from accessing the results of the crucial biomedical research funded by their taxpayer dollars, and stifle critical advancements in life-saving research and scientific discovery.
Because of the NIH Public Access Policy, millions of Americans now have access to vital health care information from the NIH’s PubMed Central database. Under the current policy, nearly 3,000 new biomedical manuscripts are deposited for public accessibility each month. H.R.801 would prohibit the deposit of these manuscripts, seriously impeding the ability of researchers, physicians, health care professionals, and families to access and use this critical health-related information in a timely manner.
H.R. 801 affects not only the results of biomedical research produced by the NIH, but also scientific research coming from all other federal agencies. Access to critical information on energy, the environment, climate change, and hundreds of other areas that directly impact the lives and well being of the public would be unfairly limited by this proposed legislation.
[Why you support taxpayer access and the NIH policy].
The NIH and other agencies must be allowed to ensure timely, public access to the results of research funded with taxpayer dollars. Please oppose H.R.801.
In "Discussion on JISC Report on Economic Implications of Alternative Business Models," Ian Russell, Chief Executive of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, and Charles Oppenheim, Head of the Department and Professor of Information Science at Loughborough University, exchange views on the Economic Implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models: Exploring the Costs and Benefits report.
DigitalPreservationEurope has released a briefing paper on UMID—Unique Material Identifier
Here's an excerpt from the announcement:
A Unique Material Identifier (UMID) is a special code that is used to identify audiovisual (AV) materials. The UMID is a core component in tagging AV content to enable its reliable access and tracking, especially in networked storage, production and dissemination systems. Its purpose is to provide unambiguous identification of material through the production and emission chain, as well as to make possible the reliable linking of essence with its metadata. The UMID is a locally generated and globally unique identifier, standardised by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), and presents a key component in digital media asset management systems.
The Association of Research Libraries, the Association of American Universities, the Coalition for Networked Information, and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, have released "The University’s Role in the Dissemination of Research and Scholarship."
Here's an excerpt:
Primary Recommendation: Campuses should initiate discussions involving administration and faculty about modifying current practices and/or its intellectual property policies such that the university retains a set of rights sufficient to ensure that broad dissemination of the research and scholarly work produced by its faculty occurs. . . .
Some specific institutional strategies include:
- Initiate a process to develop an institutional dissemination plan by explicitly evaluating existing dissemination activities, policies relating to promotion and tenure, and policies regarding faculty copyrights. For instance, charge a campus blue ribbon task force to advise the provost on key issues raised by the emergence of new forms of scholarly publishing and the gains that might be had by utilizing more effective ways of sharing the high quality results of the processes of scholarly and creative endeavor.
- With this foundation, develop priorities for supporting new dissemination strategies that enhance the value of the multifaceted investments in faculty research and scholarship by promoting the broadest possible access to it.
- Engage departments on campus in developing fresh articulations of the criteria that are appropriate for judging the quality of contributions to their discipline, criteria that embrace emerging forms of scholarly work, where those possess the same attributes of quality and contribution to new knowledge, and do not rely solely on traditional publications and historic practices.
- Develop institutional policies that enable the university to disseminate the full range of its community’s products now and in the future.
- Where local dissemination infrastructure exists (such as institutional repositories), promote its use and expand its capabilities as required. Where needed, build new infrastructure that supports documentation of the products of faculty work, both for grant management and compliance and for more general purposes.
- Seek opportunities to invest in shared dissemination infrastructure with other institutions – through shared facilities or by contributing funds to the development of dissemination services by another institution.
- Encourage faculty authors to modify contracts with publishers so that their contracts permit immediate open access or delayed public access to peer reviewed work in a manner that does not threaten the viability of the journals or monographs.
- Develop policies or strategies that redirect resources from high cost /low value dissemination practices to development of dissemination mechanisms residing inside the academy.
- Where universities support presses, work to realign presses more directly with the university mission. Encourage press investments in dissemination activities that correspond to areas of excellence on campus. Consider revising reporting relationships to encourage collaboration between presses and libraries. Invest in press/library collaborations.
The Bridgewater State College's Maxwell Library is recruiting a Digital Services Librarian.
Here's an excerpt from the ad:
The successful candidate will work collaboratively with librarians, faculty, staff, administrators and others to design, develop, deploy and provide ongoing maintenance for the Library’s digital publishing initiatives. The Digital Services Librarian will investigate, evaluate and recommend appropriate digital collection management software products and/or systems, oversee and participate in their implementation, and provide training in their use. The Digital Services Librarians will develop written workflows, policies and procedures to bring digitization projects to fruition; assist in writing grant applications to fund digitization projects; monitor professional trends, communicate positively and effectively with colleagues within and outside the Library; maintain a positive, focused customer service orientation; and apply critical and creative thinking skills to resolve problems successfully in a collegial, team-based environment. The Digital Services Librarian will represent the College and the Library in statewide and regional digitization projects, seek opportunities for participating in collaborative projects and programs; and perform other duties as assigned, which may include but not be limited to collection development responsibilities and reference services.
In "ALA, ARL, ACRL Host Meeting of Experts to Discuss Google Book Search Settlement," District Dispatch reports on the numerous questions raised about the Google Book Search Settlement in a recent meeting on that topic.
Here's an excerpt :
- Access. What will the settlement mean for protecting the public’s ability to access and use digital resources from the nation’s libraries? Since the Book Rights Registry established as a condition of the settlement will represent the interests of the authors and publishers, who will represent the interests of libraries and the public? What are the financial implications of participation? Could the settlement create a monopoly that threatens the mission of libraries by raising the prices to an unreasonable level that limits public access?
- Intellectual freedom. Are there academic freedom issues to consider? What are the implications of Google’s ability to remove works at its discretion? Will there be notification of their removal? What are the issues regarding possible access and use restrictions on the Research Corpus?
- Equitable treatment. Since not all libraries are addressed in the settlement, what impact will it have on the diverse landscape of libraries? In light of tight economic times, will this negatively affect libraries with lean budgets? Will it expand the digital divide?
- Terms of use. Under the terms of the agreement, will library users continue to enjoy the same rights to information under copyright and other laws? Will the settlement impact the legal discussions and interpretations of library exceptions that allow for library lending, limited copying and preservation?
SHERPA's RoMEO Service now includes over 500 publisher self-archiving policies
Here's an excerpt from the press release:
If an academic author wants to put their research articles on-line, they are faced with an increasingly complex situation. Evidence shows that citations to articles made openly accessible in this way are taken up and cited more often than research that is simply published in journals. Also some funding agencies require open access archiving for their research, to increase the use of the information generated.
However, some publishers prohibit authors from using their own articles in this way. Others allow it, but only under certain conditions, while others are quite happy for authors to show their work in this way.
Authors can be left confused: RoMEO helps to clarify the situation . . . .
The RoMEO service, provided by the award winning SHERPA Partnership*, uses a simple colour-code to classify policies and inform authors of what can be done with their articles, and offers users the ability to:
- View summaries of publishers' copyright policies in relation to self-archiving
- View if publisher policies comply with funding regulations, as some publishers are too restrictive and cannot be used to publish funded research
- To search journal and publisher information by Journal Title, Publisher Name and ISSN
Additional RoMEO provides lists of
- Publishers that allow the use of their PDFs in Institutional Repositories
- Publisher with Paid Options
RoMEO is seen as an essential resource by many in the Open Access community. RoMEO is funded by JISC and the Wellcome Trust. Journal information is kindly provided by the British Library's Zetoc service hosted by MIMAS
Ray English, Director of libraries at Oberlin College, has received the 2009 winner of the Hugh C. Atkinson Memorial Award.
Here's an excerpt from the press release:
Named in honor of one of the pioneers of library automation, the Atkinson Award recognizes an academic librarian who has made significant contributions in the area of library automation or management and has made notable improvements in library services or research.
"Ray English has provided transformative leadership within his own institution, his state and region, in ACRL and as a national leader in scholarly communications through SPARC," said Sarah Michalak, Hugh C. Atkinson Memorial Award committee chair and university librarian/associate provost for University Libraries at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. "The award has been given to a college librarian only once before in its 21 year history."
English was a primary founder of the ACRL scholarly communication program, serving as chair of the task force that led to the program and also as chair of the Scholarly Communication Committee from its inception until 2006. He is a long-time member and current chair of the SPARC steering committee, of which Oberlin College is a founding member. English has also lectured and written extensively on scholarly communication issues and open access. Since 1988, he has served on more than 15 ALA and ACRL committees and is a former member of the ACRL Board of Directors (1996-98).
Under English’s leadership, Oberlin became the first private, liberal arts college library to join OhioLINK. In addition, he participated in a cooperative effort with four other Ohio private colleges in establishing a new consortium, the Five Colleges of Ohio, which received a major grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for library resource sharing. He also coordinated a $475,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to incorporate information literacy into the liberal arts curriculum of the Ohio Five schools. English additionally served as co-project director of an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) National Leadership grant to create a library diversity intern program at Oberlin College from 2000-02 and since 2003 has directed four separate multi-institution grants from the Mellon Foundation totaling more than $2 million that are designed to attract undergraduates from diverse backgrounds into the library profession and encourage leadership development. The Oberlin College Library received the 2002 ACRL Excellence in Academic Libraries Award in the college category.
English received his A.B. with honors in German from Davidson College in 1969. He earned his masters in German literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1971, where he also received his M.S.L.S. in 1977 and earned his PhD in German literature in 1978.
The Hugh C. Atkinson Award is jointly sponsored by four divisions of the American Library Association: ACRL, the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS), the Library Leadership and Management Association (LAMA) and the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA). The award is funded from an endowment established to honor Hugh C. Atkinson.
The University of Virginia Library is recruiting a Digital Humanities Specialist.
Here's an excerpt from the ad:
The University of Virginia Library seeks a technically-grounded, visionary person with a deep understanding of scholarship in the humanities and social sciences to shape the services of the Scholars' Lab and Digital Scholarship R&D departments around text-based digital humanities. The successful candidate will design and implement technical services that sustain legacy content while supporting current faculty development, are forward-looking to research trends such as data mining, visualization, and social, semantic, and web services, and that further UVA Library's reputation as a leader in the digital humanities. . . .
Responsibilities: Reporting to the Director of Digital Research & Scholarship, the Digital Humanities Specialist offers and coordinates support for scholarly projects and public services around text-based digital humanities. This individual will: consult with faculty on scholarly and technical goals and best practices; perform XSL work in support of faculty projects as needed and provide targeted TEI, XML, and XSLT training for faculty and students; collaborate with Digital Scholarship R&D on the development of faculty projects with significant textual components; pursue innovative solutions to problems of ontology, markup, data mining, visualization, and display; supervise XML/XSLT efforts by Scholars' Lab students attached to faculty projects; create and offer training programs related to text-based digital humanities, assist in ongoing corpus management work related to resources developed by the former Etext Center; and follow emerging standards and methods to ensure that UVA Library practices keep pace in public service and technology support. The Digital Humanities Specialist is further expected to engage professionally in digital scholarship by publishing and presenting original research or development work.
ALA has issued an action alert regarding the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. You can use the alert's form to contact your Congressional representatives.
Here's an excerpt:
The next 36 to 48 hours is critical to get millions, maybe billions, of dollars for libraries in the stimulus package. We need every single library supporter to start sending messages and calling congressional offices so that we can keep important library provisions in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). As you all know, libraries are a key source of free Internet access to look for jobs and so much more. Our libraries provide essential services that stimulate our local economies, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provides crucial funding for libraries to continue and build upon them. This week, the Senate and House versions of the economic stimulus package will go to conference to reconcile these pieces of legislation, and your calls and e-mails will help protect this funding. There are pros and cons of each version of the stimulus, and we need to protect the parts that benefit our communities.
In the coming days, you will receive a lot of e-mails from us, and your advocacy will be the key to our success. Last week, Senate Amendment 501 could have stripped broadband funding from their version of the bill but your calls and e-mails to your elected officials defeated this amendment and successfully protected this funding. Now, more than ever, your activism is needed. Over 1,250 calls went to our elected officials, and now we need even more.
Please call your elected officials and tell them to communicate with the conferees in support of the following parts in both the House and the Senate versions:
- Restore education construction funds eliminated from the Senate version of the ARRA. The House version of the ARRA would provide $14 billion for K-12 construction and $6 billion for higher education construction and specifically mention libraries as an allowable use of funds. The K-12 construction funds would create 300,000 jobs.
- Restore the money cut from the State Stabilization Fund in the Senate bill to $79 billion to and restore the Governors ability to use a portion of the funds at his or her discretion.
- Maintain $8 billion for ‘Broadband Technology Opportunities Program’ for robust broadband to all of America including “fiber to the libraries for the 21st century.”
- No less than $200 million that shall be available for competitive grants for expanding public computer center capacity, including community colleges and public libraries.
- Open access of networks should be upheld and not include provisions allowing intrusive network management techniques.
If your elected officials are one of the following, it is even more critical that you contact them, as they are conferees on this legislation and control what stays in and what will be taken out.
Please contact the following and use the same talking points:
Appropriations Chairman Obey (D-WI)
Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY)
Commerce Chairman Waxman (D-CA)
Appropriations Ranking Member Jerry Lewis (R-CA)
Ways and Means Ranking Member Dave Camp (R-MI)
Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)
Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT)
Appropriations Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-HI)
Finance Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
Appropriations Ranking Member Thad Cochran (R-MS)
The University of Pennsylvania Libraries and Kirtas Technologies will offer a new service that allows customers to request that public domain books in Penn's collection be digitized and printed on request.
Here's an excerpt from the press release:
Today, Kirtas announces a partnership with the University of Pennsylvania Libraries to make over 200,000 titles available to the public in a unique way.
Using existing information drawn from Penn's catalog records, Kirtas is able to offer out-of-copyright books for sale through its own retail site, www.kirtasbooks.com. What makes this initiative unique is that the books can be offered for sale before they are ever digitized, so there is no up-front printing, production or storage cost.
"This partnership allows us to gauge reader interest in on-demand digitization and printing services," said Carton Rogers, Vice Provost and Director of Libraries at the University of Pennsylvania. "That frees us from difficult selection decisions and lets the digital collection grow in response to user demand. The model is efficient and minimizes the risk as we develop new ways of addressing information needs."
Through www.kirtasbooks.com, customers will be able to search for a desired title, and when found, place a "digitize for me" request. The desired book will be pulled from Penn's shelves, digitized, processed by Kirtas for optimal reading and printing, and a newly-printed copy will be shipped to the initiator. Or, the customer can purchase access to an online-only version of the book. Once the book has been digitized, it is returned undamaged to the library shelf. . . .
Through this unique partnership with Kirtas, the Penn Libraries will also earn income on orders of its books. Distribution rights are non-exclusive so the books can be made available through the Penn Libraries, as well as other distribution channels at the library's request.
In "New Kindle Audio Feature Causes a Stir," Paul Aiken, Executive Director of the Authors Guild, said about the new Kindle's read-aloud feature: "They don't have the right to read a book out loud. That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law."
In reaction, John Herrman at Gizmodo said ("Authors Guild Claims Kindle 2 Text-to-Speech Somehow Violates Copyright"): "the idea that a robotic reading of text is materially equivalent to a proper, recorded audio version of a book—read by the author in many cases—is ridiculous."
Mike Masnick at Techdirt said ("According To Author's Guild, You Cannot Read Books Out Loud"):
By that reasoning pretty much any use of text-to-speech software is illegal, which would make for a fascinating legal case. And, actually, if you take that reasoning further, any reading out loud from a book that is not yours is also a violation of copyright law, according to Aitken. Read to your kids at night? Watch out for the Authors Guild police banging down your door.
Public Knowledge has issued an action alert: "UPDATE: Say No to Copyright Filtering in Broadband Stimulus."
Here's an excerpt:
The House and Senate stimulus packages passed without copyright filtering language attached, but now the concern is that the language could return in the closed-door conference committee that works out the differences between the bills. Right now, we need you to contact those conferees and tell them to leave out this controversial provision.
Hollywood’s lobbyists are running all over the Hill to sneak in a copyright filtering provision into the stimulus package.
You can use the alert to send a message to your Congressional representative.
An older alert provides background information about a defeated amendment to the bill that lobbyists are apparently trying to revive in the conference committee.
The Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: 2008 Annual Edition is now available from Digital Scholarship. Annual editions of the bibliography are PDF files designed for printing. This edition is over 285 pages long.
It presents over 3,350 articles, books, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet. Where possible, links are provided to works that are freely available on the Internet, including e-prints in disciplinary archives and institutional repositories.
The bibliography has the following sections:
1 Economic Issues
2 Electronic Books and Texts
2.1 Case Studies and History
2.2 General Works
2.3 Library Issues
3 Electronic Serials
3.1 Case Studies and History
3.2 Critiques
3.3 Electronic Distribution of Printed Journals
3.4 General Works
3.5 Library Issues
3.6 Research
4 General Works
5 Legal Issues
5.1 Intellectual Property Rights
5.2 License Agreements
6 Library Issues
6.1 Cataloging, Identifiers, Linking, and Metadata
6.2 Digital Libraries
6.3 General Works
6.4 Information Integrity and Preservation
7 New Publishing Models
8 Publisher Issues
8.1 Digital Rights Management
9 Repositories, E-Prints, and OAI
Appendix A. Related Bibliographies
Appendix B. About the Author
Ned Snow, Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville School of Law, has made "Proving Fair Use: Burden of Proof as Burden of Speech" available on SSRN.
Here's an excerpt:
Requiring fair users to prove the fairness of their expression threatens fair use‘s very purpose—to protect speech. . . . Facing a hefty punishment for losing the uphill battle of proof, fair users self censor. The burden chills the speech that fair use is intended to protect.
Judicial placement of the burden with fair users represents an attempt to foster expression by safeguarding copyright. The attempt has failed miserably. The burden represents heavy-handed patrolling in the marketplace of ideas. Trying to punish those who steal, courts are punishing those who share. They have turned an open emporium of exchange into a highbrow boutique for the wealthy. It is therefore time to construe fair use as it was originally intended—a doctrine that defines the scope of copyright‘s rights. It is time to restore the burden of proof to plaintiffs. It is time to return to the traditional contours of copyright that will cultivate creativity.
In "Wikipedia Bolts Its Open Door," Giles Hattersley reports that Jimmy Wales will propose that changes to popular Wiki pages (e.g., biographies of living persons) be screened by "core users" prior to publication on the site.
Wales is quoted as saying:
One of the great misconceptions about us is this idea that Wikipedia is anti-elitist. That’s just wrong. We are actually extremely snobby . . . . These core users really manage and enforce our standards. If it weren’t for them Wikipedia would be chock full of rubbish.
Google is developing a peer review tool called GPeerReview. (Thanks to Google Scholar Blog.)
Here's an excerpt from the project page:
With GPeerReview, you can:
- Publish immediately (and get reviews later),
- Seek an unlimited number of reviews,
- Verify the integrity of the reviews,
- Verify the credibility of the reviewers,
- Publish without limitation on format, style, or number of pages,
- Maintain complete copyright ownership of your works, and
- Enhance the acclaim of your already-published works.
In "Mass Digitization Projects Update," Heather Christenson, the California Digital Library's Mass Digitization Project Manager, overviews UC's 2008 mass digitization efforts.
Here's an excerpt:
2008 was a busy year for our UC Libraries’ book digitization activities. We continue digitizing tens of thousands of books from our print collections from many libraries across UC. In the latter half of 2008, our mass digitization projects have responded to significant changes and developments in the scholarly and commercial world: Microsoft decided to end its Live Search Books program which funded a portion of UC book digitization, Google announced a Settlement with authors and publishers, and UC allied with the University of Michigan, Indiana University, and the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, or CIC (a consortium of Big Ten Plus universities in the Midwest) to anchor the new HathiTrust digital repository. Throughout, we have continued to steadily digitize books in partnership with the Internet Archive and Google.
Bits has live blogged the rollout of the much anticipated Kindle 2.0 e-book reader.
MediaMemo has posted the official press release.
The Frederick L. Ehrman Library at New York University is recruiting a Digital Projects Librarian.
Here's an excerpt from the ad:
The Digital Projects Librarian will join the Library Medical Informatics Group (LMIG) in the provision of high-quality computing services to the faculty and staff of the libraries, as well as to the libraries' constituencies in the Medical Center. The Digital Projects Librarian will take the lead role in coordinating the design, creation, and maintenance of the libraries' digital projects in a manner that is consistent with NYU Medical Center policies and supports library resources of the NYU Health Sciences Libraries at the NYU School of Medicine, College of Dentistry and Nursing, Bellevue Hospital and the Hospital for Joint Diseases as well as the library's three consumer health branches.
The Digital Projects Librarian is responsible for the coordination of the libraries' digital initiatives. Working in a highly integrated team environment, the Digital Projects Librarian will assess appropriate standards, policies, and procedures for application to the library's digital projects and ensure continued development and maintenance of the libraries' digital initiatives, which include projects with the Archives, digital resources targeted for special groups, and joint projects with the Medical Education IT services unit and other departments of the School of Medicine.
This is a tenure track position and reports to the Associate Director for Library Systems.
ARL has released Transformational Times: An Environmental Scan Prepared for the ARL Strategic Plan Review Task Force.
Here's an excerpt:
In looking across the key trends that are described below, some common threads recur.
- Libraries need to change their practices for managing traditional content and develop new capabilities for dealing with digital materials of all types, but especially new forms of scholarship, teaching and learning resources, special collections (particularly hidden collections), and research data.
- Content industries inevitably seek to extend control over the copyright regime and over content, in general, while libraries, authors, and research institutions endeavor to provide more access to and active management of the intellectual assets produced by the academy.
- Accountability and assessment are essential for data-driven decision making within libraries, on campus, and with funders and policy makers.
- Collaborative approaches are being applied to new activities both with regard to traditional operations as well as emerging functions.
- Radical reconfiguration of research library organizations and services is needed coupled with an increasingly diverse and talented staff to provide needed leadership and technical skills to respond to the rapidly changing environment.
- New relationships must be formed with library users to support rapid shifts in research and teaching practices.
- ARL and its member libraries must cultivate alliances and partnerships to advance all strategic arenas identified as important for the Association.
The McDermott Library at the University of Texas at Dallas has launched its institutional repository, Treasures @ UT Dallas, using the Texas Digital Library's DSpace system.
Read more about it at "Tools Helping Library Share its Wealth of Material."
