Professional Development

This year, the North American Serials Interest Group met in Phoenix, Arizona for its annual conference. Steve Kelley and I represented ZSR at the conference, and the weather became It may have been a “dry heat”, but 103 degrees Fahrenheit was still hot in every sense. Thankfully, the conference was mostly held indoors and away from the warming rays.

The theme of this year’s conference was “Taking the Sting out of Serials”, and there were strategy sessions, tactics sessions, and vision sessions where ideas were presented to address this issue. In the midst of these, however, were three concepts that were on the minds of many conference attendees.

• Integrated library systems- the next generation. With the aging of current library systems, questions are being asked about how an upcoming ILS will handle the next generation of library resources. Further, the market for the open source ILS (such as Evergreen, Koha and OPALS) continues to grow in relation to the current players.
• ERM systems. The open source ERM is also taking off, with libraries considering a stand-alone model (GoldRush and HERMES, for example) rather than an interconnected model with the ILS. Still, many libraries are facing how to fully incorporate an ERM into established workflows while creating new procedures around its operation.
• Staff resources toward e-resources. Electronic resource require a workflow all of their in order to guarantee access from the point of order to ongoing maintenance. Library staff is being tapped to deal with the fine points of the process, and libraries are determining the best procedures to commit librarians and support staff toward effective management. From reorganization to outsourcing, solutions are being explored to make up for the changes in personnel.

The session I attended covered a wide range of issues. The standouts for me were:
• “Taking the Sting out of Multiple Format Serials Displays”. This session, presented by two librarians at the University of Kentucky, described how they used bib linking to “join” records of differing formats together on a single OPAC display. For example, if one were searching for Library Journal and arrived at the record for the print journal, the link to the electronic version would be available within the same display. UK also used this procedure for print titles that had been canceled and linked them to their online counterparts, and they said that it had great success with the understanding of patrons. Also, UK is a Voyager site too.
• “Marketing Library Database Services”. Elsevier is developing a student training program in which graduate students are instructed on how to use Elsevier products (such as SCOPUS) as well as online services that are specific to individual libraries. When they return to their home institutions, these graduate students would become trainers for faculty and students alike about databases and journal products. I found this to be an interesting approach, although the application would definitely vary from one library to another.
• “Managing Divergence of Print and Online Journals”. The National Library of Medicine charged a working group that would investigate the differences in content between the print and online versions of its journal subscriptions. The implications included the available content between print and online, but it also involved interlibrary loan requests for content that may be restricted by the terms of a license agreement. The working group reached several conclusions but these in turn led to other questions such as article-level access and workflow reorganization.

Like Steve said in his post, I don’t see Phoenix on my short list of retirement hot spots for the future (though it is a hot spot of another kind). However, I did take some pictures from the trip, and they can be viewed at this link.

From June 5 to 8, Chris and I attended the 2008 NASIG Conference in Phoenix, Arizona at the Tapatio Cliffs Resort, which sounds nice until you account for the fact that Arizona is a sun-blasted hellscape unfit for human habitation. Nevertheless, I attended a number of useful sessions at the conference. Highlights included:

Real ERM Implementations: Notes from the Field - a panel discussion including Ted Fons of Innovative Interfaces (moderator), Karl Maria Fattig of Bowdoin College, Jeff Daniels of Grand Valley State University, Paul Moeller of University of Colorado, and Toni Katz of Colby College. The panelists discussed their experiences implementing an ERM at their library. The libraries ranged in size of staff, size of collection, timeline and preparation of implementation, and in their staff’s enthusiasm for the process. However, a few common concerns and observations emerged. Far from reducing the amount of work performed by Technical Services, the implementation of the ERM meant that staff spent more time working with the knowledge base and link resolver, rather than doing copy or original cataloging. The ERM allowed information regarding terms of use and other acquisition information to be consolidated in one generally accessible location, and allowed for the divorcing of content from the management of that content. In order to implement the ERM, huge flows of communication had to be maintained among all parties involved and, in at least one case, a long, often painful process of re-working and re-designing all workflows and responsibilities had to be performed, with a goal of designing the system as if it were a new start-up (a process that included three consecutive all-day meetings, with the director present forcing the process along). It was difficult to figure out the workflow and procedure consequences of implementing the ERM, and was made more difficult by the fact that there were no standards for data entry into the ERM. All recommended that planning for ERM implementation should be thorough, have sufficiently long timelines, should bring in all stakeholders (including public services), and should encompass widespread training among the staff in accessing the ERM.

When Did (E)-books Become Serials? - a panel discussion including Kim Armstrong of CIC, Bob Nardini of Coutts, Peter McCracken of Serials Solutions and Rick Lugg of R2 Consulting. The gist of this presentation was that the similarities in the management of e-books and e-serials are becoming greater than the similarities that e-books share with print monographs in terms of management. The primary similarity is that e-books and e-journals share similar deliver systems. Also, e-books are like e-journals in that they are available by subscription, and they are acquired primarily by pre-defined publications from the publisher or by self-selected collections by subscription. However, e-books are not like e-journals in that there are many more individual titles that require many more individual decisions, they have less granular content, there are questions of long-term ownership, their purchase may include platform or maintenance fees, monographs have a strong tradition of expert selection, monographs tend to have more data in their bibliographic records than serials which creates metadata issues, they are discovered traditionally by the OPAC and MARC records, and linking and aggregation are less developed. The acquisition of e-books is based on inventories of individual titles and selections are decided by the library/customer. There is often coordination with print access in acquiring e-books. And e-books make possible acquisition on demand (bibliographic records for e-books are loaded into the catalog, and if a customer selects the book for access, it is purchased at that point). The acquisition of e-books also raises the issue of whether to subscribe to e-books or purchase them, if purchasing them is even possible. Libraries generally say they don’t like subscriptions, but they have a history of purchasing subscriptions, so it’s very likely that publishers will continue to offer e-books by subscription. The management of e-books is complicated by the existence of multiple editions with many different ISBNs, making it difficult to collate editions of a single title (although the xISBN may help here). Different editions in multiple languages also add problems with efficient discovery of the e-book you’re looking for. Serials Solutions announced at the conference that they have added e-books to their knowledge base, and will now be providing management and tracking resources for e-books.

MARC Holdings Conversion: Now That We’re Here, What Do We Do? - a panel discussion including Steve Shadle of University of Washington (moderator), Frieda Rosenberg of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Ted Schwitzner, Illinois State University, Sion Romaine of University of Washington, and Naomi Young of University of Florida. This panel discussion covered the experiences of various libraries in implementing full MARC format holdings records in their catalogs. The benefits include establishing prediction patterns for claiming, allowing for automatic update of holdings summaries, and the ability to upload holdings records directly to OCLC’s Union List. However, the planning for the conversion and the amount of work required is large and daunting. Here at Wake Forest, we use only a couple of fields in the MARC holdings records and have other means of establishing claim patterns, updating our holdings summaries and Union List records, which do not require very much work. Or, at least not enough work to make it worth our while to fully implement the MARC holdings record. It may become an issue when we are preparing to migrate to another system, but I recommend that until then we leave our current system in place.

Last Tuesday, I attended the session on “A Brave New World: Teaching and Learning with ThinkPads” by Susan Borwick, Professor of Music, and Jolie Tingen, Instructional Technologist for the Music Dept. They described how their collaborative efforts contributed to effective teaching and learning. Specifically, the Instructional Technologist’s role is “to ensure that students and faculty don’t need to get caught up in the technical details of making seamless learning happen.” In addition, Prof. Borwick made an interesting point that education is limited by “time” and “place” (e.g., books located in the library), but the use of technology has eliminated the “place” factor. “With mobile technology, students learn everywhere, students can study anywhere, and students engage with the material and the instructor much more of the time. Mobile technology allows more fully for seamless learning.” Last, Prof. Borwick mentioned that she keeps up with latest technological developments not only through her collaboration with Ms. Tingen, but also through technology training sessions offered by ZSR Library!

Center for Intellectual Property in the Digital Environment

Conference: Day 2

A long and very theory driven day…

Keynote Address: Georgia Harper

“The Economics of Copyright and the Impact on Academia: Mass Digitization and Copyright Law, Policy and Practice”

Georgia Harper started her speech with a bang, proposing that anyone who is looking for change in the arena of copyright should “forget Congress.”(This won her some derisive remarks about her position in subsequent sessions.)Since the methodology that is employed by Congress when evaluating change in Copyright Law is to put the powerless (those that represent the public interest) together with the powerful (copyright holders) and then implement recommendations that come forth, the powerful continue to increase the length of time that copyright will reign over works.Congress is, by virtue of this scheme, also marginalizing its own hold over the issue.

Market response: So in this vacuum, markets are growing that will sidestep the law.Steve Jobs is providing for demand for legitimate online entertainment.Creative Commons repudiates the overly broad scope of protection, and Google Books, some say, confronts it head on.Television has put its own full length episodes on the web.New York Times has abandoned its online subscription program.NIH has mandated that all publications written as a result of its funding will be provided electronically, full text to users regardless of copyright leading to greater access.

Orphan Works:The orphan works bills that are in Congress will not be passed, according to Ms. Harper.Some solutions might include the following. Construct the copyright evidence base, (OCLC is working on this.)Or register works after the first term by paying a single dollar to continue copyright.If the owner of the copyright won’t even pay a dollar to continue to enforce it, then it truly is not commercially viable enough to keep under copyright protection, and it should be in the public domain.In the arena of digitized photgraphs, utilize the web to publish photos and have people add info they know about them to identify copyright.(“Supply what information you have, and also tell us how you know what you know about the image.”)Work with the strength of the digital environment, instead of against it.Libraries know that convenience wins.Markets will come up with ways to step aside the copyright law if the copyright law won’t step aside.The copyright holders will maintain that “if there is value to be created from my work it should go into my pocket.”But business models would suggest that if you erect barriers of time and expense, and compete with tons of free legal stuff, and you want attention, don’t make it hard for people to give it to you.

Scanning full text for indexing, is it a violation of copyright?If you put your work online it will be indexed.Courts have found that, when creating images, thumbnails are fair use.Still to be determined are issues where indexing companies are linking to infringing copies (Perfect 10 v Google & Amazon).Google Book Search is stepping up the pressure to put full-text online, and change copyright law. Users want search results to yield clickable links.

We don’t know how the legal issues will settle.Google’s position, open access trumps copyright.This is good for Google, and good for readers, and maybe good for authors, publishers and libraries, too.What publishers and creators should realize is that what is difficult to find or inconvenient in an increasingly digital environment, is what is NOT getting read.

In 3 and a half years in this business model, there is evidence that openness beats armor.The benefits of convenience outweigh the weight of law and what results is a massive disrespect for the law.Congress and copyright law is a one way ratchet:it will always be more restrictive and longer.The market actors come up with solutions to future problems.In a free market they can try new things.They will either fail or succeed, but we will always learn something.

Panel One:Response to Keynote Address

Paul Jaeger, Director of the Center for Information Policy and Electronic Government and an Assistant Professor in the College of Information Studies at Univ of Maryland. (Moderator)

Bill Carney, Content Management, Business Development, OCLC, Inc. spoke first.OCLC is going to launch a new initiative in July, 2008 that will create a copyright registry that can be utilized by all libraries much the same way as cataloging responsibility is shared among the consortium.Libraries can search the registry for evidence of copyright in works they are interested in.If found, they can use the information therein.If not found, and the library worker continues to search for the information, they can add it into the database.Some of the librarians in the audience balked during question and answer about utilizing the hard work of librarians to populate OCLCs database.Mr. Carney responded that he was aware of that, but wanted to use the power of OCLC to unify this data, and they were uniquely poised to do that.

Jon Orwant spoke next.He is the engineering manager of Google in the Boston office.He said that Google is good at indexing.Sometimes answers to a particular question are on the web.Sometimes the answers are in newspapers and books.Where rights permit—let them read!The hard part is how to codify legal code into C++ code.When the book was published + 14 is easy to codify.When the author died + 70 is less easy to codify.And if the author died “for France” they get death plus 100 years.So now Google needs to know when they died, and how they lived in order to know what the copyright restrictions are.Strong DRM that eliminates options to cheat does not exist.Metadata can be created that will give the rights history.The Orphan Works legislation that is currently before Congress includes how to deal with graphic as well as written works.Photographers, graphic artists and fabric producers are most afraid of this legislation because their works are so hard to identify.Metadata can be used to discern copyright registry even without the actual book, CD or image.Even the copyright owner can add description.Image matching software that will let us match image even allowing for differences in size and shading is now possible.The registry of copyright will allow us to decouple evidence from policy.And decouple policy from procedure.How many members of the public will equal one NACO certified librarian?

Third on the panel was Patrick Ross, executive director of Copyright Alliance.He stated that people who value copyright law to protect their work are seen as obstructionists who are frozen in the last century.Creators are inspired because of copyright protection, to create works…(not sure I agree with that particular analysis.)Without copyright, creators will not create.He was most vehement in his criticism of Georgia Harper’s assertion that Congress will not solve the problem.Copyright holders continue to assert that copyright protection is necessary to have creative works continue to be produced.But while you can’t eliminate copyright OR lock all content down, we should accept the principle of copyright.In responding to the sentence “If the law doesn’t step aside, we will side step the law” he responded that the end doesn’t justify the means.

Luncheon Speaker: Gigi Sohn, Public Knowledge

“Discussion of ‘Public Knowledge’ Copyright Principle

For the past 35 years, copyright policies have been expanding in an unmitigated fashion.It is a clear mis-match between policy (which was written pre-VCR) and our current technology and the law.The pendulum has been swinging ever farther away from our digital reality and we need to swing the pendulum back.She outlined six points to better align the needs of people in the digital age with the copyright law:

.Fair use reform: expanded to add transformative and non-commercial use of content, and making a digital copy for indexing as not an infringement.

. Limits on secondary liability: on manufacturers of technology who have substantial non-infringing use

.Protections against copyright abuse: deter copyright holders from filing frivolous requests to take material down from websites, and provide legal relief for legitimate users of a work.

.Fair and Accessible Licensing: simplify rights to a musical work.

.Orphan works reform: limit damages for the use of works which a copyright holder cannot be found after a “good faith” search.

.Notice of Technological and Contractual Restrictions on Digital Media: require copyright holders to provide a clear and simple notice to users of any limitations on their ability to make a fair use of a product.

Panel Two:Changing Cultural Definitions and the Impact on Copyright and Scholarship

Karla Hahn: Director of Office of Scholarly Communication at ARL. (Moderator)

Michael Newman: Georgetown University; Kenneth Hamma, J. Paul Getty Trust; Stuart M. Shieber, Harvard University

“Boats against the Current: Students Rights, University Policy and Next-Generation Social Networking”

Universities are fighting a losing battle trying to stay current and update policy in the face of changes in technology.Our understanding is always obsolete by the time policy is written.Faculty want to incorporate more and richer resources into their courses, (online only or online supported).They utilize media in course management systems, without knowing if it’s reasonable or legal.Scan in documents of former students to use as examples of best practices; add YouTube videos; snippets from encrypted DVDs.

Students have rights to their Academic IP by default, but some universities try to circumvent those rights by having students sign agreements that hand over some or all rights to the university that supported their research.Can they refuse?It is unclear.Others secure rights for their students explicitly and make no claim to their work, and it’s written into policy.Still others say that faculty can ask to make use of their work, but students can refuse to comply.And some make provisions that are equally strong for students, faculty and staff of institutions to allow the author to maintain copyright ownership.

Increasing use of social networking sites to be the locus for learning and distribution of material is also challenging.Social networking is used to being disinterested in copyright issues; personal content, external to the university, few policy implications.But increasingly it will become necessary to confront these issues if it becomes the place for course content.There is potential to become a sharable space for group projects, digital rights management necessary, personal file and storage management.G-mail explicitly states that content posted through their service transfers all licenses to use to Google.

Universities need a policy for how much substantive access faculty members have for student’s work.A Pugh Initiative recommended that faculty be given great license to access and maintain their copyright over work created while on staff.But universities maintain that a substantial use of their resources went into the creation and therefore they can and should be able to claim copyright.This could extend to course material and course content that is in a course management software environment.

Panel Three:

P2P, virtual worlds, wikis, blogs, vlogs etc: Are these technologies dismantling copyright?

Moderator Lateef Mtima, Professor of Law and the Founder and Director of the Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice at Howard University School of Law.

Mary Madden, Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Patricia Aufderheide, Professor in School of Communication at American University in Washington DC and Director of Social Media.

(the fourth panelist, who was supposed to appear through Second Life on the big screen, couldn’t present due to technical difficulties.)

This panel discussed emerging technologies in use on college campuses and their impact on copyright.Horizon Report available at http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2008-Horizon-Report.pdf

Copyright was written to keep people from gaining by illicit uses of others’ work.Now, copying, mixing, and re-mixing is a form of creative expression.People are doing it to take creativity to a higher place, but no one will actually profit from it.

Students at the college level are demanding more content delivered electronically, not just to desk tops and lap tops but to cell phones, ipods, mobile devices.This presents both an opportunity to creatively respond to this need, but also has serious implications on digitization of materials to be delivered this way.Students are “always on”, and expect instant access and immediate response.

Some statistics on how we use the web:70% of adults use the internet, but 90% of teens do.Ninety-two % of kids aged 12 to 18 use the internet.57% of online adults have used the internet to watch or download video, and 19% do so daily.Frequency and amount is correlated to the speed of the users’ connection to the internet.Three out of 4 young adults, (18-29) use the internet to download video daily.Educational videos are frequently watched or downloaded, too.One in 5 users are downloading educational video content every day.One in ten young adult have created blogs, 4 times that many read it.Teen content creators have initiated conversations on the web.They experiment without fear.Today’s kids are tomorrows innovators.

Ownership and authorized use is peripheral to them.Users interests take a back seat.Are these technologies dismantling copyright?Under the right pressure, copyright will be reformed.The benefit to the culture is greater than the harm to individuals who have been victimized.

Panel 4:Legislative Panel

Kim Bonner, Executive Director of the Center for Intellectual Property in the Digital Environment.(Moderator)

Oliver Metzer, Policy Planning in the Office of Policy and International Affairs at the US Copyright Office.

Robert Samors, Associate VP for Research and Science Policy and Director of Information Technology at National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges.

Jonathan Band, legislative and appellate advocate.

Discussed the Orphan Works legislation currently before Congress.Orphan Works are defined as works that are protected by copyright law, but are unable to be used or cited because the copyright owner is unable to be found even after a diligent search.The legislation before Congress will limit liability of those users who searched for but could not find the owner of a copyrighted work, who then go ahead and use the material anyway.The settlement amount is limited to the value the original agreement would have been if the copyright holder had been found.Statutory damages and court costs would not be involved in the transaction.Some versions of the bills before congress include a checklist to determine when a diligent search is completed.

This legislation does not affect “fair use.”It takes steps to assure that each party will negotiate in good faith.(Ie that neither the infringer will be able to “low ball” the copyright holder and the copyright holder will be unable to “high ball” the infringer, just to have the other one have to go through the hassle of taking them to court.)

Center for Intellectual Property in the Digital Environment

Conference: Day 3

Round Table Discussions: Georgia Harper and Carrie Russell

Our table discussed: University, Innovation & Copyright: How to Become an Effective Advocate and Move Your Community from Baltic Avenue to Park Place

As students and faculty begin to use new technologies (flickr, facebook, second Life, etc) we are charged with understanding the associated copyright concerns.Barriers we have run into when promoting the proper use of copyrighted materials to the campus community include:inability to get in front of an interested audience and not being aware of what they are doing that might be infringing.Challenges are different now with new technologies, online classrooms, online course content.Being an effective advocate includes being an effective copyright educator and a point person on copyright issues.

One strategy is to try to talk to the admin assistants in each department instead of the faculty themselves.Develop user policies that are timely and extend beyond the reach of the library…policies at the institution level.Advocate for fair use.Get a copyright component into all of the classes so that the students (and faculty) can be aware of their rights as producers, and their responsibilities as users.We should start a copyright education movement on our campuses.

Additional information from all of the tables on all of the roundtable discussions will be forthcoming from the conference.

2008 NC Independent Colleges and Universities (NCICU),

Purchasing Committee Meeting, May 28-29

by Lauren Corbett and Carol Cramer

• For the first time in the history of the group, sessions were not restricted to vendors and purchasing, which was discussed as a problem at the end of the meeting, with suggestions to divide into separate days for vendors/purchasing and other topics
• This year information literacy was the topic for several presentations
• References to SACS prep dominated the discussions
  • Make sure everyone knows the QEP
  • interdisciplinary learning was a SACS interest
  • feedback from users is required, not just statistics

• Members gave demos of WorldCat Collection Analysis and RCL Web. Duke uses WCCA but RCL Web seemed to elicit the most interest, perhaps due to size of institution and cost
• The Endeca implementation by Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN) was demonstrated by Derek Rodriguez (formerly Davidson College’s systems librarian). It seemed resource-heavy in terms of programmers; definitely not an out-of-the box solution for faceted searching of library catalogs.
• NC LIVE will send the bill in early fall for 1008-09, which is a timeline change in response to requests, so that both libraries and NC LIVE have better cash flow.
• The only new info from the SOLINET/PALINET merger update (i.e. not already on the website) is that 2 more town hall meetings are to be scheduled for NC since several were canceled due to single person sign-ups.
• In a session on user surveys, one suggestion was to have Institutional Research help write your questions, since they are more versed in writing surveys than we are.
• And finally… Lauren and Carol brought identical T-shirts to use as sleepwear. We had both acquired these shirts at the 2007 Charleston Conference.

On Friday I attended the NC Publications Depository System Meeting meeting in Raleigh. I went since Mary H. has left and Mary Lib was on previously scheduled vacation, but it turns out that I was our representative at the last meeting (in 2006), too, so I’m starting to feel like a part of the group! And, as last time, I left the meeting feeling that the NC Library understands the bigger picture and what they need to do to be most relevant and useful for people today.

We covered a lot of information through the course of the day, so if you have specific questions, I’d be happy to talk one-on-one. We learned about digitization, the future of the depository program, and met the new library staff members.

The library is charged with making government publications available to the people of North Carolina. Traditionally this has meant the depository program, where materials are sent out to libraries throughout the state. With the internet, the library is exploring providing access to digital collections. Of course the depository libraries, particularly the academic ones, would like MARC records for the NC publications to integrate this search into the catalog. However, for the general public it is probably more important to get the library’s holdings to rise to the top of a Google search.

The library has made tremendous progress in making digital materials available, starting with the formation of the Digital Information Management Program. In case you are interested in seeing their work, here are the links to their projects:

• Digital Repository
• An Era of Promise and Progress, 1863-1910
• Eugenics in North Carolina
• From Crossroads to Capital: The Early History of Raleigh, North Carolina
• North Carolina State Government Web Site Archives
• Influenza: 1918-1919
• Malaria Data for North Carolina: 1900-1940
• State Publications Collection
• Transforming the Tarheel State: The Legacy of Public Libraries in North Carolina (working site)
• Wildcats Never Quit: North Carolina in World War I

I always enjoy finding out what the State Library is up to, and the people are great. This meeting lived up to my expectations and I can’t wait to hear what progress they make over the next two years!