Professional Development

I thought I’d jump in and do my post before all of the “good” sessions got reported on by others. BUt in truth, they were ALL good.

In the keynote by Joyce Ogburn, she talked about some of the entrepreneurial initiatives that they’d done at her institution, the Marriott Library at the University of Utah. The coolest was the Western Sound Scape where they are capturing and cataloging western sounds from nature. We could to that! Couldn’t we? The “Eastern Sound Scape.” I’ll go out to the mountains of Western North Carolina with a backpack and a microphone any day…well maybe not TODAY, but any sunny day!

My first session on Wednesday was with Gillian McCombs and Rob Walker from Southern Methodist University in Dallas and a presentation entitled “Carpe Digital, or Reinventing a 1980s AV Center as an Entrepreneurial Digital Services Center.” The two presenters discussed how they took a center that had been entrenched in classroom support, (delivering materials to campus classrooms, providing overhead projectors, DVD players, and slide projectors), and being the videographers, filming campus events for their archive, to a center located in the library that provides digitization assistance and a video and film production lab to users. Getting there was a hard road and took lots of convincing as at the outset, they had no interest from the faculty or students for such a center in 2001. But, with vision and determination, and a great deal of hutzpah from the two presenters, they looked forward 7 years to what will be needed, and worked to make it happen. They got very little additional funding, but creatively worked through all of the obstacles a little at a time.

The second session on Wednesday was the one that I presented on the WTL 5K. It was sparsely attended, with just a handful of people I didn’t know in the audience. (Mary S., Patty, Ellen, Heather, Lynn and Bill were there and they were, literally, half the audience.) It was fun to relive the good times. At the end of the presentation I was approached by the rep from EBSCO who suggested that he might be able to get a donation for our 5k this fall, and that at the very least he will run in it. He lives in Charlotte. I also got a high five from the director of High Point Public Library who said he might be interested in running an event like this. I said I’d be happy to help, just so long as he picks a different weekend than ours.

The final presentation of Wednesday was given by Camilla Baker and Michelle DeLoach at Augusta State University who gave a presentation on “Study Space for Students with Young Children.” They took an innovative approach to providing services to students who had no choice but to bring their children along when they needed to study, and created a study room for them. The school is a commuter school that has a large population of students who have small children and they were worried about retention of these students if they didn’t find some way to meet the need. They retrofited two small computer labs that had a connecting door and turned one into the study lounge, and one into the play area. They fitted the study lounge up with traditional furnishings, (desk, table, chairs, whiteboard, 3 computers) and put in bean bags, a book shelf with kids materials, a DVD player and DVDs and an assortment of games for the kids in the adjoining room. The parents need to sign in at the circulation desk to get the passcode to enter. They’ve had good response from some parents who admit that but for this study room they would have had to drop out of school.

The afterhours reception that was held at the Weatherspoon Art Gallery on UNCG was quite the elegant affair. We took great pains to have just the right food and drink and kept the galleries open to allow for quiet contemplation and viewing by all of the conference attendees. Unfortunately, the thunder and lightning and rain stole our thunder. Ask Lynn about her harrowing trip down Spring Garden and the floating trash can that almost took her out. This will be known as the Conference that survived the great Greensboro Flood of ‘09.

Thursday morning’s presentation I attended “Meeting an Unmet Need: Extending the Learning Commons Concept Through On-Campus Partnerships and Branding”. La Loria Konata, from Georgia State University discussed all of the ways that they have marketed the library, and the Learning Commons to campus. She discussed the training that was provided to staff; the creation of new programs called “Write Right” (a writing center) and “Cite it Right” (Zotero and End Note training). “Reference-to-go” is a program that they created to put librarians in the Student Center the week before exams to make them more available for consultation. She also said that when they started to make study rooms bookable, they contemplated calling it “Get a Room!” but decided against it since it’s a little too salacious. They’ve also undergone a big change to their website and embedded some home cooked video meant to get the word out about different services. They call their finals study break “Chillax” , serve pizza and show “Family Guy” episodes on a smart board in their computer lab. They had so much going on to engage the students and get them excited about library services, and the students are responding.

The final session I attended was called “Horses and Hoops: New Approaches to Oral History in a Digital Environment.” Doug Boyd from the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky gave a great talk about how he leveraged opportunity to expand the size, endowment and presence of their oral history project on campus. The most exciting part of the presentation was his demonstration of the OHMS (I think it stands for Oral History Metadata Software) software which is being developed by them that allows for people to search for key words or phrases within the text of a transcribed document, read that portion of the document and then, with a click listen to the chunk of the digital recording. He demonstrated the methodology to us. It was really well done. When I asked him when we might get our hands on this software, he grinned and said something about patents and testing, etc. So I’m thinking this won’t be an open source product.

It was a really good conference. A great deal of variety, and a good number of ideas that can be brought back to each institution for ultimate implementation.

Erik Mitchell, Kevin Gilbertson, Cristina Yu, Mary Scanlon, Ellen Daugman, Steve Kelley and I all attended the LAUNC-CH conference at Chapel Hill on March 9, 2009.
I attended the Next Generation Library Systems session from 12:45 to 2:15. That presentation, not surprisingly, focused on the OLE Project, (Jean Ferguson and John Little were presenters) and had a presentation about Endeca, with Derek Rodriguez.

John Little, From Duke, began to discuss OLE (which stands for Open Library Environment) by asking the conference attendees the following questions to frame the logic for the development of OLE, and to wake us up since his presentation was right after lunch:

Do you believe that business processes at libraries are more similar than they are different?

Do you agree that in 10 years anything that is not digital will be invisible?

Do you agree that in 5 years your consortial arrangements will be just as important as work at your home institution?

Do you believe that any backlog longer than 6 months is irrelevant?

Do you believe that in 5 years all library work will be done on the network?

Among the attendees, the first question was resoundingly agreed to. The second, third and fourth questions much less so. The last question was pretty much 50/50 with many people responding to the “I don’t know” third option. He challenged librarians who believed his questions were false. One challenge to the “backlog” question came from a librarian who worked in special collections who maintained that when handling rare and special collections, no backlog is irrelevant. Another librarian maintained that “to the serious researcher, whether or not something is digitized is not important, so nothing is invisible” and John conceded that point.

He then moved onto an overview of the OLE project and described how the SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) would define the project’s development.The first part of the project is to be completed by July, per the terms of the grant from the Mellon Foundation.The second phase of the project, the “writing” the software phase, will then presumably be funded, and completed over the next few years.

The next speaker was Derek Rodriguez from TRLN, Triangle Research Library Network whose job is to assess metadata fitness for next generation library systems.He spoke about and then demonstrated Endeca.Endeca is a discovery and request layer that works with an ILS to allow a user to search and request from several library systems at one time.The request, if not being fulfilled through the user’s home library automatically creates an ILL request.It allows for easy sharing of materials among all of the libraries of the TRLN which includes UNC, Duke, NC State, and NCCU.

I apologize for the length of this post, but it is encompassing both Saturday and Sunday, and both were extremely valuable days at the conference.

Saturday, March 14’s first session was called Weaving a new net: Hauling multiple services into a New Learning Commons at Seattle University. They discussed the trials and rewards of bringing together 4 discrete operations into a single “help area”. The 4 operations were not overseen or common to the library, but would be collocated there once their renovation was complete.They began planning in 2005 and envisioned a collaborative, stimulating interactive space that would assist users in multiple needs. This was all very exciting, but hard to envision. The Provost selected from a number of proposed operations to be moved initially into the space.The Research Assistance desk, Speaking Center, Writing Center and Learning Assistance departments were included. Left out of the initial mix, but under consideration were the Teaching and Learning Center, Circulation Services, Math Lab, Student Advising, and the Disability Services. Each of the four that were to be moved into the Learning Commons were from different buildings, different cultures, different operations, with differing levels of staffing and staff, and cultures. They each answered to different budget lines and different bosses as well and all had different levels of financial support. From this very awkward beginning, they started conversations in early 2006, and were glad that they had the benefit of time to figure it all out. It is to open in September, 2010. Some members of the panel expressed a discomfort with feeling like a “guest” to the library. They didn’t know at the outset what each other’s missions or best practices were. Others were still trying to figure out what the best practices were to be. There was a clash of cultures, (hierarchical vs. collaborative). They will continue to have separate budgets and reporting lines but said that with a common mission and vision, (they also expressed a little difficulty figuring out the difference between mission and vision) and lots of open communication, they were confident that it would all be a beneficial experience for the students but still had a little defining work to do. Questions from the audience were asking about whether there were plans to include media/technology support in the future or if it had been considered. The panelists agreed that there would be benefits to this, but the decision of what to include in the Learning Commons was entirely the Provosts, and it was not included at the outset.

Second session was with Veronica Bielatt and Judith Arnold, former colleagues from WSU who spoke on Creating Instruction Objects “to go”. They discussed the need for portable, large scale, point of need instruction to support three large classes of business/finance students, about 600 students in all.They moved to these little 1-2 minute teaching objects, developed in 3 “chunks” and portable across many formats, and provided for other people who may or may not have “pre knowledge”. The 2 minute micro lectures include demonstration of the skill and then user demonstrating the skill. They utilized online collaborative mind mapping, Mind Meister. Then compared Trailfire or Brain Honey for the teaching and Hot Potatoes for the self-test.

After lunch in a little café, (where we had to walk a bit because every restaurant near the convention center was packed with librarians), we did a tour of the Seattle Public Library, then back for the afternoon sessions..

I stayed a few minutes with Lauren’s “Charting the path to the Mountaintop” where we were supposed to describe in a catch phrase what our own personal path had been thus far. I decided the catch phrase for my path was “Taking advantage of surprise.”

Halfway through I left to catch the second half of the Reference Renovation project that was offered by former colleagues from Wayne State. The reference area renovation that they described was a two year project that began before I left there, so it was very interesting to me how it all turned out.In order to have the space work, they opened up vast areas of the first floor of Purdy Library, downsized their reference collection by 81% and put the reference desk in the center of the area that had previously been only rows and rows of computer terminals.They utilized a 3D modeling software to plan the changes and found it very beneficial both for identifying potential problems with their design, and using it as a valuable tool for showcasing the project for potential funders. They finally finished the project with the installation of the new work areas and reference desk in December/January of this year after having to make a few “seat of the pants” changes to configuration because the original “pinwheel” design didn’t work aesthetically and was not stable enough actually hold up the computers. But the end result is really a great renovation of what had been a really sad space.

The evening events have already been described by others, but I will say that the dinner was the best I’d had in Seattle, and the EMP and Sci Fi museum was really fun.

Sunday in Seattle dawned snowy.

After saying goodbye to Roz and Susan, I ran over to the conference center to see Robin Chase, the invited “green speaker.” ACRL made a commitment to have a “green” conference this year and 80% of the participants took the pledge. (I admit that I must have missed that part of the website, because I didn’t take the pledge, but did participate in the initiatives.) Some ways that that manifested itself are:

1. Sessions had no powerpoint handouts.

2. Each attendee was given a bag made of 10% recycled content. (I think they could have done better there.)

3. Each attendee was given a “shower timer” so that we could try to keep our showers down to only 4 minutes. (I used it and it worked and managed to get my showers to the shortest ever. One little tip, open the shampoo bottle before you turn on the water. Saves precious seconds.)

4. There were recepticles for recycling the program and the badge holders after the conference.

Robin Chase is the founder and CEO of ZipCar the worlds largest car sharing company, and also GoLoco, a ride sharing community. She discussed the importance of reevaluating how we all operate if we want to continue to have the same level of cultural wealth that we enjoy today. We should all recognize our unrealized capacity in everything and try to exploit it, efficiently using our resources, instead of continuing to deplete them. Examples she gave are the ZipCar program she started, which is essentially a time share program for automobiles. Also mentioned the “CouchSurfing” program, run through a website, where individuals needing low cost accommodations can sign up to sleep on the couch of a willing and available couch owner in the same town. (I have a couch that is available, but not utilized all night. You have the need for a couch to sleep on. That is the essence of recognizing an unrealized potential and utilizing it.) She was a very entertaining speaker and recognized the synergy between what she does and what libraries have always done…shared resources among many for the good of everyone. (She said something like, “You have know idea how much fabulocity is in this room!”) One of the questions that was posed to her at the end of the session was regarding how to begin to move the seemingly immovable like vendors who write restrictive license agreements that won’t allow for easy sharing of resources. Her answer, interestingly enough is to find the value of the service you want to provide to the seller, and sell them on it. It might mean that you give a different story to everyone you meet. She said that if she just told everyone in this room that we should all sell our cars and sign up for this timeshare that will be managed through the web and lessen the ‘available-ness’ of cars to you, no one would be willing to do that. But, when she says to city planners, you can, by promoting this, eliminate some of the road construction and maintenance that is projected, they respond to taht. When she says to individuals that you can save money on both autos, and insurance AND reduce air pollution, as well as building up your social network, they respond to that. And she says to schools and doctors that she can demonstrate an impact on the numbers of students with asthma, THEN people start to listen and recognize the value of this lifestyle. She challenged all of us to begin by just announcing to everyone when you are going anywhere in your car, and see if someone in earshot might like to share a ride. Get in the habit of recognizing unrealized capacity and utilizing it. Scarcity breeds a desire for ownership, but social sharing breeds a feeling of wealth and abundance.

Second session of the day was Improving on Excellence: Looking Beyond Information Literacy to the 21^st Century Educational Paradigms and Virtual Worlds. This session was on gaming and how gaming can be used to teach the core fluencies that all 21^st century users should have. The panelists were all from Ontario, Canada, and two of them were from McMaster University one from Earlham College. Shawn McCann, (another former colleague from WSU) is the Nextgen and Gaming Librarian (I kid you not!) at McMaster. He took us into the “World of Warcraft” game , and demonstrated all of the core fluencies, and how they are involved in the game. The fluencies expected of a 21^st century learner include: information; media; numeracy; business and economic, scientific, multicultural, and geospatial. It was a fascinating look at gaming, and I now have new found respect!

The final event, the closing keynote by Ira Glass, long awaited by yours truly, (big fan of This American Life did not disappoint. His story telling technique is epic. Others have described the lecture already…how he started the lecture speaking to us in the dark, just to illustrate the power of just listening. One lesson that resonated with me is when he demonstrated how he reels in the listener. At one point, to make his point, he stopped the narrative of one of his stories long enough to show all of us just what happens when we hear the beginning of a story, even a rather mundane story. It was driving me crazy not knowing how it would end, as he dangled that ending out in front of us like a carrot. It was like hearing a great set up to a joke, but not knowing the punchline! As he put it, “when the story starts to build, nobody turns off the radio just then.” One statement he made, (this may not be verbatim but it is the essence) is “the more idealistic the position you are trying to sell, the more cunning you need to be about encasing it in something people will want to hear or know about.” It made me think about our library services that we are so certain that faculty and students need to know about, but we have a difficult time sending that message out. We need to recognize that everyone else sees us differently than we see ourselves. Identify that which is universal and tell a story about what is at stake. His funniest moment was, as Lauren said, when he blamed the creation of the topic sentence for the current situation with the dearth of storytelling. Giving away all of the good stuff at the beginning takes all the fun and interest out of the story. He was a great ending keynoter for a very enriching conference.

A busy day today started with

The Proquest Breakfast . Roz and I attended the presentation that was meant to showcase the new Summon Unified Discovery Service.In order to frame the issue, first Alison Head spoke about, “Project information literacy:Through the lens of the Student Experience“

She shared a YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cvZPMmYeR4) that summed up the results, and discovered 7 out of 10 students start with Wikipedia first, to get “presearch”.They do not cite, (because they have been told not to use it), but do use.The second speaker, Jane Burke, began by taking a position that if more than half of the academic library’s money is spent on electronic in academic libraries, then the collections have become electronic.They did anthropological research:they went where the students are conducting research…in their dorm, library, coffee shop.Solicited student participation through facebook, asked if they would let Proquest watch while they did research…for money.In the course of discussion, they discovered that students believe that libraries provide superior sources for quality… Web research gives a lot of junk, therefore the library is the most efficient place for research.HOWEVER, the use of Google and GoogleScholar is on the rise.How to explain the dichotomy?When time is tight they go to Google…and they aren’t procrastinating, they are busy!

Conclusions:Why is the library not the first place people go?Libraries provide no clear and compelling starting place.”It is difficult to discern what is the appropriate resource for me”. ” I’m short on time, don’t have wherewithal to start “investigating” where to begin.”She quoted“How do you know that?An investigation of student research practices in the digital age.” , another study, shows the library is seen as intimidating and inconvenient…especially in its primary purpose…helping with research.

Then she introduced “Summon:single search unified access tool”.Not a federated search, but a precoordinated metadata delivery service.Single search, preloaded with content (like Google’s web crawler) that provides the full breadth of digital and physical content available in the library, and to the libraries users.It brings together print, electronic, courseware, databases, institutional repository, conference proceeding, dissertations, your digital library, and all given equal presentation, equal weight.And only provides that which is available to your users…respecting copyright, respecting licenses.This is in beta at Darmouth and Oklahoma State and about to go into University of Liverpool and University of Sydney.

From there I headed to the Cyber Zed Shed and a session that discussed optimizing web pages for mobile use.The presenter told how they condensed the content of web pages and distilled the whole website down to 5 pages.The best take away for me…using Twitter to update the pages when things like “hours of operation” or “changes to a library event” require quickly pushing content out to the web.

Post literacy:Michael Ridley, CIO and Chief Librarian, University of Guelph-Ontario

Fascinating presentation on post literacy, Michael envisions an age when we move beyond literacy to an era of human communication that exceeds and replaces written language.Since we can think so much faster than we can write, literacy is inefficient and slow.Post literacy will provide an opportunity for greater and faster collaboration, utilizing technologies that allow for greater sharing of thought.Like the BORG in Star Trek, we will give up the “I” for the benefit of “we”.His most provocative statement:Literacy is over.Post literacy is an advance:Difficult transition to post literacy, but it is coming.Once we are in a post literacy society, libraries will be unnecessary.(He did say, however, that everyone in the room could relax…our jobs are not immediately threatened.)

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Campus disconnect: Cara Bradley, Distance Ed and Outreach Librarian at the University of Regina-Saskatchewan

Cara surveyed campus staff who are not on the teaching faculty and found that the majority of staff have information needs, but do not turn to the library for assistance.To the users in this study, when ranking what is most important, first is accuracy, currency, and convenience.She asked “if you don’t use the library, why not.”An astonishing 14% said they forgot about the library.This response was given in a free text box.She hadn’t included it as a choice on the survey.It never occurred to her that this could be true.The staff indicated that they would be more apt to use the libray if they had a designated contact person, someone to build a rapport with.Library isn’t important to respondents in this survey, but more than half would like to see the library play a larger role when they are looking for information.Recognized benefits:stress reduction; opportunity to learn and reuse new strategies.They would feel more authoritative, credible, and efficient.

Others have already commented on other presentations and I won’t duplicate them here. Lunch provided by Gale, (with Roz) showed off many new and expanded full text databases. They highlighted GREENR, the new database that brings together content for environmental studies and sustainability was particularly interesting.

Roz, Susan and I started out the day with the “Chocolate, Wine and Waterfalls” tour. The tour was populated with two buses full of librarians, so I guess there were plenty interested here at the conference. (The tour of area glass blowing facilities, didn’t make it, however.) It was a fun and engaging tour of the region. I’ve been here to Seattle several times since both of my sisters live here, but hadn’t ever done a real organized tour combining these three fabulous things.

Roz and Susan sat together on the bus with me on the seat behind them so I had an opportunity to meet a librarian who sat down next to me. His name was Nigel, originally from Belfast, who used to work at Notre Dame, and now works as the Univesity Librarian at Franklin College in …wait for it…Switzerland! He was very easy to talk to, but somehow we never got around to sharing stories of challenges in libraries, aside from the economic situation, which is truly worldwide. Over lunch, we discovered he had worked with Caroline Numbers, and wrote her a letter of recommendation before she came to Wake Forest. Small world.

I think that Susan’s pics will tell more of the day than my words will, but aside from the fact that the tour was very rushed, (they planned too much, but needed to get back to the Conference Center in time for the Keynote speaker), it was well done. Expect some chocolate on our return!

I wasn’t expecting to enjoy the keynote speaker, Rushworth Kidder. He was filling in for Naomi Klein, author of No Logos, and I had been looking forward to hearing her speak. We all agreed after Kidder’s speech that he did a good job. He clearly defined the problems of our time as attributable to a lack of ethics more than the result of economics or politics. He galvanized us to continue to cling to our ethical roots, and honored the profession of librarianship several times in his speech.

From there, we went to the Exhibits floor where I met up with several former colleagues from Wayne State. We had dinner at the hors d’oeuvres table. Tomorrow the conference begins in earnest.

Renate, Mary, Ellen, Heather and Mary Beth attended the LAMS workshop entitled “More than Service…How Libraries are Transforming the Customer Experience” in Burlington, NC on December 11, 2008. This all day workshop was meant to help us learn how to put the customer experience at the center of the library’s strategies, operations, training and development and procedures. One oft repeated catch phrase in the workshop was reminiscent of Lauren Pressley’s blogging from the NCLA Leadership Institute: “It starts with you, but it’s not about you.” Mark Livingston and Kem Ellis were the presenters, and they also presided over the NCLA Leadership Institute.

A few of the memorable moments of the workshop include:

• Sharing stories of excellent customer service and examples of those who went above and beyond to provide service.
• Recognizing that services designed appropriately to not impede the users experience is only the starting point. Truly excelling at customer service requires a willingness to go beyond what is expected.
• Nothing in our library can have a relationship with our customers except our staff, and therefore, the staff are at the heart of the success of any customer service experiences and their investment will allow the program to succeed or fail.
• You will have created a loyal customer base when they know that you will watch their back.
• What is the expectation of the experience that the libraries will provide. At the very least (they will be open) and at the very most (they will have helpful staff and the material I need.) What if every time we could go beyond what is expected? Then we will have achieved a loyal customer.
• Are policies and procedures engineered in such a way to produce negative or positive results?

The afternoon of the workshop introduced the “Customer Experience Touch-Point Mapping” tool which allows for us to look at the touchpoints of a customers’ experiences in the libraries, from parking, to restrooms, to services, to collections, to lighting to emails, and examine them in detail to see where the customer experience might fail. Then implement strategies to eliminate failure.

• Eliminate sacrifice
• Engage senses
• Ensure satisfaction
• Elicit surprise
• Evoke suspense

The goal is to build an “outside-in” service experience that starts with where the customer is, where their expectation is, and then provides service that meets them where they are, and exceeds what they expect.

We were given a 90 day challenge at the end of the workshop to have us “Step Up” and apply the tools we’d learned to the places where our patron’s (or the customer) connects with the facility, service, program or people related to the library. On the way home, we brainstormed a number of places that we could change our procedures to better meet the needs of our customers.

Day 1: OLE Project, Duke University

On Monday, December 15, Lauren C., Erik and Mary Beth attended the OLE Project , Open Library Environment Regional Design Workshop held at Duke University

The OLE Project is funded by a grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation and is meant to design an architecture for an open source ILS.Day 1 participants began to describe critical processes.We had pre conference homework which included thinking about:1. Which feature, currently available in the ILS would we not want to live without?2.What is the biggest frustration with the ILS?3.How would you describe what an ILS is?4.If you could design an ILS today, what would it look like and how would it function?There were 50 to 60 participants from all around the south east, most from academic libraries, and one from Forsyth County Public. (Interestingly, only a handful of people from Access Departments, many more from Systems, Acquisitions and Cataloging. No one was here representing Special Collections or Preservation.)

The group work today through breakout sessions and then in the larger group, was to identify the work that was core and broad enough to be flexibly build into the ILS.There was some healthy debate about what needed to be included in the “critical” category, as well as what was to be included as “high level” enough.We had a chance to try out a 4/6 presentation wherein one participant brought forth a burning issue and discussed it for 4 minutes, then the group was given 6 minutes to comment or question the presenter.The issue the participant brought forth was the importance of creating an ILS that will support consortia, and I thought how valuable that would be as we move forward with more TALA like agreements.The last lecture of the day was describing service oriented architecture and business process modeling.Then we had a chance to practice creating a model process that included creating a process map for checking out a book and all the decision points that go into that simple process.(It was more challenging than it sounds.)

Today we are going to be doing more business process modeling.

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.

Pre Conference Seminar: 1:00pm to 4:00pm

“The Public Domain and Fair Use” Lolly Gasaway

Lolly Gasaway discussed the purpose of copyright laws, namely to promote learning to the public, and encourage authors to create new works. The US Constitution gives Congress “the power to promote the progress of science and useful arts, (aka anything worth learning), by securing for limited times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” The constitution was adopted in 1787 and just three years later, in 1790, the first copyright law was adopted. THAT’s how important it is.
Copyright can be affixed to any work that is creative and original, not facts or ideas. Before the copyright act of 1976, copyright needed to be applied and paid for. Copyright became automatic in 1976. The length of copyright continues to expand from 14 years, with one 14 year renewal in 1790, (and 85% of copyrighted works were not even renewed for copyright), to the present standard with the1998 amendment which allows for life of the author plus 70 years. She presented us a nifty schedule of when things pass into Public Domain at http://www.unc.edu/~uncing/public-d.htm . The rights of the copyright holder include the right to limit reproduction and distribution, adaptation, performance, display. Once it passes into the Public Domain, it becomes available for any of these uses, without needing to seek permission from copyright holder.
Works become public domain: 1.) when the copyright has expired, 2) if published before copyright law was enacted. 3) for materials where the author never claimed copyright (pre 1976), 4) never entitled to copyright protection because they are not “original or creative”, 5) things created by the federal government, (but surprisingly, many states DO copyright and control distribution of their works.) 6) earlier statutes put all works by foreign nationals into the Public Domain, (ie, Charles Dickens works were never covered by copyright here in the US since they were published in Britain.) When a new preface is written on a work that has passed into the Public Domain, (ie a new edition of Jane Eyre is published) then only the preface is covered by the copyright. The work is still in the Public Domain.
To determine if a work is in the Public Domain, start with the chart of copyright dates. If it pre dates those cut offs, it is in the Public Domain. Then use Copyright Office online records, and then contact the publisher/author. Services, ie Thomson, also exist, and, while expensive, can get the answer much faster than the copyright office. Restoration of copyright once something has progressed into the Public Domain is also possible, but it isn’t automatic. Restoration requires an action on the part of the copyright holder. If a work was adapted from a work that was in the Public Domain and then was pulled back into a Copyrighted status, (ie a movie was made of a CS Lewis book while it was in the Public Domain, but now the book has copyright protection again) the adapter must pay reasonable royalties to the copyright holder for future sales, but not past sales.
Orphan works (works which no one can discern who owns the copyright even after a significant search), legislation is in congress now, and may pass. It will allow for users of orphan works to use the work as they intend, but will have to pay reasonable royalties should any copyright holder come forth in the future. Photographers and textile designers object to this legislation, but it seems to be enjoying enough support in Congress to pass before Summer, 08.
Fair use is described as the safety valve of copyright. Determining if a work is useable for your purposes under the terms of “fair use” an evaluation must be done to see if the use predominately meets the criteria of the four “fair use factors”: Purpose and character of the use, (ie is it for education or profit); Nature of the copyrighted work, (book, article, digital media); amount and substantiality used, (ie a chapter of a book, a line of a poem); and the Market effect, (ie will the author suffer a loss of profit.) Determining “fair use” has problems because it is so often claimed, and so few court decisions have been made to evaluate. Guidelines have been established to assist with determining fair use, but they are not case law and it’s still all hard to establish. Libraries who are utilizing “fair use” to make an argument to use copyrighted materials should strive to find an exception in ss 108 of the copyright law instead.
The future? Congress listens to money and the copyright industries of publishers and authors have it…not the libraries. So expect that Copyright terms to continue to lengthen.

Notes from the Keynote: 7:00pm
James Boyle, Duke University School of Law
Copyright 2.0? Re-emagining Copyright in a World of User-Generated Content

James Boyle was a very interesting speaker and he had the audience engaged and involved and laughing at the painful truths of exactly how un-helpful current copyright law is and how inadequate it is to control use and distribution in a digital age. These are pieces of his keynote. He was too quick and my fingers are too slow to do him justice.

As technologies of reproduction and production have advanced, so has the number of infringements of copyright. In the 1940s, copyright infringement was virtually impossible, or at least difficult, because even copy machines weren’t invented yet or widely available. Since the 1970s and 1980s and into today, producers of unique content have had many more opportunities to have their copyright rights infringed upon. Jessica Litman noted that copyright law is always written by those that are most affected: publishers, movie makers, song writers.
What’s wrong with copyright law? People believe that the limitations of copyright are unjust. And copyright holders frequently don’t pursue violators because an individual violator is too insignificant. Content is unprotected. Quite profound social and cultural goods are involved, and they have no real protection.
When copyright law was first written, copyright holders had exclusive use over their works for a very short period. Fourteen to 28 years. Now ALL works are protected for a much longer time, on average 95 years. All works are automatically protected even if they are not commercially viable. Two percent of copyrighted works are actually commercially successful. Ninety eight percent are held hostage, even the 50% of works that are orphaned during that time.
Copyright law undermines its own goals. It always says no, and harms its own legitimacy. Like an adolescent kid testing his parents, the public reacts to his by saying, “if you are always saying “no” then it must be worth it to me to not listen to you.” Morality is a better enforcer than the police. We don’t have the tools to be everywhere and control every infringement.
Two conflicting paths are before us. One allows for increases in new technology to be met with increases in monitoring and enforcement. This supports those that feel that their copyright rights are just as protectable today as they were in the 1940s. The other thought is to adjust copyright to allow non-commercially viable materials to pass immediately into the Public Domain. If the copyright holder isn’t making money on it, then why can’t the rest of us copy, distribute and use the material now. Secondarily, for the 2% that are commercially viable, let others use the material and alter or change it to their own liking (ex: the YouTube video “George Bush Don’t care about black people” that was released with 4 days work and $5 in materials, and criticized the governments failed policy to respond to Katrina in a powerful and timely way. The video, which violated copyright because it used samples of music still under copyright, began the movement to get greater assistance for victims, and was viewed over 1million times on the internet.), if money is made in such an alteration, allow for royalties to freely flow back to the original copyright holder.
James Boyle’s views were refreshing and had a hopeful tone. He sounded so logical and took into consideration all of today’s digital copyright issues. I long for the day when such views as this will dominate Congress’ discussions on copyright.