Science Fiction & eBooks Presentations @ MLA2011

At MLA 2011 I participated in 2 presentations, one on Science Fiction Readers Advisory, and one on eBooks. 

“To Boldly Go:  Fantastical Journeys through Science Fiction Readers’ Advisory” was my solo science fiction readers’ advisory presentation.  I started out by making the point that SF is literature, and, in many ways, SF RA is the same as any other sort of RA. Then I talked about how it’s different, and went through various science fiction tropes and subgenres.  In lieu of handouts, I created a blog, a Delicious account (mirrored on Diigo, due to Delicious’ recent upgrade), and a GoogleDocs page, all of which are linked here.  About 30 people attended, which is pretty good for 8:00 am, and the audience was enthusiastic and asked questions.

“E-books:  What’s All the EXCITEMENT About?” was the eBooks panel I participated in and moderated. We kept the discussion philosophical, and some of the topics discussed were what the panelists’ libraries are doing with eBooks, the future of print and eBooks, the library’s role in the future of eBooks, meeting patrons’ expectations, the library’s role in matters of patron privacy in the digital age, the availability of eBooks for lending and what are publishers thinking, anyway. The discussion was wide-ranging and enthusiastic, with lots of audience participation, and it was standing-room only.  We created a wiki including statistics, free eBook sources, and a bibliography of eBook resources. .

I also attended some interesting panels, including “The History of Copyright in 45 Minutes,” “RDA:  DOA or A-OK?  A Town Hall Debate” (on Resource Description and Access – the new cataloging system being discussed), "Things in a Flash:  The Latest Web 2.0 Tools," and the “50 in 60 Book Blast,” which covered Nordic thrillers, teen, contemporary women's fiction, fantasy and science fiction, and paranormal fiction and featured our own Barb Pierce and Jennifer Larson.  You might want to check out the MLA 2011 presentation materials. There was also fairly active tweeting and photo taking; check out the Twitter hash tag #mnlib11 and the Flickr photostream. 

Melissa @ Central.

(A version of this article also appeared in the November issue of Communique.)

RDA: DOA or AOK?

RDA:  DOA or AOK?

MLA2011
Town meeting. 

RDA = Resource Description and Access.  Proposed successor to AACR2. 

This panel was a town meeting of catalogers discussing the still-controversial RDA, and whether it would be implemented wholesale or abandoned.  As this took the form of a debate, the opinions of the presenters was divided, but they did poll the audience and said they’d let us know the results. I haven’t heard yet.  

First, what’s RDA?

Here’s a really good article from Reference and User Services Quarterly (RUSQ) that gives the basics of RDA and some of the implications for reference. ”Resource Description and Access (RDA):An Introduction for Reference Librarians” by Diane Zabel, Editor & Liz Miller, Guest Columnist.

 

The changes mainly have to do with the data model.  AACR2 is based on:

• Limited resources determining the method of providing access - catalog cards only provide description and carefully delineated access points. Space and access points were limited resources in the world of the card catalog and early computing, but are not any more. 
• Linear searching. In a card catalog, there’s a limit to the number of ways you can access an item – author, title, subject.  That’s not true in the current digital world.
• A lot of the semantic weight of a catalog card is in one place – the chunk of text that makes up the description.  Computers have a really hard time interpreting that because it’s not divided up into discrete data points.  Designed for humans, not computers.  

A few things RDA does differently:

• Designed with the user, not limited resources, in mind – richer searching, no abbreviations, all the creators listed, etc.
• Designed for use with the semantic web – data is divided into very small pieces and consists of data points and the relationships between them.  A name, and that name’s relationship to the item being cataloged, for instance. The point of the semantic web is that with the discrete data points and the relationships, the computer can understand the data better and create meaningful data blocks without specific instructions.  The semantic web is not here yet, but it’s coming.
• It’s a lot more flexible than AACR2.  AACR2 is still based on catalog cards, RDA is not.  RDA is based on a digital environment.

RDA has been a long time in development. The original meeting of what became the Joint Steering Committee for the Development of RDA  where RDA was proposed was in 1997, and we’re at a conditional endpoint.  We’re just coming off of an extensive testing program, where a number of libraries all over the country (including MNHS) tried RDA on a limited corpus of documents in real-life conditions. The final decision is that RDA will be implemented by the three national libraries – LC, National Agricultural Library, and the National Library of Medicine - not before Jan 2013, as long as certain conditions are met. Each library will need to decide whether to implement it or not. 

Most of the members of the MLA panel liked RDA, at least in theory.  They agreed that AACR2 has seen its day, and we can’t keep going on as we have been. The main issues the panelists had with RDA had to do with cost. Whether they were AOK or RDA was determined by if they thought the pros outweighed the cons.  Here are some of the points they made, pro and con.

• Pro: RDA is designed to work with AACR2, and theoretically, everything won’t have to be recataloged. 
• Pro: There is a team working on revising MARC.  Con: MARC is a legacy system, as far as the non-library world is concerned, and therefore a huge stumbling block. One of the panelists expressed grave doubt that RDA would work in any meaningful way with MARC.  MARC is a flat, rigid system designed to work with the computer technology of the late 60’s.  RDA does things the designers of MARC might have dreamed of. The panelist didn’t think MARC in any form would be sufficient – the basic construct is inadequate.  We need a whole new supporting software structure, and that means that not only would a new system have to be designed and implemented, but all records would have to be recoded, largely by hand.  MARC still has a lot of data in unwieldy chunks – physical description is all in one field, for instance – height, pagination, illustration, etc, and a computer would have great difficulty in picking it apart with any accuracy. 
• Pro: RDA is based on XML, and is designed for interoperability and data sharing outside the library world. Under AACR2 and MARC, libraries have all this great data that no one else can import in any usable fashion, and vice versa. A specific example given was that libraries might be able to import data directly from publishers so as to cut down drastically on cataloging time. 
• Con:  Current ILS systems wouldn’t be able to implement RDA to anything close to its full potential.  While RDA’s interoperability would mean ILSs would be far less specialized and difficult to build, the initial changeover would be expensive.
• Con: The expense of training
• Con: The extra expense of the RDA Toolkit, which libraries would need in addition many of the cataloging services they use now.

Melissa @ Central.

History of Copyright - MLA2011 Presentation

History of Copyright

Nick Lavely

Reference Librarian

Metro State.

Copyright is an agreement - the creator can have all the proceeds from her creation for a while, but society want free access after that.

The Past:

Plautus - 1st person to insist on being payed for using his work.

1710 - British Statute of Anne - very similar to a lot of current copyright law.

Each American Colony came up with their own copyright law. This was a very important issue to the colonies. There is, in fact, a copyright clause in the Constitution: “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

1790

With the first congress came the first copyright law. Closely modeled on the British Statute of Ann.

• Covered maps, charts, and books.
• No prior materials were covered – created a public domain.
• Term was 14 years - renewable once for another 14 years.
• Requirement for a depository copy held by the Library of Congress.

1831

• Widows and children could renew.
• Term grew to 28 years, renewable once for 14 years.

1870

• Expanded author’s rights to include translations & dramatic adaptations.
• Included photographs - the hot new technology.

1906 - 1907

• Congress debated perpetual copyright. Mark Twain was a big fan.

1909 – New copyright law.

• Introduced corporate authorship and works-for-hire copyright.
• Term 28 years renewable once for another 28 years.

The Corporate Authorship and Works-for-Hire clause gave publishers (like newspapers) and production companies (like movie studios) the ability to own the rights of everything that was created under the auspices of their companies. It took away the automatic right for the creator to own what they created, which had previously been assumed by copyright law. All studios took advantage of this. D. W. Griffiths used employment contracts to force creators to sign away rights. It corporatized creativity.

“Authorship could not be considered mystical or romantic after 1909. It was simply a construct of convenience, malleable by contract.” (‘Copyrights and copywrongs: the rise of intellectual property and how it threatens creativity’ by Siva Vaidhyanathan, 2003, p. 102.)

1912

• Amended to include motion pictures.

1952

• Amended to include lectures, sermons and performance of nondramatic literary works.

1971

• Amended to include sound recordings.

New technology = new copyright law.

In this period congress would keep expanding copyright for 3 years when necessary so nothing was entering the public domain. This is messy; it creates a lot of orphan works, questions as to what was actually renewed, who has right to claim, etc. Hard for creators to keep up with.

1976 – New copyright law.

• Included any media known or unknown
• Established Fair Use and the 5 Rights of Copyright Holders
• Established library archive rights.
• Registration not required
• Term: life + 50 years, 75 years for works made for hire.

The 5 Rights of Copyright Holders are:

• To reproduce
• To prepare derivative works
• To distribute - sell, rent, lease or lend
• To perform publicly
• To display publicly

4 factor test of Fair Use from Section 107 of the Copyright Act:

• Purpose and character of the use – how creative? Fictional or Factual?
• Nature of the copyrighted work
• Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
• Effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Fair use is determined by case law not public law (law made by the legislature and signed by the president).

Offers restricted rights for copying, distribution, book to movie - make own version

It’s all right to consume media - borrow from library.

Fair use can encompass commentary, parody, limited educational use. It’s nebulous.

Library archiving - Single copy (not digital) for purpose of law

The default is - copyright on. Fair Use switches the paradigm.

Arguments to extend copyright:

• 56 year term is not long enough for an author and their dependents to gain the economic benefits.
• Life expectancy has increased.
• Growth in media has made older media more popular.
• The public already pays for public domain materials.
• Renewal process is time consuming.

1988 - Sonny Bono copyright extension.

• Steamboat Willie (earliest Mickey Mouse cartoon) was about to come out of copyright.
• Copyright holders – with Disney in the forefront, got copyright extended by 20 years.

Nothing new will pass into public domain until 2019.

The copyright agreement is out of balance.

Now

1998 - DMCA

• Signed by President Clinton.
• Works side by side with copyright.
• Limitation against reverse engineering & defeating DRM.
• Anti-circumvention rules.
• Fair use is not a defense.
• Term: ?

Library archiving - Section 108 update - 3 copies, digital; can copy the work if original format becomes obsolete.

What’s obsolete? 8-track is not an obsolete format, nor are LPs - as long as you can find something to play it on, it’s not obsolete.

Basically the DMCA means perpetual copyright as long as a lock exists.

Chilling effects:

• On research, publication, and journalism.
• On legitimate and/or fair use.
• On competition and reverse engineering.

Copyright/DMCA being used as a sword. People are using the DMCA to force removal of unfavorable comments. It’s easy to subvert fair use.

“It appears that the copyright laws are being used as part of a massive collection scheme and not to promote useful arts.” Judge Bernard Zimmerman

Medical Justice is a company that does medical forms. One of the forms you fill out at your doctor’s office might be one of their forms saying that if you review your doctor online, you give up your copyright on the review.

Current academia cases:

• Cambridge U Press v. Patton - Publishers are suing Georgia State University due to the amount and accessibility of content on eReserve system.
• Ambrose Video Publishing vs. University of California - Publishers are suing UCLA for copying a DVD and streaming it to students.
• Authors’ Guild et al vs. Hathi Trust - AG is suing a consortium of universities for sharing digital copies of their works, even though there’s lots of security in place to make sure there’s no access to the full text.

EBooks

• Overdrive, HarperCollins and the 26 loan cap.

There’s a loss of control at all levels. Licensing agreements are also used to subvert copyright laws and rights.

The current use of copyright is locking down our culture.

GoogleBooks (GB) is a fair use case.

• GB changes the paradigm and provides non-linear access by searching the whole card catalog – indeed the whole collection - for a term simultaneously. Highly transformative and does not supplant the need for the original.
• GB is basically creating an index, it is not creative.
• GB requires entire book to be scanned, but the database is secure and only a small portion is shown if copyright is an issue. It’s similar to a quotation. Snippets are not likely to effect purchasing. No need to prove absolute zero damage. Publishers have seen financial gains on GB.

The GB Settlement:

• Will give Google a de facto monopoly
• Setup is similar to ASCAP or BMI without the government controls
• What about library access? Licensing? Orphan works? $150 million immediately? No government oversight? It doesn’t address a lot of questions.
• It was settled out of court.

Afterword

American judgments are way out of proportion to the crimes:

• Sony BMG v. Tenenbaum (student) - He was sued for $675,000 for pirating 31 songs.
• Capitol vs. Thomas - as high as 1.92 mil for 24 songs. This is still in court – decision coming down.

Sweden – someone paid 30 dollars for pirating 24 songs. Much more reasonable.

7 things Google isn’t censoring.

Millions of people have a direct stake in copyright law.

48 hrs of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

Since 1909, copyright law has encouraged lawyers for publishers, record labels, motion picture studios and distributors to write law that has benefited them.

ACTA - Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement:

• Taking DMCA global.
• Removing safe harbor exceptions unless ISPs enforce three strikes policy.
• Notice and takedowns.
• Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even for fair use purposes.
• Brings in the government to enforcement private rights – which is ridiculous.

The agreement was passed on 9/30/11 without ratification, going through the Senate, or going to the people.

Wikileaks ha shown how the US has influenced copyright in other countries.

The UK wants to extend copyright for 20 years – The Beatles’ copyrights are ending soon.

It’s all being settled out of court. Nothing is going to court.

--Melissa @ Central