October 2, 2008
Free Our Libraries, Cry University Presidents
Presidents of major universities want more library materials distributed online, without prohibitive charges.
At the Universal Access Digital Library Summit, held on September 24 and 25 at the Boston Public Library, Mark Huddleston, president of the University of New Hampshire, Peter Nicholls, provost of the University of Connecticut, and Jack Wilson, president of the University of Massachusetts, called for new approaches to the digitization of library collections that will allow access for all. The presidents urged libraries to halt what they described as an assault on the public’s right to knowledge, done in the name of copyright.
The meeting, which was convened by the Boston Library Consortium, also included the presentations of “Free Our Libraries! Why We Need a New Approach to Putting Library Collections Online,” a white paper by Richard K. Johnson, senior advisor to the Association of Research Libraries. In the paper, Mr. Johnson argues that libraries need to come up with new financing strategies, coordinate their actions, and adopt “forward-looking” principles to guide book and journal digitization projects. —Josh Fischman
Posted on Thursday October 2, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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It’s not the libraries, but the publishers who are pushing the restrictions and raising the prices.
— Steve Clancy Oct 2, 07:28 PM #
Citing Boston Public Library catalog links.
We need to make it easier to cite a particular BPL catalog URL uniform resource locator link for a book title. At our BPL it’s problematical citing the URL for a catalog entry at http://bpl.org
Compatibility of BPL resources for all.
Compatibility with other operating systems needs to be a greater priority for audiobooks and other ebook BPL resources. At our Boston Public Library other operating systems’ users are a bit sidelined because of lack in the usability of overdrive at http://overdrive.bpl.org
Alternative resources listings for all.
Point of use at http://overdrive.bpl.org needs listings of any alternative resources to the BPL overdrive ebooks, audiobooks, etc. that BPLusers of other operating systems can try.
— don warner saklad Oct 3, 12:38 AM #
The libraries have prime responsibility for applying the copyright law of the United States. In many ways the law favors libraries, granting us considerable discretion in applying the Fair Use provisions to copyrighted materials. In other ways, the law is contradictory and, if you take the TEACH Act for example, nearly impossible to apply in good faith. Our job is to lead useful discussion on the future of the law, looking out for the traditional and appropriate rights and privileges of both copyright owners and the users of intellectual property.
— Philip J Tramdack Oct 3, 07:20 AM #
Libraries are caught in the middle between the greed of major publishers of academic research, the demand of the libraries’ users for these expensive subscriptions, the failure of faculty to retain rights to their published writings so that their institutions could provide free access to them, and the grip that publishing in these expensive journals has on the tenure & promotion process. Making libraries the scapegoat in this situation is simplistic and unproductive. I’m sorry to hear that university presidents have such a limited understanding of the issues.
— CarolynK Oct 3, 09:08 AM #
Amen to CarolynK’s comments. The libraries are not the heavy here—copyright law is a fact and if you think there needs to be changes, write to your Congressperson!
— Chris Oct 3, 09:21 AM #
Indeed, it is very disappointed to see how unaware of the law, publishers demands and their own institutional requirements for P&T these individuals are.
Either they are as disengaged as some current politicians or the library administrators are not providing a simple understandable explaination of reality.
— Another Bill Oct 3, 10:14 AM #
Mark Huddleston, Peter Nicholls, Jack Wilson start hiring, promoting, and giving performance awards to your faculty that publish in open access journals, instead of to those who publish in Elsevier journals, and your vision of libraries will be realized. The ball is in your court.
— Peter Oct 3, 11:39 AM #
Great comment #4. This is much more than just a copyright issue it is also a matter of funding. In most cases publishers charge much more for online access than for print. This is just as true of books as it is of the journal literature. Libraries are facing a fundamental paradigm shift in the way we collect, house and distribute materials without adequate financial support. In some cases a copy of a subject encyclopedia which cost 500.00 in paper will, depending on the number of students enrolled at the university, almost double or triple in price for the online version. Libraries are caught in the middle as mentioned above and are without adequate support both financial and political to adjust. Libraries must make their case and change the misconceptions that are evident in the article above.
— cb Oct 3, 12:11 PM #
I read an article in the August ’08 American Libraries that said that the concept that libraries are “free” devalues them.
At a meeting yeserday, someone said that “getting money” is that Uni. Relations does, taking it for granted that we did not. That is no difference. We are for making money too. Libraries underestimate their own importance in this sense; it’s not really a part of our professional culture to think like that (I got some of that in my library school classes, although I’m not sure ). Us and our services are a marketable “product” that the school sells under its “brand.”
And the publishers are selling things too; only harder. The reality must be made clear.
— Karen N. Oct 3, 12:16 PM #
In the white paper Richard Johnson makes a strong case for not putting all of the public’s eggs in the private basket of a company like Google. He calls for “new funding strategies” to make sure that the digitized contents of public libraries are accessible with no restrictions to everyone for any type of use. Oddly, he makes no mention of Brewster Kahle’s Internet Archive, which was established for precisely this purpose. So, why not direct more funding to it? Johnson doesn’t tell us. Nor does he give us any reason to believe that the public would be willing to be taxed to raise the kind of funding needed to digitize books in the public domain. As many librarians have realized, with some frustration, Google is the only game in town right now on this scale of massive digitization, and no amount of lamenting Google’s business-oriented way of providing this service can change that basic fact.
— Sandy Thatcher Oct 3, 12:59 PM #
I think the problem here is the very poor “article” by Josh Fishman that misrepresented the Summit. Perhaps he was misled by only reading the white paper by Richard Johnson, which was one person’s view. In fact, the BLC member libraries are funding a large digitization project with Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive, and Brewster was one of the speakers. There were also people from the publishing industry, IP lawyers, faculty and librarians. Most of the issues raised in the comments above were addressed, including the need to address the current conventions of the tenure and promotion process. The press release about the Summit is at http://www.blc.org/news/Universal_Digital_Access_Announcement.pdf if anyone is interested. I’m not sure what #4 meant by “making libraries the scapegoat.” The Summit was sponsored by a group of academic libraries that wanted to raise the visibility of scholarly communication issues at the university administration level. We had great support from forward-looking University presidents who understand our problems and were willing to step up to the plate and say “let’s address the issues, their causes, and their impact on the university community.” The Presidents and Provosts were there to support us and help us begin to find solutions. None of this is clear in Mr. Fishman’s article.
— Sherry Vellucci, UNH Oct 3, 02:07 PM #
“The presidents urged libraries to halt what they described as an assault on the public’s right to knowledge, done in the name of copyright.” So was this actually expressed, or did Fischman put words in their mouths?
— jwoo, librarian Oct 3, 02:34 PM #
There is an element of truth (unintended) to this strange post: “The presidents urged libraries to halt what they described as an assault on the public’s right to knowledge, done in the name of copyright.” But what if university libraries were to say no to publishers, turning away from the exorbitantly priced subscription databases, electronic document packages, and regressive copyright claims of commercial vendors?
What if libraries turned, instead, to home grown, public institution minded, and open-access repositories with free culture copyright provisions? Faculty and university administrators would scream bloody murder as researchers could no longer access the super nova databases around which their old tenure habits orbit [ISI]. But if libraries held firm against vendors and faculty were able to adapt, libraries might ultimately play a meaningful role in halting the market driven assault on the public’s right to knowledge … Or perhaps this awkward post was merely a typo?
— brian Oct 3, 03:52 PM #
It appears that in using http://overdrive.bpl.org BPLusers relinquish control of their own computers to the player software with embedded code and all the code that’s embedded isn’t explained clearly.
Ethics have been compromised at our Boston Public Library
http://www.defectivebydesign.org/Library-Letter-Template
— don warner saklad Oct 5, 07:15 AM #
The white paper is certainly not intended to be critical of the actions of libraries or of firms that have digitized materials from library collections. Rather it is a call to learn from this experience and to support worthy initiatives that put the public’s needs first. The Internet Archive is a good example of such an initiative.
— Richard K Johnson Oct 5, 02:52 PM #
I think that the CHE gives these short blog posts to interns, and the interns often don’t do a good job. I’ve seen a couple of weird, misleading posts like this one in the Wired Campus blog. Maybe a little more editorial oversight is called for, CHE?
— Amanda French Oct 6, 12:27 PM #
This blog post was clearly written by someone who read the BLC’s press release about the event but has very little understanding of the issues. It is a misrepresentation not only of the event but of the most basic ideas about improving access to digital resources. Blog editor, please consider removing this post or issuing a correction.
— Jane Oct 8, 11:32 AM #
Mark Huddleston should know about open access publishing publishing because his former institution, Ohio Wesleyan University, is an OhioLINK member. The OhioLINK consortium has been a leader in promoting open access publishing. If Mr. Huddleston had shown interest in the OWU Libraries and OhioLINK, he might understand better what other scholarly communication options exist.
— Paul B. Oct 16, 12:07 PM #