Copyright law in the digital age (afternoon)

Databases started out as compilations or collective works, which are coyrightable. Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone eliminated “sweat of the brow” copyright because white pages as just a total universe of data–no curation, originality. Court declared that something needs selection, organization, indexing, and/or added value in order to meet originality component of copyright. Yellow pages, though, are more unique and can be copyrighted.

OCLC database (the bibliographic part) was registered for copyright in the 70′s. Every member has to download their entire collection, so there is no selection about what goes in. It is organized by accession number, which is how all large bibliographic databases are done. Indexing is largely by fact (title, author), sequential numbers (ISBN, ISSN), and subjects from government agencies. So these elements do not make it copyrightable, but added value is determined by the person/agency issuing the certificate. In reality, it’s the license agreement that really protects databases.

Unauthorized use = anything that violates the license agreement. It’s largely a matter of how the database is funded. Per-search or connect time pricing mean both different search strategies and different ways that consumers attempt to circumvent. License agreements are governed by state law and may exband or contract rights under copyright. ***Put copies of license agreements with the front-line people (ILL, Reference, Serials) not the director’s office.*** Be sure to initial all changes and sign with “accepted with changes noted above.”

Click-on licenses are going to be a sticking point sometime, probably soon. Recommendation is to include a clause in federal law that states negotiated licenses trump click-on ones.

Electronic publishing is still largely still covered by license agreements, though she thinks this may change. There are several types: journals that exist in print, too; journals that are e-only; pre-publication articles (such as arXiv); open archives.

The internet doesn’t do anything to copyright! Content vs. container issue. “It’s just a new way to infringe.” Even listserv submissions are copyrighted, as long as there’s intellectual content (not just “me to”)–and the listserv owner would have to get permission from each author to publish it. Have no way of knowing whether something was posted with permission unless the website owner says so.

[sidetrack: if as a university employee it's part of your job to write a blog, then the university owns the copyright on the whole. It's a work for hire situation. Unless it's a student employee. There's also a teacher exception for work for hire--largely because so little of what faculty write is commercially viable. The exception to this is beginning to be online courses, where universities are wanting to keep the rights to use a course after the prof is no longer teaching it or with the university, but the faculty would still retain the content (assuming creative).]

On the internet, originality is no problem. If you’re doing it, it’s yours. But does inclusion of someone else’s work require permissions? It depends! For a text, if you’re citing and only quoting a small portion of the work, then you’re probably ok. For photographs, it depends on what part you take. Cropping doesn’t change the nature of the work, but did you crop to show the main focus or some little bit off to the side? Similar issue for graphics–are they stand-alone, or do they interpret or refer back to the main text? Motion media are a little tricky. No one knows what’s a fair use clip. And whatever you do, don’t use Disney. For music, perform it yourself–the sheet music people don’t care. But the sound recording people haven’t made a statement one way or the other yet.

Linking is basically a cross reference, just make sure you’re linking to a clean site–one that isn’t infringing. Government sites are fine, original content at .edu (not student pages), most big national non-profit organizations (ACRL, NRA), large professional organizations (AMA, ABA), big businesses. Just don’t use logos unless they specifically state that you can. Use words instead.

GSU was sued by three publishers, but sued only for an injunction since school protected by 11th amendment immunity. GSU wasn’t paying royalties for electronic coursepacks or e-reserves, and no permissions for including articles on course management software. Policy was written very loosely; administrators had been warned that it need to be rewritten. No password protection on {…?}. Publishers are sticking with it despite inclusion of passwords (policy still not written to the publishers’ satisfaction), and are threatening to sue others as well–most of them have rewritten their policies to avoid suit. Also, since GSU once paid royalties and then stopped. The resolution of this will answer a lot of questions that are now up in the air.

For text in a course management software system, follow classroom guidelines–ok for one semester, but need permission afterwards. Linking out is fine.

TEACH Act covers performance and displays only for transmissions and online portions of courses, for almost all types of works. Different requirements for institution, IT staff, and faculty. Institution must provide copyright notices and educate the community about copyright, while IT staff have to reasonably prevent retention and redistribution, plus not interfere with copyright owners’ tech that does the same. The items must be technologically limited to students in the class, be an integral part of the class, and the class must be from an accredited non-profit educational institution.

The one exception in the performance area is for full nondramatic literary musical works (read poetry or novels, for example). Also, reasonable and limited portions of other works. “Reasonable and limited portion” looks at purpose of use, underlying work, and other issues, and is often longer than a fair use portion. For display, all works are usable in an amount comparable to what’s normally used–so an art history prof who usually used 20 slides per class wouldn’t be able to use 60 online, just because she can.

Must be a lawfully made copy and solely for student in the course or government employees as part of duties, and copying or retransmission should be blocked. Digitization for use in transmission is permitted as long as no digital version is available or the digital version is subject to tech measures that prevent use in course management software.

Benefits to the act include that longer portions can be used than perform, it applies to all types of works, there is no classroom requirement, no one semester limit, and fair use still applies. However, the act does touch on text at all–there is still a need to coursepacks and royalty payments, and it doesn’t deal with course reserve systems hosted on course management systems.

In case of infringement, there are two tpes of damages: actual damages and profits, and statutory damages. With libraries, they’ll usually got after the latter, with the former reserved for someone actually making large amounts of money. Unless the item wasn’t registered, in which case only actual damages are available. For statutory damages, amounts can range from $750 to $30,000, though it can be lowered to $200 if innocent infringement and raised as high as $150,000 for willful infringement. There is also a provision for remission of damages, which is similar to a Good Samaritan law for librarians and other institutional employees who are trying to do the right thing. It doesn’t make provision for attorney fees, though.

Criminal penalties: The No Electronic Theft Act (since 1997) is for anyone who willfully infringes for commercial advantage or personal gain by reproduction or distribution over $1000. But the penalties are very high (for combined retail value of $2500, up to 5 years in federal prison [home of the big baddies] and $250,000 in fines)  so no one’s been penalized under this act. The computer industry says it’s aimed at commercial-scale piracy, but users say it criminalizes almost every computer users, since it covers even one copy.

Under 11th Amendment immunity, state entities cannot be sued for monetary damages in certain types of suits, including copyright cases. It does not apply to city or county entities, so public libraries do not fall under this.

Q: Where do you see things going in the next 5 years? A: She thinks the “IP Zsar” position created under Bush is silly and should go away. The TEACH Act will probably be amended, since it’s always been a glass about 2/3 full–online instruction is more developed now than it was. Something will happen with orphan works; just remains to be seen exactly what. Doesn’t see copyright holders becomiong more liberal–they will continue to try to lock it up, even as it becomes easier to use content. As Uni Presses continue to fold, scholarly monograph publishing will be affected, making it harder for faculty who need to publish books to gain tenure.

 

Copyright law in the digital age (morning)

Presentation by Dr. Lolly Gasaway, UNC, at seminar sponsored by Oklahoma chapter of SLA

Copyright = the right to make copies; legally secured right to publish and sell the substance and form of a literary, artistic, or musical work

Copyright law protects: 1) authors, 2) publishers and producers, and 3) the public. There’s a tug of war going on among these three groups. Anyone who produces a work is an author in the legal sense (photographers, choreographers, etc.). Most of the money is in the hands of the publishers and producers, who take good care of themselves by influencing politics. Librarians and teachers are stand-ins for the public, traditionally, but with RIAA, p2p file sharing, etc., the consumers are paying more attention.

US Constitution, Article 1, sec. 8, cl. 8 = the one that gives to Congress the power to promote science and arts through legal protections.

History of copyright starts in 1710 in Britain, with Statute of Anne, which allowed copyright to authors instead of the publishers. It also limited the time for which copyright could be held. First US law was 1790 and very similar. 1909 Copyright Act’s main purpose was to regulate importation of international editions (libraries, booksellers, and publishers were fighting even then). Since mid-30′s, introduction of ability to reproduce works changed the way libraries thought about copyright, but biggest change started happening in 60′s with widespread adoption of photocopiers. 1976 Copyright Act (effective 1978) had to deal with a lot of new technology–film, video, computers–and did so relatively successfully, trying to be at least partially technology-neutral.

Term of copyright under 1909 was 28 years, with possibility of additional 28 with application, so after max of 56 years things were in the public domain (over 80% were not renewed). In 1976 it changed to life of the author plus 50 years. Could no longer tell from looking at the book whether it was still in copyright–introduction of uncertainty. Also, copyright attaches at fixation, not at publication.

In 1998, the 1976 act was amended (Sunny Bono term extension act) to life plus 70 years, retroactively, in order to harmonize with EU law. There was litigation (Eldred vs. Ashcroft) but it was upheld.

If the author is a corporation, anonymous, or pseudonymous, copyright is 95 yrs after date of first publication or 120 yrs after creation, whichever comes first. Fine arts and visual arts created after 1990 are for the life of the creator only.

See her website: www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm for chart of what’s covered when.

To get copyright, the work must have some bit of originality or creativity and be fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Registration requires only filling out a form and $45. The certificate mailed back gives the author the right to sue for infringement, with a statute of limitations of 3 years even if haven’t registered yet. It also requires deposit of 2 copies with the Library of Congress.

“Notice of copyright” is term of art referring to the circle-C, year of publication, and name of holder. It is no longer mandatory that the notice be included on the piece. In 1909, if you didn’t use the notice, it was assumed the work was meant for the public domain. The 1976 act gave the opportunity to correct and error of omission within 5 years. But in 1989 notice became optional. This is important because so many people assume that things on the internet are not copyrighted because of lack of notice.

Protectable works: 1) literary (includes databases and computer software as well as books and journals), 2) musical, 3) dramatic (not tv sitcoms, for ex), 4) pantomime and choreography, 5) pictoral, graphic, and sculptural (the largest category; includes maps, scientific drawings, consumer trade goods with a design element [games, fabric patterns, etc.]; copyright is sold separately from the work, so buying an original painting does not give you rights), 6) motion pictures and AV (public performance rights attached to these), 7) sound recordings, 8) architectural (added when we joined the Bern Convention; covers both blueprints and buildings themselves; for design as whole, not individual elements).

Rights of copyright holder: 1) reproduction, 2) distribution (first two very important as that’s where most of the money is), 3) adaptation (includes derivative works like film adaptations of books, translations, and new editions), 4) performance,  5) display (purchase of copy includes right of display), 6) public performance of sound recordings by digital transmission (webcasting was added in 1998 DMCA to include record companies and performers, where before it all went to the composer; so two sets of royalties for stations that have both radio and web broadcasting).

Visual Artists Rights Act gave rights of attribution and integrity–such as to not have a Calder mobile repainted to match the new decor at an airport. This applies to works with fewer than 200 signed and numbered copies.

First Sale Doctrine makes it so that no more royalties are necessary for second-hand transactions. Crucial to libraries or we wouldn’t be able to lend works without payment.

Public Display of Copies lets us put up bulletin boards of book jackets, but disallows transmission or web display.

Public Domain: 1) expired copyright, 2) materials in which author never  claimed copyright (pre-1976 act; there is currently no way for an author to declare a work in the public domain, although you can say it’s ok to use without payment [Creative Commons]), 3) materials produced by federal government (for outside contractors, it depends on the contract).

Fair Use: protects criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies), scholarship, or research. Courts say this is illustrative, not set in stone. Factors: 1) purpose and character of use (nonprofit is favored over commercial, but it isn’t absolute; courts favor transformative use), 2) nature of the copyrighted work (for example, copying a short factual piece vs. a large creative piece), 3) amount and substantiality use in comparison to whole (smaller is better to the courts; Texaco case is the one that gives copyright to journal article independent of issue, but copyright law claims it of the issue as a whole), 4) market effect (potential, not absolute; hard to judge with online at this point). Meetings are included, but quantity will still matter. ***A link to the publisher’s site is not a reproduction.***

Multiple copies for classroom use: Guidelines developed by copyright holders and educational groups in concert, and only applies to nonprofit educational organizations. Public vs. private doesn’t matter–just the tax code. Tests for use: 1) brevity (there are hard guidelines [2500 words], but they don’t take discipline into account), 2) spontaneity (last-minute decisions by the teacher), 3) cumulative effect (for one course, one per author or three per issue/collected work; no more than 9 per term and not repeated the next term; these are safe harbor guidelines), 4) notice of copyright, 5) no charge beyond cost of copying.

Coursepack cases: BasicBooks v. Kinkos; Princeton UP v, Michigan Documents Service. Both said that course packs in the hands of the commercial services are not fair use, even though if the student compiles them they’re fine. Permissions are required by the commercial stores. Uni-owned bookstores have more leeway, but still better to obtain permissions and pay royalties.

Alternative rights: 1) Open archives movement (NIH, institutional repositories), 2) Creative Commons license (most common one is free use with attribution; different licenses for different countries). However, if a musician wants to be represented by one of the big companies, the music must be registered for copyright.

Library Exceptions: 1) Section 108(a) for copies of unpublished works for patrons (one copy, non-commercial, when the collection is open to public or researchers in the field; must include notice of copyright, or we have to add one), 2) Section 108(b) for copies of unpublished works for us (up to three and in collection and if digital is not available outside the walls of the library) 3) Section 108(c) for copies of works we own (3 copies, damaged/stolen/obsolete; reasonable effort to replace; digital not available outside premises).

Obsolesence is in effect when the tech necessary to render a work perceptible is no longer available (so VHS isn’t quite yet obsolete, but BETA is). Also, if the work is available in new format then have to buy the new format, such as with song on 8-track now on cd. Can not digitize LPs. Do not have to search for used tech, only new.

Reasonable effort is variable but normally requires utilizing known trade sources, contacting copyright holder if known, and using authorized reproduction service.

Fair price is original format at latest suggested retail price (per ALA). But AAP’s definition is more complicated.

Copies for users: Section 108(d) for when work has been published. No more than one article from a work. Copy becomes property of user (library cannot retain copy for further use), library does not know it will be used for profit, and library displays notice of warning of copyright. “Reproduction” is used, not “photocopy,” so digital copies are covered here. Section 108(d) allows for copying and distributing of whole or larger parts of a work if another copy is not available otherwise (same rules apply as above). [mostly libraries don't do this; we use ILL instead. trying to find one to buy is too much trouble, usually]

Reserves guidelines (for print) from ALA are generally the same as for copying for classroom use: not recurring every semester; one copy per student; no fee beyond copying; include copyright notice. Multiple copies should have reasonable amount of material (ie, not all material for the course), reasonable number of copies, notice of copyright, and not be detrimental to the market for the work.

Electronic reserves suggestions: keep material restricted to students in the course; catalog under course/faculty information only; leave on reserve for only on semester w/ permissions for later use; include copyright notice plus notice that no further electronic transmission is permitted.

Section 108(f)(1): no liability for unsupervised use of reproduction equipment as long as notice of copyright law is displayed nearby. (2): individuals are still liable. Also, nothing here affects fair use, but any license agreement signed by the library trumps all.

Section 108(g): isolated and unrelated and spontaneous copying is ok. Systematic copying and distribution is not.  See US Telephone vs. Readers Digest for nonprofit ruling on this. Also, Legg Mason vs. Lowry’s Reports.

ILL: Section 108(g)(2): it’s ok as long as it doesn’t substitute for subscription or purchase. CONTU guidelines call for requesting no more than five requests from a periodical title from the most recent 60 months of the title (five years), unless the title is owned but missing, or it’s on order. Non-periodicals get five requests per year over term of copyright. But since these are just suggestions, each library has to determine what’s right for them (if historical research is more common at your library, for example).

ILL responsibilities mostly fall on the borrowing library, certifying that the request is within guidelines and maintaining records for three calendar years (do *not* keep longer, as they can come back to bite you if subpoenaed). Lending library shouldn’t send it if the request clearly exceeds the five, unless they tell you that they’re going to pay royalties.

Alternatives on 6th request: 1) no, come back Jan 1 (especially works in academic libraries), 2) order copy from document delivery service, 3) pay royalties directly or through CCC, 4) subscribe to title, 5) “once in a blue moon” exception–make the copy.

For digital ILL, license agreements prevail. If the requesting library receives an e-copy, they can place it on a password-protected site and time limit the availability, then delete.

Copyright Clearance Center created in 1978 w/ currently over 10,000 publishers; publishers set the prices. Two options for libraries: pay-per-use and campus-wide license (UTx did this) based on headcount charge. [she thinks we'll all end up with these licenses eventually] Does cover both print and digital.

Section 108(h) added from Sonny Bono act: in last 20 years of copyright term, rights are loosened under these criteria: 1) work is not subject to normal commercial use, 2) copy cannot be gotten at a reasonable price, 3) owner provides notice that neither of above apply. Won’t be something we do often, but for unique items will be worth it. Includes ability to digitize and put on web, but does not apply to subsequent use by others.

Section 108(i) means that 108 only applies to text media (not music, movies, etc.), with an exception for preservation and non-text items within a text (such as illustrations).

Orphan works: Proposed register would not eliminated need to seek permission–good faith. No liability if owner shows up later, after good faith search. This legislation did not pass because of photographers, since pictures are generally published without copyright notice. No one knows why they just didn’t write it w/out photographs, but she thinks it’ll be back due to Google Books settlement.

Section 108 Study Group Report (she was a part of this):

1. things wrong with it: 1) designed for analog, 2) not working as libraries adopt digital tech (“touching” digital work requires copy, plus issues of upgrades for format changes)
2. changing: 1) library practices (works originally in digital, users wanting digital ILL, preservation and access), 2) technology (ubiquitous computing; costs decreasing; scanners common; users have their own scanners and digital cameras), 3) issues for rights holders, 4) publishing practices (article-level pricing)
3. recommendations: 1) add museums!, 2) permit outsourcing (for commerical photocopying and digitization, w/ no copy kept by them), 3) allow digital copies for preservation or to curate websites, 4) no recommendations on copies for users because of differences between academic and public user communities and how to define them

Google Books Settlement

1. So far, 12 million books. Does this scanning infringe copyright? Full works without permission–so most experts say Yes! Google may not let them out, but what happens when the company is sold?
2. Settlement is having significant problems (currently in 2nd iteration). It’s overly broad, addressing more than the scanning.
3. Orphan works provisions essentially create monopoly for Google.
4. Class action problems. Claims to cover all publishers (except Europe) w/ an opt-out clause (class actions are usually opt-in).
5. Foreign works not included in 2nd version.
6. What can partner libraries do with the electronic copy? [nothing! no money to even keep up with format changes, and everything in copyright can't leave building]

 

Library day in the life, round 4

After rereading my posts from the last Library Day in the Life I didn’t want to do a blow-by-blow sort of thing again, so I’m going to content myself with this single post. It would have come closer to the end of the week except that the forecast is for either a snow or an ice storm on Thursday (depending on which forecaster you choose to believe). This being Oklahoma, there’s a good chance that any such storm will shut everything down, so I’m busily trying to get to all the must-do stuff. Here are the highlights:

On Monday morning the job search committee I’m on decided which candidate we wanted to offer the position to, in the afternoon I did my usual Reference Desk shift, and in the evening I worked on our federated search implementation.  In between I mostly attempted to clean out my email inbox (an ongoing project). Basically, email is my to do list. Common things that come into my inbox are: requests for trials/pricing, invoices and licensing agreements, “report a problem” notifications from our link resolver, and messages from various listservs, including three that I keep a very close eye on: SERIALST and the discussion groups for SFX (link resolver) and MetaLib (federated search engine).

Listservs can be annoying, yes, but they can also be your friend. I’ve learned a lot from the SFX one in particular — including, on a couple of occasions, when something isn’t working and no one’s told me.

Anyway, today it really sank in that there’s a good possibility work will be closed at least one day this week. And since I’ll be in Austin for ER&L most of next week, there’s lots to get done. So today I:

• ventured down to the basement to go through the donations in my collection development area (education) to see whether any were worth adding to the collection. Turned out that someone in the field had recently cleaned out their personal collection. Jackpot!
• helped one of my staff fill out the semi-annual performance reviews for the two people she supervises. We have a very non-intuitive program for this that seems to cause great confusion for most of the people who use it. It doesn’t help that we only access it twice a year.
• had conversations with our director and the WestLaw rep regarding an unsatisfactory clause in the renewal. I’m guessing it will go to both our legal departments to be resolved.
• had two random reference moments. Tracked down the Italian version of The Divine Comedy, and explained how to find information on constructing a survey.
• talked with the ProQuest rep.
• gathered together everything I’ll need to take to ER&L (well, the stuff that’s at work, anyway).
• futzed with the federated search stuff some more.
• freaked out about the press release regarding the state budget. It doesn’t look good folks, but at least the legislature finally conceded that it’s bad enough to dip into the rainy day fund.

Tomorrow, I’ll be spending the morning at a bookstore, buying books. We have a fund specifically for purchase of popular titles and January is my month to go on a little shopping spree.  The list of books I’d like to get far exceeds the funds available, but then it’s rare for a bookstore to have everything on my list anyway.

 

Books and me: 15 things

Steve re-started it.

1. In one of the many albums packed into the bottom of my parents’ secretary there’s a photo of me, age pre-7 (based on the house it was taken in), sleeping with a book spread open, spine up, across my chest. I recall it as a large blue book, but keep meaning to find the picture to verify that.

2. I learned to enjoy reading romance novels the first year I worked in Ryle Hall’s little bitty one-room library. Something like seventy percent of the books in there were romances and they were quite popular with our stressed-out student population.

3. For the eight years prior to that, my primary genre of interest had been fantasy, with some science fiction thrown in for balance. Blame it on The Hobbit, which I read in fifth grade. Starting with Tolkien must be something akin to starting with moonshine.

4. Prior to and overlapping with the early SF/fantasy years I read a LOT of biographies. As in, every one I could get my hands on. There was a whole wall of them in my elementary school’s library.The only ones I remember, though, were about Wilma Rudolph and Babe Didrikson.

5. After spending five years in my twenties working in bookstores, I had quite a collection of books. In February of 2005 I gave away or sold approximately 97% of them (along with all my furniture and lots of other things) before packing what was left of my possessions into my Geo Prism and moving from Idaho back to Oklahoma.

6. I reread fiction, but not nonfiction. My top rereads are: Anne McCaffrey‘s Harper Hall trilogy; Pride and Prejudice; and Jane Eyre. Oddly enough, I first read all of these in eighth grade.

7. I write in books. Generally in pencil, but not always. When reading library books I first make sure there is no writing implement within reach.

8. Paperback science fiction cover art from the 60′s and 70′s is misogynistic, tacky, and dated. And I love it.

9. The first time I read Tarzan, I laughed out loud. Repeatedly. Did you know that he teaches himself to read by looking at books? Seriously.

10. The only textbook I still have from my undergraduate English degree is an anthology of British Renaissance poetry from the first major course I took. The next-to-last, an Old English textbook, didn’t make the cut in the purge mentioned in #5 and I still regret it. (It’s the only one I regret not keeping.)

11. I take S. R. Ranganathan’s “books are for use” quite literally. Two books each are under my two side-table lamps in the living room.

12. After graduating from library school in the summer of 2008 I found myself unable to complete any book that wasn’t a Regency romance. For 18 months. (Yes, this just ended.) I have a very large stack of partially-read books next to my bedside table.

13. My maternal grandmother’s masters thesis is the one book I can never see myself willingly parting with. No matter how rare, every other one is replaceable.

14. My most recent book acquisition: the new edition of the Larousse Gastronomique.

15. Due to a short stint working as a shelver in a public library, I know Dewey better than I do LC.

 

SIGALO fall meeting (rough notes)

Anne Prestamo (represents the Americans regional council to OCLC)

OCLC New Governance Structure

As OCLC became more international, more of a need for greater representation. Also, less and less cataloging focus—added e-resources, ILS, etc—and now have more non-library institutions as members.

7.1.09: Global Council and three regional councils replaced Members’ Council; Americas Council includes both South and North, plus Carribean—“bodies of the whole”

-Global Council has 48 delegates w/ each region guaranteed 4; remainder allocated based on revenue (designed to change yearly as needed); one f2f mtg per year

-Regional Councils get 2 members on executive committee

She thinks OCLC is looking for a better way for member organizations to have an avenue of communication with OCLC

Past and curret: difficult to be sure community colleges and school libraries are represented (didn’t specify why)

They’ve been transitioning—each regional council had to determine for themselves how they were going to operate. Under the new structure, *every* OCLC member organization has a seat and a vote at the Regional Council (new)

Emphasis on communication and advising OCLC—two-way relationship btwn members and OCLC

Meetings currently taking place in conjunction w/ ALA (so Boston for Midwinter, and first business mtg at ALA in DC in June). This won’t always be the case—trying to account for small travel budgets at the moment and there’s a critical mass of libs at ALA. In future, will do other mtgs, including Canadian. Will also do virtual meetings.

There are several positions that will be filled for positions starting July 2010 (see slide). Some geographic and institution-type requirements. Anyone from any member library is eligible to seek election. The election will be virtual. Each library will be asked to designate a voting representative—if none specified, then it’s the director. Results will be reported at summer ALA.

They need *all* libraries to be involved with this process. OCLC very concerned with this process and its results—all about communication.

Policy for Use and Transfer of WorldCat Records—this was a surprise to the Members’ Council, too! OCLC did eventually back off; review board appointed; their report made clear that more time and study were needed (see slide for link); very frank report: large proportion of people who responded said that OCLC had broken members’ trust by handling this the way they had. Transfer to new governance structure was already in process but took on a whole new importance.

New: Record Use Policy Council convened 9.09; charged with recommending a new policy “aligned with the present and future information landscape.” [mentioned III’s new cataloging thing—might be a sharing tool? hadn’t heard of this]

Federal gov’t libs and state libs were particularly worried about the record use policy because of conflicts with their missions

In the past, those involved with OCLC tended to be tech services people, but they need pub services people as well—can affect entire library

What does it mean to be a member of OCLC? What do you expect from OCLC? What are member organizations’ responsibilites back to OCLC?

Q&A

Q: Why did OCLC shunt aside the regional organizations like AMIGOS in favor of a more direct relationship with the members? Why do they want to hear from us yahoos out in the hinterlands? And how long will it take until they’re sorry? A: Members Council had no input into that. The network model didn’t exist in the international community, nor was the entire US covered by organizations similar to AMIGOS. So it was a business decision to move away from network/middleman relationship. Will take some time to discover how this will work out. Anne wants to know what our experience is with the customer service at OCLC now that we’re going direct to them for support. This is hard for AMIGOS because of the loss of the OCLC surcharge—new membership fee structure and they’re actively looking at areas that libraries still need support (just added 3M as a vendor partner). They did loose a few memebers due to new fees, but for most libs it was a wash. Getting back…She doesn’t think OCLC realized how big a job they were going to be taking on—had to hire new people to cover the support aspect. Her opinion: it was an unwise decision to cut out the regional newtorks. Some of the regionals are now getting into support for open source, as well as more consortial licensing and joint physical repositories (AMIGOS is looking into this).

Q: The restructing sounds very deomcratic on the surface, but seems more like a stockholder-type situation. How fast will the Americas Council actually be able to move/respond? A: These things do just take time, and OCLC doesn’t have a track record for acting quickly. The meaningful commincation will increasingly take place virtually, and so there can still be regional-specific activities within the bigger structure. Languages will also be a barrier. She doesn’t know if it’ll work, but it’ll definitely *not* work if members don’t participate and OCLC is offering the opportunity for us to be active participants. If we don’t speak up, it’s never gonna happen.

Q: When can the libraries expect to get communication from OCLC? A: Get on OCLC Abstracts mailing list. Should have already been or will be very soon a letter going out to primary contact of record—most likely director/dean-level.

Comment: Lirbarians used to take WorldCat for granted, so the recent flap was a wake-up call. Many of us didn’t realize there was any value in them. Response: If an organization like Open Library finds a way to mass-harvest information from WorldCat and then turns areound and sells it, neither OCLC nor any libs get anything from it. OCLC has agreements with GoogleBooks, for example, so it gives something back. They want to protect intellectual property. Bungled it, but she hopes that the outcome (in form of the new use policy) is worth it. Feels that we have a vested interest in OCLC.

Q: GoogleBooks and OCLC: snippet cataloging: commercialism and appropriateness? A: We don’t know how that will pan out until the settlement is complete. Academics can at least use the snipets as a discovery tool—can always ILL instead of buying [although that’s unlikely given the ease and familiarity of purchase model]. Also, there will be some sort of subscription service for libraries—just don’t know what it’ll be yet. Sarah: OCLC does seem to get that people just want the information, and don’t always care about buying it; we can’t just be about what’s in libraries anymore. Anne: Recently at an Abstracting and Indexing (publishing) meeting, was in a discussion about what Google is doing to them. Particular publisher had numbers on addition to their bottom line that happened when they started allowing Google to crawl their articles, so links to abstracts were available and people were buying the full text. Important for us to have our link resolvers registered with Google, so our users can get back to the library and not have to pay.

Q: Anybody know about state database agreement? A: State purchasing made ODL rewrite the RFP, which is why it’s so late. The 6-mo extension is up at the end of Dec. Bonnie says the choice has been made and the paperwork is in process, but that’s been the case for about a month. OCALD renewed PsychInfo; Newspaper Source Plus, BSP, ASP are new—agreement for five years.

Discussion: Paper to Electronic Workflow Changes

Barbara: At OSU (serials) 1997; 11,000+ current serials titles—maybe a handful of electronic. Now 53,799 titles w/ only 5,000+ in print. Intentional shift. Head of Acq 2002 (Louisa came in as serials); as of July doing more serials. Voyager library. Was 11 staff, now 6—loss mostly through attrition. Digital Library srvcs became new dept—web site, Serials Solutions, e-access. Periodicals keeps moving as the physical holdings shrink (bound periodicals are interfiled). Physical w/ e-access are going to annex; it’s very full.

Ila: OU does have remote storage—it’s almost full.

Barbara: Bindery and students taking more responsibility—receiving, tagging, shelving.

Faculty were the ones who didn’t want them to get rid of the paper(Michele: “They had a small cow.”); students more comfortable w/ online. Also, ARL counts volumes still.

JJ: Does anyone get microformats? Most do, but it’s minimal. This is the last year for her, except for NYT. (discussino went to ProQuest’s new digital—universal scorn due to lack of search). Cultural aspects of wanting print or film (preservation). Tulsa World isn’t indexed! They use TCity-County’s vertical file!

Barbara: They like packages. Allowed them to pick back up some titles that they had cancelled in paper prior. Some vendors don’t deal with EBSCO for e-only (and a few aren’t dealing w/ EBSCO at all anymore—this is still a minority). Lots are switching to Cox: OK Christian; Tulsa City-County; Southeastern (they do edi; no problems w/ title selection; smooth, easy switch). OSU will probably have to bid their periodicals in the next year or two. Sarah and Sandra both had to pull teeth to get EBSCO to respond to the new bid.

Louisa: They looked at the commercial e-resources managers and didn’t like them, so they built their own. Brandon Boils currently the database manager for it. Access and SQL w/ Cold Fusion (maybe). All packages, reps info, licenses scanned in and analyzed according to NISO standards (wanted to make it easy to switch if they ever do get a commercial). TCCL is going to start using ERMS.

Louisa: OSU catalogs their databases and all the ejournals, and their use stats show that people do indeed access them that way.

JJ: OK Christian uses LibGuides, which allows tracking use. Changes them each semester. Students seem to like them; suspect they’re getting used more than trad. web page.

General lack of statistics on how people are getting to particular journals. We have full text stats, but not where-did-they-come-from stats.

Junie: Because of their student population, they have to know the major to know what they have access to (OU-Tulsa). Their IP is attached to the Health Sci side, but there are plenty or Norman-affiliated students there too. “Collection development doesn’t really mean much any more.” Students don’t use what we thing they’re going to use. Scope has become an issue.

Also, issues with ILL and Reference, and how we interact with those departments. License issues for ILL. Course reserves and course packs, too. Uof Tulsa has deflected ILL from their ejournals. OK Christian has limited the number of ILL requests per time—were having problems with students doing searches and bulk requests, then not wanting them (print costs, time costs).

Michele: We’re lending more than ever.

Louisa: Difficulties with transmitting items that need the color images (art, diagrams, etc.). Junie’s medical folk are fine with the pdfs, but the architects still want paper, so it’s harder—the color printers aren’t always quite good enough.

Junie: Instructional librarians are having a hard time, too. Setting up the LibGuides was a start—there’s just too much for the students to sift through. Louisa: Students don’t understand how much they’re missing. JJ: tunnel-vision on topics; they won’t either expand or redefine their searches. Louisa: Johns Hopkins case where a doctor didn’t get subject-specialist help with a search and killed a patient because he missed something that was common knowledge from 40 years ago.

JJ: They’ve picked up Credo and the students love it (in answer to demand for more e-books). They got 100 titles and will add on each year. Anything they get through Credo they won’t get paper.

Sarah: TCCL is going more toward downloadable books, too. They’re not touching the catalog records for these—just batch load MARC for ebooks and ejournals and hope for the best. They’ve got 2 full time and 1 part time cataloger, plus her. Not enough time to do those and the books. 7500 titles is too much to even check the title and author. The items are getting used—they have the usage stats—but if there’s soemthing wrong in one, they won’t catch it. They’re spending so much time on kids books (which don’t get searched in the catalog and have a short shelf life)—she admits they need to look at a switch to spend more time with the records that the item is only available through electronic means.

Michele: Co-Ming still has them check some things in downloaded records.

Junie: We still treat electronic as ephemeral.

General problems w/ ILSs. Costs—switch to open access and pay a programmer instead of a company. If AMIGOS is going to support open access, then it’ll make it easier for smaller libraries to make that switch.

JJ: NetLibrary doesn’t always work with non-IE browsers, and their campus has gone Mac—lots of students using Safari, FF, Chrome. They’ve got a student position for programmer.

Junie: It’s sure not any less interesting!

 

Brick and Click rough notes session 5

Academic reserves via ReservesDirect (as implemented at NCSU libraries)

-opensource

-functional requirements list: global, administrative, user, course, item, statistics

-contenders: Equella (not suited), Docutek e-res (no trail of versions over the semesters), Ares (good tools for the staff but not enough for faculty), ReservesDirect

-works through authentication (login); enrollment based for students (pull datafeed from registrar’s office); for profs, can only see own classes, not edit anyone else’s—can add their own documents and URLs; searchable, so faculty can see what is on reserve for other classes

-admin side: the’ve added ability to add a video; can see who has used a particular article over time; way to make links non-breakable as they move across platforms

-needing to educate faculty about metadata so the search function wrks better (or cean it up for them)

-good, useful canned stats with limiters for admin; faculty also get a report as to which items have been opened, how many times, and by how many students (but not which ones)

-pilot test summer 2008 w/ 4 faculty and 1 instructional designer; bug reports led to fixes (if had to do over, wouldn’t use faculty, just more instructional designers, since the one was the only peson who really gave useful feedback)

-full release fall 2008; lots of positive feedback from faculty

-migration: datamap, 17 gigs of data, broken links (all of them!), confused document icons, wayward data, safety net

-ran some instrution session for faculty, but they don’t take them—only the instructional design people. Made office calls in order to do one-on-one training. Also has a video tutorial.

-www.reservesdirect.org/wiki

 

Brick and Click rough notes session 4

How to be the Bad Guy Without Being Bad (now with LOLcats!)

-You have to have the right group of people with the right attitude in order to have everything work right; any other group of people makes for an entirely different group of people.

-She’s had 52% turnover in 3 yrs but now has the right mix of people.

-Poor performance eats at an organization, rendering it unproductive, slow-moving

-Basic responsibility: productive and well-disciplined individual (then they’re happy)

-3 types of issues: performance issues; attendance; beahviour/conduct

-punishment failures: uncertainty, inconsistency (favouritism), long-term disaster (looses power); breeds apathy

-performance improvement discussion: know your org’s process; serious and planned; specific goals; structured (one goal: have the person agree to change the behavior)

-prepping for discussion: identify the specific difference between the actual and desired performance (the person has to take responsibility, and that won’t happen without specifics—too easy for them to rationalize); anaylyze the impact of the problem (why to solve); identify consequences (“further disciplinaty action” isn’t enough—be specific); determine appropriate action plan

-actual vs. desired performance: type of problem (if there are multiple, limit to highest priority); be specific and limit to facts

-first conversation is about the behavior and opportunity to change; second is about failure to change (consequences)

-disciplinary: change in workflow, physical location, or whatever might be incentive

-5 questions: Did employee understand the policy that was violated? Did the employee know in advance that such behavior would be subject to disciplinary action? Was the rule violated reasonably related to the safe, efficient, and orderly operation of business? Is there substantial evidence that the employee actually did violate the rule? Is the action planned reasonable related to the seriousness of the offence, the employee’s record of service, and the action taken with other employees who have committed similar offenses?

-Conducting the discussion: Somewhere private; as soon as possible; give enough time for discussion (but don’t want it to be endless, either); Go straight to point—no sense dragging it out since they’re already freaking out or worried; let them talk about it from their POV and be an active listener; gain agreement; end on positive expectation of change (and follow up in writing)

-2 causes of performance probs: 1) lack of knowledge (training issue) and 2) lack of execution (clarify expectations)

-execution problems: clarify expectations; remove obstacles; provide feedbac; arrange appropriate consequences

-attendance problems: cause is irrelevant; only the effect counts. Individual responsibility—coming to work is a condition of employment, as is coming to work on time. Address as you would a performance issue: logical consequences; gain agreement; personal choice; further action.

-attitude probs: (other than psychotherapy, religious conversion, and brain surgery) Handle it same as others. Just don’t *tell* them they have a bad attitude! They’ve heard it before. Just get the expected behavior in writing.

-Discussion difficulties: “yeah but,” “I’ll try,” silence, irrelevancy. You’re going for a concrete answer. Keep the conversation on track.

-Dismissal (aka “No Fault Divorce”) Sometimes the best thing you can do is fire someone. It isn’t a judgement on them as a person—it just means that the fit is bad. Dismissal should not be a surprise to anyone involved. Lots of meetings, feedback, and written documentation. There is no other choice.

-Have a plan. Pre-meeting; meeting; post-meeting. Know org’s requirements.

-Run it by a jury first if you feel at all uncertain. Was employee aware? How do you know that they knew? Do you have documentation? Were they given time to improve? Was training provided?

-Write a script. Short and to point. Listen to response. Repeat as necessary. Anticipate questions and concerns.

-Avoid misdirected compassion. No one enjoys doing this. Don’t let that stop you from carrying out the process. Their actions have had an impact on your org. The time and effort is only worth it if the behaviour is fixed or they leave.

 

Q&A

-how do you deal w/ unions? Doesn’t have to do so now, but in past union was very supportive as long as there was cause.

-Before the divorce, do you consider moving them elsewhere within the org? Yes. Sometimes it works, but sometimes there are other issues. Act in good faith.

 

Brick and Click rough notes session 3

Usability Testing for websites and other applications

-focusing on tutorials and user guides

-started out as making sure web sites cohered to design standards, but has gradually morphed to include how users intact with the site—really have to think about how to include testing in implementation process

-ISO def’n: extent to which a product can be used by specified users…

-don’t forget the consent form! might have to talk w/ IRB, too

-Card sorting: use, perception, demand; have participants sort cards w/ headings, then have them come up w/ own headings, then interview (from soc and psych); can lead to navigation redesign; time consuming to test and analyze results (can take pictures of the cards post-sort to help)

-heuristic: best practice (Jakob Nielsen); need outside experts; evaluate for specific criteria (ie, match beween system and real world [library jargon]); fix now/soon/someday; hard to find experts (and $$); high learning curve; can be hard on the site designer due to negative focus

-Assessment testing: users complete tasks; objective or goal-oriented; review for duplication; arrange from easiest to hardest; best method for feedback on functionality and navigation; can be formal or informal; remember to debrief the participant

-choose right method: demographics of users, purpose of testing; need lots of user groups represented; use incentives to recruit (also, neutral location and timing) [do lib staff and librarians separately, since they use the site differently and staff might be more willing to be open w/out libs in the room—can be good to have outside moderators for some groups]

-testing 2.0 apps: Focus! assessment tests work best for this. specific audience; greater depth of test; user population may have no prior experience with the application, so have to account for that in the questions

-content testing: focus on info; tasks based on learning objectives; interfae independent

-software testing: focus on navigation; tasks based on finding info; interface dependent

-Be sure to be focusing on Content, not software (unless you’re doing OA, you can’t do anything about the software)

-pretest: use to refine questions; small sample user group; screen captures can really help; repeat until results are consistent; methods: interviews after, screen capture, filming

-designing test questions: be specific and task-oriented; pretest for validity and clarity; broad or narrow scope—keep to middle ground; longer is not better—don’t want to tire people out or have them get bored (on side of paper seems to be good; it looks do-able)

-samples:

-find book: Does the lib. own a copy of ____?

-access a db: Does the lib. have access to _________?

-find lib. hours: What time does the lib close on _____?

-find contact info: Where is liaison’s office?

-Use back button: How do you get to previous material?

-Nielsen says doing 5 should be plenty—diminishing returns after that. But they aren’t so sure.

-implications: highlights user interaction relative to design; focus on important content; indicates higher maintenance items; underscores tast complexity; potential redesign

-figured out that students were having different interactions w/ the info depending on the librarian who had created the libguide, so they’re going to write some standards for the guides based on their findings.

 

Q&A

-What type of 2.0? Tutorials and guides are the only ones they’ve done testing for.

-signifiant diff in user groups? Yes! Esp. btwn patrons and librarians, w/ libs not understanding what patrons want (user testing can debunk lib myths about what students want)

-institutional standards in the website redesign? yes. colors, header, and a few other things dictated by the school (Wartburg College) so they had to work around, but their head guy was ok with a little switcheroos

-how much time? card sorting: one afternoon (used magnetic board and handed out candy bars while at the ref desk);  assessment takes much longer, esp. w/ pretesting, plus fact that application are often new to the user (and sometimes the lib!)

 

Brick and Click rough notes session 2

Serials Evaluation/Advanced Excel “magic”

-They’ll post a sample spreadsheet to the blog that will have the formulas in it

-Filtering (highlight entire sheet befoe clicking on filter [in sort area]) – like Scott uses

-IF statements, esp. in conjuntion w/ formatting rules

-Makes the review process easier since all info’s in one place and can filter and sort as the discussion goes, as needed

-Easier to update since they’re now more familiar with the process.

-Can use icons instead of shading for conditional formatting

-downloaded info on journal formats from EBSCOnet so they wouldn’t have to flip back and forth

-use data to tell the story rather than text—takes up less space

-Data validation; list; =[named column of info {such as Action: New, Review Next Year, Format Change, etc.}]

-icon sets are under “conditional formatting”; create new rule; choose icon sets when formatting; can use different colors for diff levels of use (just have to decide what levels are what)

-COUNTER compliance makes it easier to standardize our workflows

-Don’t worry so much about “making the wrong decision”—can always reorder something.

 

Q&A

-Faculty involvement? Not for cancellations. They’ve moved to trimester and enrollment is up, so faculty are very busy.

-Do they use these spreadsheets as justification? Yes, for audits, chancellors, and other outside groups. easy to hide columns that don’t apply.

 

Brick and Click session 1 rough notes

Cataloging and User Experience

-What users want

-info changing at umprecedented rate, but we’re not changing fast enough to keep up

-OCLC 2003 enviro scan; info conusumer trends: self-sufficiency, seamlessness (liesure/work overlap) – libraries are not seamless!

-2005 OCLC college student survey; satisfied with what they find through our search

-2009 OCLC what libs/users want; users=seamless flow, immediacy, enhanced content (TOCs, etc), advanced search options for narrowing, but w/ one box, expectations are based on popular sites

-Info now, in one place, and don’t want to have to go to lib to get it (but we’re not entirely digitized, so not there yet)

-Challenge=make catalog wrk for all

-

 

-Netx gen

-features:keyword search, relevance ranking, faceted search, search limits, did-you-mean, item recommendations, RSS feeds, user feedback, cover art, TOCs, reviews, tagging

-Endeca: works w/ existing ILS, simple, relevance and faceted, NCSU using

-VuFind: Open source (Villanova); faceted, author bios (browse search?)

-WorldCat Local: Does not sit on top of ILS, searches WC; single search, can link to ER, multiple languages (U IL-Chi)

-eXtensible catalog: still in development at U of Rochester (rollout in 2010); open source; will be discovery layer as well as converting existing MARC to XML to help prep for RDA’s scenario 1

(she didn’t mention Koha)

-If it metadata isn’t right, none of these will work right!

 

-RDA

-1997: AACR3 began to be talked about due to all the new e-formats, but work didn’t begin until 2004, so even more formats!; quickly realized that print-based ideas wouldn’t work; RDA started in 2005

-online product scheduled for release in 2010 w/ testing, eval, and training by national libs after release

-principles-based w/ more left to catalogers’ judgement (less ridgid rules); new formats shouldn’t flummox catalogers any more;

-content standard, not display standard (MARC, XML, whatever) w/ focus on user

-strusctured v. diff from AACR; still describing items, just adding other things; subjects, concepts; how to connect works, manifestations, etc., with subjects, people, and concepts

-www.rda-jsc.org/docs/5sec7rev.pdf

-

 

-FRBR

-user tasks: find, identify, select, obtain

-RDA is shaped by conceptual framework of FRBR; way of showing relationships to a greater extent than we have in the past

-Work (story, song, etc.), Expression, Manifestation, Item

- challenge is to take use from any expression or manifestation to all the related ones

-writers of FRBR and RDA didn’t dictate how to do it, so it’s up to the softwarre developers (only one company, in Sweden, that has developed a FRBR-based program)

-we currently catalog at manifestation level—wil be moving to datasets for each work, then another for expressions, and another for manifestation, but they’ll link in such a way that they’ll feed in info so things won’t have to be redone each time.

 

Three RDA scenarios

3: “flat file” = OPAC w/ no linking (card catalog)

2: linked bib and authority records (like we have now)

1: relational/object oriented db structure; linked datasets; new infrastructure w/ info based online (future); will we have the infrastructure, will linnked data always be available, “will someone change it like wikipedia?” (URGH! Haven’t we gotten over this yet?)

 

Prepare

-catalog w/ RDA in mind; note rlationships; use authority records

 

Q&A

-we currently spend a lot of time doing authority work; will it be more or less important in scenario 1? More important! But less work because the effort will be more spread out. (LC’s lack of subfield d codes, which they had quit doing to save time but are now going to want to get RDA to work properly)

-Is FRBR more a program than a database? She doesn’t know, doesn’t understand semantic web very well, nor metadata. But the metadata people think that this will work. Q’er is worried that will have to redo work; P’er says programs should be able to do the work to convert MARC to XML

-More on user tags in nextgen catalogs? Can you search by them? Depends on the catalog, but they should be set up that way.

[example throughtout was P&P and various off-shoots]