stories filed under: "libraries"
American Library Association Pushes For More Video Games In Libraries
from the someone-alert-Nebraska dept
Just last week, we wrote about how officials in Nebraska were coming down hard on a library for buying a PS2 and the game Rock Band as an educational tool and a way to bring more kids to the library. The officials there (and many in our comments) seemed to think that there was no redeeming value for the library to do so. Yet, as reader Tyler Hipwell points out, the American Library Association is now pushing new gaming in libraries initiatives, including an online toolkit for building up gaming resources at the library. Someone should alert officials in Nebraska.Filed Under: libraries, video games
Companies: american library association
Landgrab For Ownership Of Library Catalog Data
from the not-good dept
There's been an interesting (and somewhat troubling) behind the scenes fight going on concerning library catalog data over the past few months. The Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) is a nonprofit, made up of member libraries that basically tries to help facilitate access to information among libraries. That seems like a good thing. One of its offerings is WorldCat -- basically a big online catalog of library collections, so that it's easy for anyone to find books that are available at other libraries. This, obviously, seems quite useful, and many libraries agree and are a part of WorldCat. However, a month ago, OCLC announced new policies for WorldCat that effectively allowed OCLC to claim ownership over the records that any library put in its system -- and, upon doing so, limiting what libraries could do with that data (such as, say, giving it to competing cataloging services).This has many in the library community quite reasonably worried, with specific questions about who should be allowed to "own" library records. As that last link shows, there are a number of different people and organizations involved in the creation of a basic library database record, and basically the only thing OCLC is doing is putting it online. It's difficult to see how they can then claim ownership of it.
While this may be new in the library space, this type of debate has raged for years in other arenas, and some of the findings from those earlier battles may be instructive. The issue has to do with the concept of "database rights." Normally, factual information is not subject to any sort of copyright or ownership rights for rather obvious reasons (how do you own a fact?). However, some believe that there should be separate "database rights" that allow ownership of the compilation of certain factual information. For the most part, the US has denied this right, while Europe has allowed it -- and the results have shown, quite clearly, that the US made the right decision. Ownership of database rights tends to damaging to business while allowing the data to remain free can help build booming industries.
In this case, the scenario is a little different, because OCLC isn't trying to claim a government backed "database right" over the content, but instead wants to achieve the same effective result via a unilateral change to its terms of service -- including a bit of viral licensing code that forces the "ownership" to travel with the data. OCLC doesn't really appear to have any legal authority here, but are trying to force it through by contract -- for which I'd say there's a decent chance it wouldn't hold up in court, though no one wants it to get that far. Between the unilateral change, the claiming of ownership of others' works (including public domain contributions from the Library of Congress) and the lack of database copyrights, you could probably make a good argument that the OCLC's policy change has no weight. Still, in the short term, a much better solution would be for OCLC to back off its silly ownership claim, recognize the power of open sharing of information, and focus on adding additional benefits and services for why libraries should want to work with OCLC over competitors, rather than trying to use slimy contract terms to block out competitors. And, of course, hopefully OCLC learns that pissing off your partners and customers by dumping draconian ownership claims on them is never a good business strategy.
Filed Under: catalog info, copyright, database rights, libraries, openness, ownership, worldcat
Companies: oclc
As COPA Goes Down, DOPA Comes Back
from the ropa-dopa dept
But think of the children! It never seems to stop. Just as yet another court has ruled that the COPA law is unconstitutional, some folks in Congress are trying to bring back its sister legislation, DOPA. COPA (the Child Online Protection Act) required websites to block objectionable material. DOPA (the Deleting Online Predators Act) is much more narrowly focused, requiring schools and libraries to put in place filters that block access to social networks. Why? Well, politicians are under the false belief that this somehow stops predators.There are just two big problems with this reasoning. First, studies have shown that the supposed "threat" of online predators has been blown way out of proportion. Most kids are not targeted by online predators on social networks, and the few who are tend to know enough to deal with them. But you won't hear the politicians pushing DOPA say that. Instead, they claim: "as more children flock to social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, we've seen a corresponding increase of online sexual predators." According to whom? Over the past few months we've pointed to three separate reports showing that the reports of the threat have been greatly overstated.
But, more importantly, even if predators are a threat on social networks, isn't it a much better solution to let kids use them in schools and at libraries where there can be reasonable oversight, and where educators can teach the kids how to deal with online threats? Banning access from schools and libraries only guarantees that kids will find other ways to get to those social networks when no one's there to watch them. And, by making it seem like it's somehow underground, it will seem even "cooler" to make use of those sites. And, at the same time, teachers, parents and librarians won't feel compelled to teach kids how to use those sites safely, because the use will be totally hidden from view. How is that possibly a good result?
Filed Under: copa, dopa, filters, libraries, protect the children, schools, social networks
Should Organizations Get To Ignore Copyright For The Sake Of Preservation?
from the glossing-over-a-bigger-problem? dept
Copyright was clearly designed for a different age: when not everyone was a "publisher." And while we've spent years pointing out many of the different problems that has caused, here's another one: how is a library or some other institution charged with "archiving" written works for posterity supposed to deal with copyright laws that can often make such archival activities against the law? Well, the Library of Congress and a bunch of other organizations have a suggestion: let them all ignore copyright law for the sake of archiving. Basically, the report recommends that certain organizations be designated as "preservation institutions," which are then more or less allowed to ignore copyright law and copy-at-will for the sake of preservation. Of course, this is clearly going to lead to many questions, including just who would get designated as such. Many people can probably agree on public libraries and such -- but what about Google? After all, Google is already one of the largest players in "preserving" what's online and also, with its book scanning project, what's in books. Yet it's a private, for-profit company. Should it qualify? I would argue that it makes sense to allow it, given how beneficial the archival activities of Google have already been. Even if it is for profit, the public benefit has been tremendous as well. But then what's to stop any other company from arguing that it to deserves an exemption for preservation purposes? Wouldn't a better solution be to start rethinking copyright law altogether, since what has become clear from this is that copyright doesn't quite fit today's world any more?Filed Under: archives, copyright, digital, libraries, preservation
Information Has Always Been Dynamic Rather Than Static
from the fascinating dept
AllThingsD points us to a very long, but quite fascinating article by Robert Darnton, Director of the University Library at Harvard, ostensibly about what it means to be a library in the new age, but the article covers a lot more ground than that. In fact, I'd argue that really, only the last paragraph discusses the role of today's library (in a slightly rushed manner), while the previous 48 paragraphs (5,814 words) are a variety of interesting snippets that act as prologue to that final paragraph. Within those first 48 paragraphs, however, there's probably enough material to write about four or five entirely separate posts, from the history of newspapers (they aren't trustworthy, they tended to copy each other and make up stuff, they're not very useful as a record of history -- but are useful as a look at the prism through which people viewed their events), about book publishing (it's always been a mess) to how you determine what's important either for news or a book (no one really knows).But what comes through is the idea that information is a much more dynamic presence than most people consider. Especially today, people seem to think that once something is written, it's somehow set in stone -- and, in fact, that's why we give automatic copyright to that content. But that's rarely true in history (since the days when text was literally set in stone), even when it was more difficult to "change" a text compared to these days. For example, Darnton tells the following story of Voltaire:
In order to spice up his text and to increase its diffusion, he collaborated with pirates behind the back of his own publisher, adding passages to the pirated editions.That doesn't seem all that different than seeing folks like Trent Reznor today release his own works on BitTorrent and encouraging others to make mashups with his content. What it comes down to is the idea that most packages of information are recipes. They're a general description of the work, but to make them "spicier" or "sweeter" or (in some cases, we need to admit) "better" people will change and adjust that information. Sometimes it will be by the original creator of that content, but more often it will be by others. And that's not a bad thing (even if strong copyright believers claim it's somehow "immoral"). It's just the nature of information. And while that represents challenges for anyone who's trying to archive all of that information, on the whole it's a process that should be celebrated, rather than feared.
Filed Under: dynamic, information, libraries
Microsoft Gets Out Of Book Search, But Hands Tools Over To Libraries
from the some-good,-some-bad dept
In a somewhat unexpected move, Microsoft has announced that it's abandoning its book scanning project. While Google's book scanning project has received a lot more attention (and lawsuits) for the way it's set up, Yahoo and Microsoft teamed up with the Internet Archive to try to do something similar, though focusing mostly on public domain works and other books where they have the publishers' permission. Microsoft doesn't give an entirely lucid explanation for giving up the project, but it is handing over the scanning systems it put together to its various library partners and hoping they'll continue scanning on their own, saying:"Based on our experience, we foresee that the best way for a search engine to make book content available will be by crawling content repositories created by book publishers and libraries."In some ways, this is a stunning quote coming from Microsoft, admitting that a publicly available repository, created by others an which anyone can index, is better than a proprietary and controlled solution. The company is probably correct that it's better to have the content be available to any search engine rather than stuck in a silo, but there's probably much more behind this reasoning -- such as the fact that Google's book scanning project seems to be gaining a lot more traction, perhaps because Google is doing deals with libraries to scan their books for free, while the Open Content Alliance (which Microsoft's project was a part of) charges money to libraries.
Filed Under: book scanning, book search, libraries, openness
Companies: microsoft
Arguing Over Copyright While Books Disintegrate
from the that's-not-good dept
Thanks to ongoing perpetual copyright extension (thank you, Michael Eisner and Sonny Bono!) many libraries and museums are distressed to find old books that are still covered by copyright, though long out of print, are literally disintegrating. They want to preserve these books, and digital technology makes that easy. In fact, that's exactly what Google was trying to help these libraries with, via its Google Library project -- the same one that publishers are suing over. While these libraries have asked for special exemptions to copyright law to deal with this issue, it seems to have turned into a huge bureaucratic nightmare, with a special study group made up of both librarians and publishers, who have agreed only to make recommendations when the entire group reaches consensus (meaning, it takes forever to get marginal improvements). Even then, the group is only putting out recommendations to the Librarian of Congress, who would then have to push for legislative change. As Stephen Wildstrom notes in his article about this (linked above):"Many more books will be gone before anything comes of this.... We have a copyright system designed in the 19th century with a bit of flavoring from the 20th, governing a reality where the existence of digital media is revolutionizing the very concept of content and protection."It's a shame. Draconian copyright is erasing large portions of our past literary achievements.
Libraries That Need To Print And Then Rescan Ebooks Just To Lend Them
from the thank-you-copyright dept
The folks over at Against Monopoly have pointed out a rather ridiculous situation that has come about thanks to the restrictions that some publishers are putting on ebooks that are offered to libraries. With regular books, once a library has purchased the book, it can lend it to other libraries to pass on to patrons with no problem, but thanks to the restrictions placed on ebooks, such things are not allowed. So if a library wants to do an inter-library loan on an ebook, it's forced to print out the ebook, scan it back into a computer and then send the scanned copy to another library. For something that's supposed to be a lot more efficient, it would appear that the ebook, thanks to publisher restrictions, is actually a lot more troublesome.Shocker: College Aged Folks Go To The Library
from the yay-the-pew-internet dept
From the fine folks over at Pew Internet, a new study reports that young adults are most likely to visit a library when confronted with a problem to solve -- despite the wealth of online information available to them on the internet. Although most libraries have now added internet terminals, for the most part, libraries are still struggling to keep pace with the times, and haven't really done much to advance their position as knowledge providers. Though the article does point out that young adults (aged 18-30) are the most active library users (with 62% having visited a library in the past year), the report itself (pdf) paints a slightly different picture. When faced with a problem to solve, the percentage of people that looked on the internet, 58%, greatly outpaced the 13% that went to a public library. So, while it's possible to paint a nice picture with the previous statistic, perhaps it's not quite as rosy as the article suggests. Furthermore, of the 13% of those that visited the library, 65% were there to use the internet. Perhaps the reason that young adults visit the library more than the rest of the population is simply because libraries are more accessible to them, since many of them are at college. So, once again, may this serve as a reminder that 73% of studies may be used to show just about anything.Filed Under: libraries, pew internet
