Managing Digital Content

Lesley Ellen Harris will be teaching the ALA Editions eCourse Demystifying Copyright: How to Educate Your Staff and Community beginning on September 12th. You can learn more about the course and register for it at the ALA Store.

In July 2011, in one of her first interviews upon becoming the U.S. Register of Copyrights, Maria Pallante was asked by Nate Anderson from ARS Technica if the extra attention caused by increased public interest in copyright had complicated life in the U.S. Copyright Office. Pallante’s response:

“I'm thrilled that more people care about copyright. I graduated from law school in 1990 and copyright was kind of a growing field then—environmental law was also newly hot—and it's only gotten bigger and better since. I do look at it sometimes with amusement; the field I obviously fell in love with right off the bat has gained so much attention.

            But I think it's great that the public is interested. It presents a lot of challenges but a lot of opportunities. I would like to see people respect copyright, I would like to see them know how copyright works, what it means for them in their daily lives.

            It's one of those life skills now, right? When you graduate from high school or college, you should know how to read a map, you should know how to use GPS, you should know a little bit about copyright. If you are somebody who is going to be in a field where you will encounter copyrighted materials all the time, you should know more. If you're going to be an artist or musician and you're getting a red-hot degree in the performing arts, you should know a lot. And I don't think that's quite the case—I don't think it's been built into curricula.”

What is Copyright Education and Why is it Important to you?

Libraries in organizations of all sizes are increasingly responsible for obtaining copyright permissions and providing information about copyright law. An increasing role of libraries as “copyright administrators” is to educate various internal people and departments and sometimes the public too about the basics of copyright laws, compliance with copyright guidelines, and respecting terms and conditions in license agreements.

Librarians who want to be perceived as the YES person for obtaining access to use content must be able to educate their community on copyright and licensing. Yet there is no exact definition of the concept of copyright education.  First, it is important that the copyright education be framed according to the needs of and in the context of your own enterprise. You will then need to be creative in developing and instituting an enterprise-wide education program. Your goals will be to increase the comfort level of staff in applying copyright in day-to-day situations, to lower the risk of employees infringing copyright law, and to lower potential or actual costs relating to copyright infringement.

Information about copyright law should come from a variety of sources from print and online information to discussion groups and seminars, courses and workshops. An online course beginning September 12, 2011 covers the following topics:

• Understanding the risks of copyright infringement and how to protect your library from lawsuits
• Understanding the need for copyright compliance nationally and globally
• Evaluating copyright issues in your library
• Developing a copyright education plan
• Assessing materials, content and technology in order to equip an instruction team for your institution
• Keeping your educational program up to date

Taking an active role in copyright education in your library is a giant step towards copyright compliance and management.

“Demystifying Copyright: How to Educate Your Staff and Your Community” offered by ALA Editions and taught by Lesley Ellen Harris (www.copyrightlaws.com), a copyright, licensing and digital property lawyer. Online content will be presented over a four-week period with opportunities to post to online discussion boards, complete weekly assignments and activities and discuss your individual questions.

For more information regarding online learning, see 

http://ow.ly/5EA6B

Your advice for on-line learners? By Joshua Kim     

Okay, perhaps not everywhere, but certainly in more places than ever before! We've been working hard to make our e-books more accessible. The following outlets either carry our e-book titles already or will in the near future:

• ALA Store
• Amazon Kindle Store
• Barnes & Noble Nook Store
• Google eBookstore
• NetLibrary
• Kobo
• OverDrive
• GoSpoken
• eBooks.com
• Follett
• ScrollMotion
• eBrary

These are just the beginning. Keep your eyes peeled here at the blog for future updates!

Owners of a Nook, the award-winning Barnes & Noble eReader, can now purchase several best-selling ALA Editions e-books at bn.com. We’re adding more titles every week, and among those already available are:

• No Shelf Required: E-Books in Libraries, Edited by Sue Polanka
• Privacy and Freedom of Information in 21st-Century Libraries (Library Technology Reports, November/December 2010, 46:8), by Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF), Jason Griffey, Sarah Houghton-Jan, and Eli Neiburger
• Fundamentals of Collection Development and Management, Second Edition, by Peggy Johnson
• Libraries and the Mobile Web (Library Technology Reports, February/March 2011, 47:2), by Cody Hanson
• Young Adult Literature: From Romance to Realism, by Michael Cart

ALA Editions e-books are also available through Amazon, the Google eBookstore, NetLibrary, and other e-book distributors, as well as directly from the ALA Store.

If you haven’t seen it yet, you’re going to want to check out and sign up for this new, FREE training program. Just one hour a week (like my book!), for six weeks, library staff and supporters from around the country can build their advocacy skills and strengthen their libraries with PLA’s Turning the Page 2.0! If, like many, you’re looking for low-cost, effective and “schedule friendly” training for yourself and/or your staff, don’t miss this!

Go to: http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/pla/plaevents/turningthepage/index.cfm and check it out!

ALA Editions now offers more than 300 titles in at least one e-book format, but can you guess our most popular titles? Here are our top ten bestsellers, in alphabetical order:

Bite-Sized Marketing: Realistic Solutions for the Overworked Librarian
By Nancy Dowd, Mary Evangeliste, and Jonathan Silberman
Written and designed to reflect the way people read today, this book is structured to quickly impart simple and cost-effective ideas on marketing your library.
ALA Store, Amazon Kindle, Google eBooks

Cataloging Correctly for Kids: An Introduction to the Tools, Fifth Edition
Edited by Sheila S. Intner, Joanna F. Fountain, & Jean Weihs
Based on guidelines issued by the Association for Library Cataloging and Technical Services (ALCTS), this handbook is a one-stop resource for librarians who organize information for children.
ALA Store, Google eBooks

Fundamentals of Collection Development and Management, Second Edition
By Peggy Johnson
Expert instructor and librarian Peggy Johnson addresses the art in controlling and updating your library's collection.
ALA Store, Amazon Kindle, Google eBooks

Gadgets and Gizmos: Personal Electronics and the Library (Library Technology Reports, April 2010, 46:3)
By Jason Griffey
Eminent blogger and library technology expert Jason Griffey provides a comprehensive guide to the present and future of modern gadgets, and how they can fit in to any librarian's plan for a high-tech future.
ALA Store, Amazon Kindle, Google eBooks

Introducing RDA: A Guide to the Basics
By Chris Oliver
Resource Description and Access (RDA) is the new cataloguing standard that will replace the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR). This Special Report offers practical advice on how to make the transition.
ALA Store, Amazon Kindle, Google eBooks

No Shelf Required: E-Books in Libraries
Edited by Sue Polanka
In this volume, Sue Polanka brings together a variety of professionals to share their expertise about e-books with librarians and publishers.
ALA Store, Amazon Kindle, Google eBooks

The Readers' Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction, Second Edition
By Joyce G. Saricks
This revised edition provides a way of understanding the vast universe of genre fiction in an easy-to-use format.
ALA Store, Amazon Kindle, Google eBooks

Writing and Publishing: The Librarian's Handbook
Carol Smallwood, Editor
If you are interested in writing or reviewing for the library community, in publishing a book, or need to write and publish for tenure, then Writing and Publishing is for you.
ALA Store, Amazon Kindle, Google eBooks

Writing Reviews for Readers' Advisory
By Brad Hooper
Whether the ultimate goal is writing for a library website, book club, or monthly handout, or freelancing for a newspaper, magazine, or professional journal, readers will find plenty of ideas and insight here.
ALA Store, Amazon Kindle, Google eBooks

Young Adult Literature: From Romance to Realism
By Michael Cart
This survey helps YA librarians who want to freshen up their readers’ advisory skills, teachers who use novels in the classroom, and adult services librarians who increasingly find themselves addressing the queries of teen patrons.
ALA Store, Amazon Kindle, Google eBooks

Originally posted at Lesley Ellen Harris' Website, copyrightlaws.com.

The year end is often a time to review finances, clean off desks, and get organized for the new year.  Below is a list of actions to get your copyright matters in order.

Permissions and Licenses

1. Check all licenses for electronic content to determine if any expire at the end of 2010.  Do you want to renew expiring licenses or allow them to expire?  Do you need to take any action to notify the vendor/content owner of your intention to renew or not renew a license?

2. Prepare a database of all content your organization has licensed. Whether it’s an image to use on a promotional brochure, or content from a large electronic database, include all content in a single searchable database that allows you to quickly and easily locate that content and determine what rights you have in it.

3. Generally, the duration of copyright expires at the end of each calendar year.  Determine if any of the works you want to use will be in the public domain in 2011. Review one list of works entering into the public domain on 1 January 2011.

4. Develop the “ultimate” list on what your organization needs from its license agreements. Do you need remote access or the right to share a PDF file? Do you need to make print-outs, or post articles to your intranet? What about using portions of the database for internal education/ seminars? Use the list as a set of goals in your future negotiations for licenses.

Budget

5. Consider your 2011 budget for permissions, licenses and copyright training.  Consult various people in your organization to gather their needs and preferences.  Prepare a draft budget and ensure you have the funds you need to meet your copyright needs in 2011.

Education and Training

6. Brainstorm ideas to get the copyright message to your colleagues.  How about a weekly lunchtime discussion group on copyright issues? Include senior management, marketing and information professionals, and lawyers.  Aim for a diverse group of speakers from authors to photographers to web designers to librarians.  The discussions can help “sensitize” your colleagues about copyright rather than being a lecture style format.

7. Continue your own copyright education.  Do you need a refresher course on copyright?  Or perhaps a course on international copyright or web 2.0 copyright issues?  See what in-person or online courses are being offered.

Management and Compliance

8. Develop a written copyright policy. If you do not already have one, first determine why you need one and how you would use it. If you have one, determine whether it is valuable, how you can improve or update it.

9. Do the same copyright questions arise again and again in your organization? Year end is a good time to compile these questions and prepare short practical answers.  Circulating these Qs & As to your colleagues or posting them on an intranet may help your organization better comply with copyright.

Copyright News and Information

10. Review copyright legislation in 2010 as well as court cases.  Are there any legislative amendments to your country’s Copyright Act that affect you?  Any court cases that interpret the copyright law that relate to your uses of copyright materials?

11. Try to better understand fair use/dealing. Is fair use/dealing narrow or broad? What research is covered by fair use? Create your own checklist to determine what may constitute fair use/dealing in your organization.

12. Create a list of favorite sites and books on copyright so that when you have a copyright issue in 2011, you can quickly consult reliable, helpful sources.

13. Investigate how best to follow copyright issues in 2011.  Sign up for a RSS feed?  Follow someone on Twitter?  (Try Copyrightlaws @ Twitter)  Participate on a discussion list?  There are free and subscription newsletters that may provide timely and relevant news.

Copyright Symbol and Protection

14. Review how you are protecting your own copyright works from documents to images to podcasts and videos.  Although voluntary in most countries, using the universal copyright symbol© is a reminder that copyright exists in a work.  Including contact information for permissions will direct people when obtaining copyright permissions.

15. Copyright registration is voluntary in most countries but consider registering your works with your country’s copyright office.  Rather than registering individual works, register a group or collection of works produced during the year to save time and registration fees.  Registration is important if you are distributing your works to the public and may need to enforce your rights through legal action.

16. Review your agreements with consultants. Who retains copyright ownership in consulting reports? If your organization does, make sure that this is clearly stated in your agreement and if necessary provide for an assignment of this work to your organization. If the consultant owns his works, take a look at the rights your organization has in any of the consultant’s work. If you are a consultant, review what rights you have in your own works.

17. Undergo an intellectual property or IP audit. It’s a great way to make sure all the content and computer software you are using is legal, and a great way to find out what IP you own, and how to market and better profit from that IP. This is true for individuals, small and large organizations.

18. Set up a mechanism for monitoring the legal use of your own online content on an international basis. This can be as simple as doing search engine searches, or you could hire a professional who specializes in finding unauthorized uses of content.  Piracy is not only the domain of the software and entertainment industries.  You may find surprises in how your individual or organization’s rights are being exploited, and your works used and perhaps even sold without your permission.

Click for permission to freely post this checklist on your blog, intranet or website.

Kate Marek writes about a story told by Paul Duguid, author of Social Life of Information, about his experience in a closed-stacks archive, where he was reviewing 250-year old primary documents for a research project. “Duguid, who suffers from asthma, was careful to cover his nose and mouth with a scarf while working with the dusty documents. One day, a fellow researcher in the study room (to Duguid’s horror, as he recalls it) spent his time with a box of letters not reading them, but instead holding each letter to his face, drawing deep breaths through his nose to capture its smell. Here is what Duguid writes about their conversation:

Choking behind my mask, I asked him what he was doing. He was, he told me, a medical              historian. (A profession to avoid if you have asthma.) He was documenting outbreaks of        cholera. When that disease occurred in a town in the eighteenth century, all letters from the        town were disinfected with vinegar to prevent the disease from spreading. By sniffing for the      faint traces of vinegar that survived 250 years and noting the date and source of the letter, he           was able to chart the progress of cholera outbreaks.”

As Marek notes, “I have used this story repeatedly when talking about digitization in libraries. It is a perfect illustration of the potential losses we face when we digitize—what information we lose when we move from physical to electronic and how we may be totally unaware and unsuspecting about those potential losses.” Duguid’s tale is just one of the many fascinating examples of how storytelling can be used in organizations to pass along important object lessons, history, and shared experiences in the library. For more about the value of storytelling, check out Kate’s new book, Organizational Storytelling for Librarians: Using Stories for Effective Leadership.

Cross-posted at the ALA TechSource blog.

We're happy to announce another ALA TechSource Workshop--Using E-Books and E-Readers in Your Library with Sue Polanka.

With the recent explosion in the popularity of eReading devices, many librarians are grappling with how to effectively integrate these devices into their services and collection. In  two 90-minute sessions on January 25th and February 1st, 2011 at 4:00pm Eastern, Sue Polanka will provide practical guidance on how to begin purchasing eBooks for your library to lend electronically and how to purchase eReader devices for patron use. The first session will provide a basic primer on acquiring eBooks, while the second will provide an overview of the issues surrounding library lending of eBook readers. 

Topics covered will include:

Session 1: Purchasing E-Books for Your Library

• Selecting content
• Evaluating vendor offerings and interfaces (publishers and aggregators)
• Choosing the most cost effective business models
• Monitoring the workflow

Session 2: Lending E-Book Readers in Your Library

• Examining legal issues
• Selecting devices
• Purchasing content
• Establishing policies and procedures

Sue Polanka is Head of Reference and Instruction at the Wright State University Libraries. She has provided reference and instruction services in public, state, and academic libraries for nearly 20 years. Her passion for reference and electronic resources spawned her eBook blog, No Shelf Required, a discussion of ebooks for librarians and publishers. She is also the author of the book No Shelf Required (ALA Editions 2010). She is Chair of Booklist's Reference Books Bulletin (RBB) Advisory Board and maintains her column, Off The Shelf, for RBB. Sue is a frequent contributor to Booklist and presents at many state and national conferences, usually on her favorite topic - eBooks.

Registration for this ALA TechSource Workshop on January 25th and February 1st, 2011, at 4:00-5:30 (ET) can be purchased at the ALA Store. To learn more, please refer to the ALA TechSource Workshops Frequently Asked Questions.

ALA TechSource Workshops are designed to give you and your staff the opportunity to participate in a hands‐on learning experience that will help you make the best technology decisions for your library.

After several years of planning, Google has finally launched their ebookstore. And hundreds of ALA Editions titles are now available, from recent bestsellers such as No Shelf Required:  E-Books in Libraries to 1969’s ALA Rules for Filing Catalog Cards. Unlike many other e-book platforms, Google lets you use just about any device you own to read any book, anywhere. You can read e-books purchased from Google on the web, Android phones, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and several supported e-readers. Their overview is well worth a read.

You can browse this list of selected ALA Editions titles or use the search function to find a specific book. We’ll be adding more titles as they become available.

In an article entitled, “Libraries reinvent themselves as they struggle to remain relevant in the digital age,” one prominent librarian from a more traditionalist bent felt that libraries are not the place for game rooms and ping-pong tables. He and others worry that such changes will hurt rather than help libraries’ image and their service role in the community. We wanted to find out more so we informally polled some of our authors on their reaction to the traditional view of libraries and their feelings about how libraries are going about reinventing themselves. Here are some of their thoughts, quoted with permission:

All this talk about libraries not being real libraries anymore because there are more computers being used than books makes about as much sense as saying that paperback romances are edging out hardback classics on library shelves! Library services and collections are NOT mutually exclusive! Our value is growing! It's good news! The doom and gloomers are missing the point if they don't see that the advent of technology, the need for PC connection, the desire to learn how to live online makes public libraries even more relevant and important to their users than ever before - not less! I think a lot of what the article said is true; reference desks will become obsolete as we accept that our 21st-century customers want a different library experience, for example. But one point in this piece is, I think, completely off-base. We're not allowing gaming in order to trick a teen into checking out Dostoevsky but, since gaming and meeting other relevant new needs just may help keep the doors open, he'll at least have a chance to find a copy if he wants one - at his thriving public library!

Catherine Hakala-Ausperk
Deputy Director, Cleveland Heights - University Heights (OH) Public Library, author of  Be a Great Boss: One Year to Success (ALA Editions, 2011)

Oh well, I remember when a few librarians were upset when we put jigsaw puzzles in the library, back in the 80s.  But everyone else loved them.   At my local public library (Brewster, MA) they let a user assemble a puzzle on a library table where passers-by can take a look or stop to help and socialize.  Many public libraries have started chess and scrabble clubs.        

Every community needs a community center and in my small town that is de facto the public library.  What better place?  It's accessible and open 6 days a week.  The meeting room is always busy.  Local artists display their work there.  A huge bulletin board is available to community groups to post notices. 

The display case features monthly exhibits by local hobbyists--from needlework to beautiful sailor's valentines.  The public computers are always in use; in fact people help each other at the terminals.  Mothers chat with each other while their children are at story hour.  Public libraries perform a social function as well as an educational one--and they always have.  I'm lucky to live in a community where the library fosters this. 

Janet Husband, author of Sequels (ALA, 2009) and eSequels.com.
         
I think he is right.  I know that isn't a popular opinion in libraries and I even included video games in my new book from LU, but that was because I knew they were in libraries. . .  not that I want them there.  I often think he is right. He just sometimes says things in a really controversial way.  You can quote that anonymously. 
Any program or service that brings people new to the library inside our doors presents an opportunity for us, the library staff, to show them everything else we have to offer them.  They can not know the breadth of information and materials we have if they never come through the doors to see it for themselves.

Becky Spratford, author of the forthcoming revision of The Horror Readers’ Advisory                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

The article muddles academic and public libraries, which have different missions. Anything we can do to get patrons into libraries is good.  In-person visits to public libraries in 2009 increased 10% compared with a 2006 ALA household survey. Seventy-six percent of Americans visited their local public library in the year preceding the survey, compared with 65.7% two years ago. Online visits to public libraries increased even more: 41% of library card holders visited their library websites in the year before the poll, compared with 23.6% in 2006.

Peggy Johnson, author of  Fundamentals of Collection Development and Management

Libraries, like most public entities, are in a time of retrenchment – doing less with less.  Times like this also offer an opportunity to try new things, keep those that working well, and let go of functions that don’t serve us as well as they did in the past. 

Valerie Horton, editor of Moving Materials: Physical Delivery in Libraries

From a business perspective, many libraries are looking for a new business model. In every business model, the organization needs to clearly understand its core processes or what it does best.  If  a library provides a coffee shop better than the top competitor in that area (Starbucks, etc.) then it should provide that service.  If a library is able to provide a competitive coffee service because its revenues are subsidized by taxpayers and consequently it does not face the same cost structure of a for-profit organization, this is not a real library core process.  Without a clear identification of core activities and a means to improve them (balanced scorecard, etc.), it would be expected to see the start of all sorts of flailing activities from game to slumber rooms.

Steve Smith, author of the forthcoming book , Cost Control for Nonprofits in Crisis

While this was just a small sample of opinion, clearly there is no consensus as to what the “library” should be.