FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 30, 2008

Contact:
Jennifer McLennan
(202) 296-2296 x 121
jennifer@arl.org

Call for Entries

SECOND ANNUAL SPARKY VIDEO CONTEST
SPOTLIGHTS STUDENT VIEWS ON INFORMATION SHARING

Competition showcases student productions, offers instructors a fun and thought-provoking class assignment

Washington, DC – April 30, 2008 – Six library, student, and advocacy organizations today announced the Second Annual Sparky Awards, a contest that recognizes the best new short videos on the value of sharing and aims to broaden the discussion of access to scholarly research by inviting students to express their views creatively.

This year’s contest is being organized by SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) with additional co- sponsorship by the Association of College and Research Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries, Penn Libraries (at the University of Pennsylvania), Students for Free Culture, and The Student PIRGs.

Details are online at http://www.sparkyawards.org/

The 2008 contest theme is “MindMashup: The Value of Information Sharing.” Well-suited for adoption as a college class assignment, the Sparky Awards invite contestants to submit videos of two minutes or less that imaginatively portray the benefits of the open, legal exchange of information. Mashup is an expression referring to a song, video, Web site, or software application that combines content from more than one source.

To be eligible, submissions must be publicly available on the Internet – on a Web site or in a digital repository – and available for use under a Creative Commons License. The Winner will receive a cash prize of $1,000 along with a Sparky Award statuette. Two Runners Up will each receive $500 plus a personalized award certificate. At the discretion of the judges, additional Special Merit Awards may be designated. The award-winning videos will be screened at the January 2009 American Library Association Midwinter Conference in Denver.

Entries must be received by November 30, 2008. Winners will be announced in January 2009. The Winner of the First Annual Sparky Awards in 2007 was Habib Yazdi, a student at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for “Share” (http://www.arl.org/sparc/media/08-0122.shtml).

“If the medium is the message, then a video competition is an apt means of encouraging the YouTube generation to think about the challenging intellectual property issues shaping their communication environment,” said SPARC Executive Director Heather Joseph.

“This video contest is an excellent venue to engage students and to explore with them the intricacies of re-using content,” said Anu Vedantham, Director of the Weigle Information Commons at Penn Libraries. “The videos that emanate from this and similar contests provide vibrant examples of student creativity and ownership of new media. At Penn, I have noticed that mashup video contests and video classroom assignments engage students and faculty in new ways with academic material, and that video creation can be effectively integrated in many disciplines including writing, history and language studies. Through involvement with the 2009 Sparky Awards, libraries and new media centers have a valuable opportunity to reach out to faculty and students.”

“We’re excited to be a part of the Sparky Awards again this year,” said Karen Rustad, Core Team Chair for Students for Free Culture. “More and more students are having to manage issues of access and re- use in their daily school work. It’s a great time to talk about the potential for open sharing.”

The contest takes as its inspiration a quote from George Bernard Shaw:
“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”

For details, see the contest Web site at http://www.sparkyawards.org.

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SPARC is pleased to welcome these co-sponsors for the 2008 Sparky
Awards:

Association of College and Research Libraries

The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), represents more than 13,500 academic and research librarians and interested individuals. It is the only individual membership organization in North America that develops programs, products and services to meet the unique needs of academic and research librarians. Its initiatives enable the higher education community to understand the role that academic libraries play in the teaching, learning and research environments.

Association of Research Libraries

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 123 research libraries in North America. Its mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations.

Penn Libraries

The Penn Libraries system includes sixteen libraries and has been in continuous operation since 1750. Penn Libraries actively explore new media by providing courseware support, encouraging technology integration and supporting creative study through flexible collaborative spaces. The Weigle Information Commons, a joint undertaking of the School of Arts and Sciences, the Office of the Provost and the Penn Libraries, is a high-tech space that provides undergraduates with integrated academic support services for library research, writing, communication, new media, time management and planning strategies.

Students for Free Culture

Students for Free Culture (SFC) is a diverse, non-partisan group of students and young people who are working to get their peers involved in the free culture movement. Launched in April 2004 at Swarthmore College, SFC has helped establish student groups at colleges and universities across the United States. Today, SFC chapters exist at over 30 colleges, from Maine to California, with many more getting started around the world.

Students for Free Culture was founded by two Swarthmore students after they sued voting-machine manufacturer Diebold for abusing copyright law in 2003. Named after the book Free Culture by Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig, SFC is part of a growing movement, with roots in the free software / open source community, media activists, creative artists and writers, and civil libertarians. Groups with which SFC has collaborated include Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, and Downhill Battle.

The Student PIRGs

The Student PIRGs are a network of state-based, student-directed and funded public interest organizations active on over 200 college campuses in 20 states.

SPARC

The Sparky Awards are organized and sponsored by SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). An alliance supported and funded by hundreds of academic libraries and research institutions, SPARC promotes new scholarly communication models that use the Internet to expand sharing of information. SPARC was created in 1997 as an initiative of the Association of Research Libraries
(ARL) and operates under ARL’s non-profit status.

SPARC is a founder of the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, representing taxpayers, patients, physicians, researchers, and institutions that support open public access to taxpayer-funded research.

After a nice welcome to the registrants by Deborah Stevenson, the 2007-2008 Chair of the CARLI Resources Sharing Team the program started with the three sessions of the morning: CARLI Office Report, Circulation/UB: Reports & Statistics, and Web Service for Voyager Reports.

CARLI OFFICE REPORT (Lorna Engels, CARLI User Services)

New CARLI Office

The CARLI staff will be moving shortly to a new location at Trade Centre South in Champaign (3rd floor). The new office will combine all staff and offices in one location, include two new meeting/training rooms, and will have better access to parking for visitors (no more having to deal with U of I parking restrictions!).

CARLI staff will send out an announcement when mail should be redirected to the new office. The new address will be: 100 Trade Centre Drive, Suite 303, Champaign, IL 61820. Phone and fax numbers will remain the same.

Other news: (but just as important as the convenient parking issue

I-Share Voyager Performance Problems

CARLI has been updating libraries regarding the ongoing performance problems with I-Share Voyager (timing out) after moving from Oracle 9i to Oracle 10g. The incidents have been reported to ExLibris and CARLI technical staff continues to fine-tune the system by re-allocating some memory resources. CARLI staff is also working on plans to distribute the Voyager and Oracle load more effectively by moving their environment to an array of servers.

Volunteering for CARLI and I-Share Committees and Teams

CARLI and I-Share committee/teams are looking for new members. If you would like to nominate yourself or a colleague, complete the volunteer form at http://www.carli.illinois.edu/comms/volunteer.php no later than May 15, 2008. Terms on the Resource Sharing Team are for three years, and become effective July 1, 2008. The Resource Sharing Team charge and current roster are available at http://http://www.carli.illinois.edu/comms/iug/iug-res.html.

WorldCat Local Update

The three University of Illinois campuses, Northeastern Illinois University and the Illinois State Library are working with OCLC and Lincoln Trail Libraries System on a pilot of WorldCat Local. CARLI has set up a separate WebVoyage server in order to minimize the pilot’s performance impact on the production I-Share databases server. OCLC is currently doing some testing; they project a May 2008 install of WorldCat Local for these I-Share libraries.

I-Share “Class of 2008”

The following institutions will be added to I-Share in 2008:
Adler School of Professional Psychology, Chicago
Chicago School of Professional Psychology, Chicago
Harrington College of Design, Chicago
Principia College, Elsah
Rush University Medical Center, Chicago

In addition, at its March 2008 meeting, the CARLI Board accepted a staff recommendation that no new I-Share participating libraries will be selected and implemented in 2008-2009. In the spring of 2009, the Board will make a decision on implementing new participants in 2009-2010.

Electronic Resource Management System (ERMS)

The CARLI Board accepted a recommendation from the Product and Services Vetting Committee and the I-Share Acquisitions and Serials Team that CARLI pursue a request for proposal (RFP) to identify an ERMS. The ERMS would be used by CARLI staff to manage electronic resource contracts for the consortium. Pricing will also be made available CARLI member libraries that may be interested in their own ERMS implementations.

CIRCULATION/UB: REPORTS AND STATISTICS (Mel Farrell, CARLI User Services; Cathy Salika, CARLI Data Services

(All presenters’ handouts will be posted by CARLI to their web site; please refer to Mel and Cathy’s presentation handouts for more detail)

Mel and Cathy gave us excellent overviews of the statistics and reports that are available to libraries. What I really liked about the presentations is how Mel and Cathy broke down the information into:

“What”: what reports are provided and the statistics they generate.
“How”: how you can access the reports.
“Who”: who can access the reports.
“When”: when the reports are run.

“Do Something! Reports”
Reports that prompt you to do something, such as what needs to be removed from your hold shelf or start a search for items that have gone astray.

Counting Stuff Reports
Statistics, statistics, statistics. An attention-grabbing quote Cathy used was “Sometimes it’s more important to be consistent than to be correct”. Her point was that using different reports all the time would mean you’re not being consistent. For example, you won’t obtain a true picture of trends in your library if you constantly use different reports to capture your statistics you need.

Resources

I-Share Statistics and Reports
http://www.carli.illinois.edu/mem-prod/I-Share/i-sysdocs/I-network.html

I-Share Year-End Statistical Package
http://www.carli.illinois.edu/mem-prod/I-Share/i-sysdocs/I-network/statspck.html

Voyager Cataloging Reports
http://www.carli.illinois.edu/mem-prod/I-Share/secure/cat/voy_cat_reports.pdf

Transferring Data Files to and from the CARLI Servers using Secure FTP
http://www.carli.illinois.edu/mem-prod/I-Share/secure/execute/SSHSecureShell.pdf

Voyager Client Software and Related Tools
http://www.carli.illinois.edu/mem-prod/I-Share/secure/execute.html

I-Share Shared SQL for Reports in Voyager
http://www.carli.illinois.edu/mem-prod/I-Share/secure/sql.html

Web Voyage Usage Statistics
http://www.carli.illinois.edu/mem-prod/I-Share/opac/acristat_interp.html

WebFeat Smart Report Guide
http://www.carli.illinois.edu/mem-prod/wf/WebFeat-SMART-Detail.pdf

Voyager Documentation
http://www.carli.illinois.edu/mem-prod/I-Share/vendor-docs.html

WEB SERVICE FOR VOYAGER REPORTS (Jan and Nackil Sung, Eastern IL University)

Jan and Nackil gave an interesting presentation on programming Voyager Reports to be displayed in a web based format. I’m not a programmer or systems librarian, but I sure understood how nice their web-based model is, over the printouts we receive from Voyager. When their handout is posted on CARLI, you should forward it to your systems librarian and your programmers.

Jan and Nackil began their presentation by comparing the Voyager reports they use, and the same information in a web-based model, and ended with an overview of the skills needed to develop a web service for your Voyager Reports.

With apologies to Jan and Nackil, here’s my scaled-down version of how this works, using their slides.

In a typical Voyager environment, users (users are the people wanting to run the report) and the report librarian communicate with each other (the report librarian is using MS-Access, Reports.mdb and ODBC Oracle and has created the reports), or the users have Access, Reports.mdb and ODBC Oracle on their own machines. The report librarian or the user is also communicating with the Voyager Report Server.

In a web-based model, users are communicating to a web server using IIS with ASP and ODBC Oracle, which is also communicating with the Voyager report server.

In an enhanced web-based model, the web server is communicating with users, the Voyager report server, and QueryDB.mdb, which can be set up so that users see all reports, or only those they need to see.

In Eastern’s case, another piece was added: the Voyager report server also communicates with Windows Scheduler, which contains scheduled tasks, MS-Access, Reports.mdb and ODBD Oracle. The Scheduler runs the queries and sends it to the various people and departments by sending the data to an mdb they’ve named BoothReoprts.mdb.

System Requirements

Web server: IIS and ASP (or Apache and PHP), ODBC Oracle Drive, DBQuery.mdb: query manager, VoyagerREport.mdb: storage for pre-processed data.

Workstation: ODBC Oracle Driver, MS-Access, pre-packaged Reports.mdb, Windows Scheduled Tasks

Skills Needed: Scripting (APS or PHP) and SQL (Oracle SQL; Access SQL)

I’m sure Jan and Nackil will be happy to talk to anyone interested in setting this up (nsung@eiu.edu and jssung@eiu.edu).

We closed the morning sessions by breaking for lunch, which, by the way, was excellent!

After our fantastic lunch at University of Illinois Springfield, we returned to the auditorium for two more sessions.

Resource Sharing Code Task Force Update

In this presentation given by Kris Hammerstrand, we learned about “Maximum Access, Minimum Barriers:  Standardizing I-Share’s Universal Borrowing Policies.” 

Hopefully we will soon have the PowerPoint slides from her presentation online for you to read; the slides really do a good job of going over the details.  In the time being, here’s the information copied from the quick overview slide:

*I-Share Universal Borrowing (UB) policies will be standardized in July 2008.  It has been approved by the CARLI Board.

*NOTE:  These policies will apply to UB loans ONLY.  Libraries will continue to set their policies for local circulation.

                 Local circulation= YOUR patrons borrowing YOUR items.

*All 76 I-Share libraries will use the same:

• UB loan periods
• UB renewal policies
• UB blocking thresholds
• UB notice schedules
• UB lost book intervals

      CARLI staff will edit these policy settings for all I-Share libraries.

*CARLI will prepare PR materials on the new policies.

After the presentation, we had a few moments for questions and answers. 

We talked about concerns for lost and damaged items- I’ve attached a Powerpoint from CARLI (found at http://www.carli.illinois.edu/mem-serv/mem-train/070418res/LostDamagedProcedures.ppt) for more details on best practices for lost and damaged items.

Also, we talked about what other libraries did when it came to billing other schools for a patron’s lost materials.  For that topic, anyone intersted could start a conversation on the CARLI wiki- http://wiki.carli.illinois.edu/index.php/Portal:I-Share 

The second session was a look at VU-Find, CARLI’s New OPAC Finding Tool, presented by Paige Weston

I’m impressed by the demonstrations that I’ve seen of VUFind so far.

Coming up later this spring, the “early adopter” libraries will begin working with this new front-end for the OPAC- including performance tuning.  Then they will begin usability testing to see what the patrons think about it too.  Early adopters are:  BRA, COL, EIU, ERK, IIT, ISU, IWU, MIL, NLU, PRK, SAI, SIE, WHE

Then by summer of 2008 (possible timeline), VUFind will be a possible option for any users wanting to use the I-Share catalog. 

*Remember, I-Share as we know it (WebVoyage) is not going to go away.  VUFind would just be another option, should they choose to use it.

*VUFind interacts with data from Voyager, just as WebVoyage does.

*Patron and item status data is retrieved dynamically from Voyager.

*All staff functions will still be performed in Voyager clients.

This is an exciting development and we’ll be anxiously awaiting VUFind’s arrival.

CARLI libraries might be interested in this digital preservation summit, which will take place on May 21 at Indiana State University. It is hosted by Indiana State University. If you have any questions about this meeting, please visit the URL provided in the announcement.

DIGITAL PRESERVATION SUMMIT, INDIANA STATE UNIVERSITY

You are cordially invited to attend a Digital Preservation Summit on May 21, 2008 at Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana. The featured speakers for this all day event include Martin Halbert, MetaArchive Cooperative, Educopia Institute; Beth Sandore, ECHO DEPository, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Jeff Essic, Data Preservation Project, North Carolina State University; and Taylor Surface, OCLC.

Registration is $75 per person and lunch will be provided. For more information on how to register for the Summit, please visit: http://library.indstate.edu/digital/

The Digital Preservation Summit is sponsored by Indiana State University Library and the Office of Information Technology; Wabash
Valley Visions & Voices; the Indiana State Library with funding from IMLS; INCOLSA; OCLC; TIG; and EMC.

Our CARLI libraries that are using CONTENTdm might be interested in the upcoming Midwest CONTENTdm Users Group conference. Here is the announcement:

Announcing the
Midwest CONTENTdm Users Group
3rd Annual Meeting
April 29-30, 2008
Indiana State Library
IUPUI University Library at Indiana University-Purdue University
Indianapolis, Indiana

Register: http://www.incolsa.net/training/contentdm2008

Find out more: http://www.lib.purdue.edu/spcol/mug/

Register and join your CONTENTdm colleagues in Indianapolis on Tuesday and Wednesday, April 29 and 30, 2008. Learn about new features from CONTENTdm users and OCLC staff. Networking opportunities will be available during the one and one-half days annual meeting.

Glee Willis, Digital Projects Librarian at the University of Nevada, Reno and Ron Gardner, OCLC will each speak about their CONTENTdm experiences. Claire Cocco, the CONTENTdm Product Manager, will discuss Future Directions for CONTENTdm. A complete program of sessions is attached to this email.

A separate half-day pre-conference on “From Spoken Word to Digital File: Making Oral Histories Available in CONTENTdm” will be presented on the morning of April 29, 2008 by staff from Ball State University.

Please plan on attending this premier CONTENTdm event. For more information, contact:
Kiffany Francis, Cleveland State University at 1-216-687-3869 or k.a.francis10@csuohio.edu

CARLI is pleased to sponsor the Pre-Conference for the IACRL Conference on March 26 at The Chateau, Bloomington, “Leading While Libraries are Changing: Conversations about the Future of Academic Libraries.”

This program is free to individuals from a CARLI member library and $50 for non-CARLI members.

Register now!

This day-long Pre-Conference will initiate conversations and collective thinking about librarian leadership within the context of a changing environment. Keynote speaker, Scott Bennett, will frame the day’s conversations with a discussion of the library landscape and the dynamics of change. Bennett, Yale University Emeritus Librarian, will focus on how these changes impact space-planning, services, collections and behind the scenes operations. A follow-up panel session will feature five Illinois library leaders discussing their visions and plans for the future. Afternoon sessions will consist of two one-hour blocks of roundtable discussions that permit participants to discuss changes in specific aspects of professional practice (e.g. reference, instruction, technical services, technology, administration, consortia, etc.). A final debriefing in the afternoon will bring together all of the ideas and plans developed, and to initiate next steps.

This program is organized by the CARLI Public Services Working Group and sponsored by CARLI.

CARLI staff will hold two follow-up ILDS webcasts. Register now for one of the following dates and times:

* February 19, 2008 – 10:30 am
* February 22, 2008 – 1:30 pm

Attendance of these sessions is optional. The agenda for these sessions will include discussion on the ILDS workflow chart, and other general ILDS topics. The bulk of each session will be devoted to your questions.

Before attending one of the sessions, please run the Wimba setup wizard so that you will not have any problems accessing the webcast on the day you plan to attend.

If you have any questions about registering for the webcasts, please send an email to support@carli.illinois.edu.

Feeling blue because you just can’t seem to get a grant project funded? Get out of your library, shake off those winter “blahs” and attend the CARLI grant writing workshop - this is your opportunity to get advice that could make your next grant proposal a winner!

The CARLI Digital Collection Users Group is pleased to announce this workshop on writing digital imaging grants. The trainer for the workshop is Alyce Scott, Digital Imaging Program Coordinator at the Illinois State Library.

The workshop will be held twice, once in Chicago and once in Bloomington. The information covered in each workshop will be the same. Please register for only one workshop. In addition, space at the workshops is very limited. Registration is limited to one person per institution. If space is still available later, we will open the registration up to more than one person per institution.

Topics that will be covered include:

Potential Funders
Planning for the Grant Project
Elements of the Grant Proposal (focus will be on Illinois LSTA digital imaging grants)
Evaluating the Proposal
Helpful Hints

The bulk of the workshop will be spent on the elements of the proposal – how they should be written and how they will be evaluated.

Locations and Dates:

Wednesday, March 5, 2008, at Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington
Thursday, March 13, 2008, at the Illini Center in Chicago

Deadline for Registering:
Friday, February 29, 2008. Remember that, at this time, we can accept only one person per institution.

For more information or to register for this event, please visit:
http://www.carli.illinois.edu/mem-serv/mem-train/register/080305dcug/index.php

Please direct any questions about the workshop to support@carli.illinois.edu.

After a month of forgetting that my folder was in my car, it’s finally time that I remembered to blog about what happened at the Resource Sharing Forum (I am also a member of the committee) that was held at Northern University in Dekalb on November 14th.

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The first half of the forum introduced us to the new ILDS, scheduled to begin on January 2, 2008.  We were given helpful PowerPoint slides at the forum, so if you’ve not yet seen those, please post a comment to this blog and I’ll double-check to see where they are available for you.

By now, you should have already received your training materials, plus have had your individualized visit with a representative of Lanter to figure out your loading dock, pick-up location, and average time for daily delivery.

Lanter Delivery Systems, Inc. is a shipping and logistics business that

 *has regional sorting centers in seeral Illinois locations

 *serves businesses in addition to libraries on the same routes; that’s how they will be able to offer 24 hour point to point delivery. They will be putting the books onto trucks that they already have going to these cities

Since other blogs about the forum have talked about the more specific logistics, and you will all be trained in the necessary computer programs and procedures, below are a few of the questions and answers that were discussed during the forum.

1. Since Lanter is not used to handling books like we do (with care and understanding that they are breakable and valuable and damageable) will they be trained in proper book handling procedure? People were concerned that they would treat the purple bags like a purple bag and not give consideration for the contents.

- Although no training is planned for Lanter employees at this time, they are a company that makes it’s money by accurately and carefully delivering shipments. If you notice any damages, please report them to CARLI.

2. What happens if I run out of luggage tags? Or if I’m shipping something odd shaped like a poster tube?

- The answer to this seemed to be to sure that you put a label on it. For oversize items that don’t fit into one of the bags, or for odd shaped materials, put them into boxes like you’ve always done, but just be sure it’s counted on your Manifest and that you accurately label it.

3. What do I do with books that I’m going to be sending to public libraries?

- For books that you are sending to public libraries, they will need to be banded individually similar to what we do now (with the name of the public library on it and the name of the system) and then all of the books going to that system can be placed into one of the purple bags. So for example, if I’m sending a book to the Atwood-Hammond Public Library, I’d band it like I do now, and then put it into a purple bag labelled for the RPLS system. The individual systems will then be in charge of distributing it to the individual public library (as they do already).

4. Where is the funding for this coming?

- It’s coming through the Illinois State Library.

5. Will receipt printers be supported in the future?

- Yes, maybe. They’ll work on it.

6. Does each bag really have to have a unique number? What if the computer is down?

- Yes, each bag must have a unique number, but CARLI has a formula (I forget what it is) to accurately and correctly create those unique numbers, even if the computer is down.

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If you have any questions, please let CARLI know!

Also, please feel free to post any comments or questions here on this blog. You can also post any tips or hints that you come across that you’d like to share (such as crates that are the perfect size for holding the purple bags

Thanks,
Debbie Myers

Millikin University’s Staley Library

Posted by Lynn Bierma, IL State Library

This blog entry is an overview of a presentation given by Rebecca Butler, Associate Professor at Northern Illinois University, to the participants of the CARLI Fall Resource Sharing Forum held on Nov. 14, 2007.

Professor Butler began her presentation with the statement that copyright wasn’t just a law, but also an ethical concern involving rules of conduct and standards, morals, and what particular actions are “good” and “right”. In other words, a lot rides on our shoulders; it’s our decision as to what’s wrong or right.

She followed up with an overview of copyright definitions, the current copyright law itself and various parts of the law, including exemptions, licensing, the pros and cons of the law and avoiding copyright problems. Professor Butler covered quite a bit of information; what follows are what I considered to be the main pieces of her presentation (and what I was able to take notes on!) Professor Butler has graciously allowed CARLI to put her PowerPoint slides up on their web site. As of this posting CARLI is working on getting the new information about ILDS up. The slides will be up as soon as possible but give CARLI a bit of time J. Notification will go out via the usual listservs when they’re up. I urge everyone to look at the slides when they’re posted.

All URL’s mentioned in my blog are sites I’ve bookmarked; they were not part of Professor Butler’s presentation.

Copyright Definitions
Right to reproduce or copy
Right to prepare derivative works
Right to distribute
Right to perform or display the work publicly

Libraries are currently working with the base law established in 1976 and the revisions to the 1976 law, which includes the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act (1998), the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the TEACH Act.

Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d105:s.00505

Another web site you may find useful that nicely summarizes the law is http://www.keytlaw.com/Copyrights/sonybono.htm. Please note that I am not endorsing the commercial aspects of this web site.

DMCA: http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/iclp/dmca1.htm

TEACH ACT: http://www.utsystem.edu/OGC/intellectualProperty/teachact.htm

By law, every doodle, letter, email, etc. is owned by the creator from the moment it’s created.

International Copyright Law

Universal copyright convention: http://www.unesco.org/culture/laws/copyright/html_eng/page1.shtml

World Intellectual Property Organization: http://www.wipo.int/portal/index.html.en

Users’ viewpoint of the copyright law and how it should be interpreted vary. In Professor Butler’s opinion, users usually see copyright as too restrictive and owners of copyrighted works usually feel they’re giving away too much.

The copyright law does have statutory provisions for fair use and are part of the law. The statutory provisions are commonly called “Fair use”, and allow ways to use works without copyright infringements and without needing to obtain permission. “Fair use” tips more toward education than commercial use.

Fair use factors to consider are: characters of use, the nature of the work, how much will you borrow and the affect of the market.

The rule of thumb regarding how much of the work you can use is that you should only borrow the least amount you need.

Exemptions

Classroom exemption – see 110 of 1975 U.S. Code (U.S. Copyright Act)
Use of copyrighted work must be in a nonprofit educational institution, in a classroom or like place of instruction, a performance or display that is a regular part of instruction, or performance or display directly related to the content of the class.

Handicap exemption – see Section 110(2)
For persons who are disabled or have special circumstances that do not allow them to attend class. The TEACH Act amends this to include films and other dramatic works.

Library exemption – see Section 108
Requirements of library for single copies: the library must be open to outside researchers, and the results of copying must have no direct or indirect commercial advantage to the patron or to the library. Copyright notices must be placed on each copy.

Three copies of an item may be made if:
1) Its for preservation or security
2) Replacement of lost, stolen, deteriorating or damaged items that cannot be purchased at a fair price
3) If a format change is needed because the current format of the work is obsolete or if the equipment that must be used to view or use the item is obsolete.

The limit to the library exemption is that libraries should not copy audiovisual material unless it’s for preservation purposes. However, if you can copy the article, you can also copy picture or chart.

First Sale Doctrine

You have purchased an item but you do not have the right to copy it indiscriminately.

Public Domain

Examples: works that were never copyrighted, works that cannot be copyrighted, works that have expired copyrights and works for which no one has claimed ownership.

Copyright Guidelines

Borrowing and copying are allowed under the law. Guidelines were established to help libraries act in good faith. Fair use guidelines have been developed for multimedia and print.

Pros of the law Pros of the guidelines
Security Clearly Stated
Often more permissive to borrowing and copying If you abide, you’re OK
Not always enforced

Cons of the law Cons of the guidelines
Confusing; no one answer Guidelines are not law

Surprisingly (at least to me) Professor Butler said she’s never been able to find anything in print about the “rule of 5”…that’s the rule we all follow that says we can’t borrow more than five articles from a journal without paying copyright fees. Professor Butler indicated it’s more of a general guideline.

Distance Learning

Refer to DMCA (referenced to earlier in this blog). The rule of thumb is:
Obtain licenses, include copyright notices, limit access and terminate at end of class term.

Copying state and federal documents

Some states copyright their works, others don’t. You should also determine if the work was contracted out a private party.

Licenses

Licensing supersedes the copyright law. Licenses are legally binding contracts between two parties. The owner grants certain exclusive rights to the product to others. Licenses are normally part of the media documentation.

Open Source licenses

Open Source licenses are usually for non-print, multimedia items.

GNU General Public Licenses: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

Copyleft: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/

Avoiding copyright problems for interlibrary loans

Once a transmitted (scanned) copy is received and sent on to the patron, remove the copy from your computer(s). The borrowing library could be liable if the copy is not removed. If the lending library is unsure as to whether or not they can copy an item, check licensing if it’s an electronic document or refuse the request.

Avoiding copyright problems for electronic reserve

Check licenses! If you receive permission to put an item up on electronic reserve, how long can it be left on the web site? Is there a limit to the access (time limit; who is allowed access)?

Avoiding copyright problems for multimedia

Check licenses if you want to put the item up on electronic reserve.