Working towards more public books, fewer orphan works

Public domain determination becomes clearer cut, more books entering the public domain thanks to … Google? Jacob Kramer-Duffield explains how Google and Project Gutenberg and the Distributed Proofreaders put their book-scanning and OCR-ing smarts into trying to solve the thorny orphan works problem to determine which out of print books have had their copyrights renewed and which haven’t. Neat. [via joho]

artificial scarcity of audiobooks

John Miedema, one of the Slow Library posse, has an excellent blog up called Slow Reading. He’s been talking about audiobooks lately and his recent installment concerns the patron experience with digital audiobooks. His library uses Overdrive. He is techie enough to not have problems with the install experience, and for this installment he was content to listen to the audiobook on his computer. But he did have one observation about the availability of this content that is supposed to resemble books.

My selected title was not currently available, so I placed a hold on it. It struck me as odd that I would have to place a hold on a digital resource. After all, making an extra copy of a digital resource does not cost additional money. I know, I’m being simplistic. The rights holders have to impose some kind of exclusivity on the product so that people will pay more to get more copies. Still, it irks. I was emailed a couple days later that my title was available for download. Nice. I was told I could only have it for fourteen days. Well, I may be a slow reader, but I suppose I can listen faster. Last note on exclusivity — if I finish early, I can’t return it before the “return” date to let someone else have it earlier.

Like John, I understand why this is built into the audiobook mechanism but as a library patron and possible librarian working with this type of material, I find it obnoxious. As a patron, you get the book for two weeks whether you need it for that long or not. As the library, every time the item is checked out it becomes “unavailable” for two weeks whether the person reads it in a day or in ten. The content costs a fixed price which has a built-in limitation of how many times it can circulate. This offends my thrifty library sensibilities.

Add to this the confusing problem of non-label releases like Radiohead’s new album — pay what you want to download it, or you can pay $80 for a boxed set — and libraries are left having to make ad hoc choices about collection development issues because of bizarre market forces not because of what they feel should be in their library. Cynics can argue that this is the way libraries have always been with major publishers and book jobbers accounting for a disproportionate amount of library sales and shelf space but I’m curious if these new technological advances are going to make this problem better or worse.

Why non-scaling solutions are bad for public access to reources

Google Books has an enormous amount of material. This is good. However, they paint copyright restrictions with a wide brush and err on the side of protecting copyright holders. So, most content on Google Books that has been published post-1923 are restricted (possibly all, but definitely most). This may or may not be good for most people, but it’s certainly bad in some specific instances, like with government documents. These are in the public domain and yet you can only see “snippets” on Google Books. Rick Prelinger described this phenomenon last year. The problem still exists. The concern, apparently is that cop[yrighted material may appear within these documents — hearings especially — and since Google can’t spare the humans to do the due diligence, we all suffer with restricted access. [freegovinfo]

on speaking with one voice, too legit to quit

I’ve mentioned the “speaking with one voice” idea quite a lot. When you work with ALA in any capacity for long you’ll hear about it. Councilors were encouraged to all support the dues increase so that we could speak with one voice for ALA. The Social Responsibilities Round Table was discouraged from sending out copies of their own resolutions using their name (and by extention, ALA’s name) because of the supposed value of a “speaking with one voice” approach. When I worked at a reference desk, I tried hard to balance my own opinions on library policies with the binding nature of the policies, and the assumption that we were allowed to be flexible within the rules, to a degree, a degree I was never sure of (“Yes, I think the fines are a little high. No you should still pay them.”).

This just leads up to an anecdote. Last week the READ Poster I added to the Flickr group I mentioned a few weeks ago was selected to illustrate a little blurb about the Flickr group in AL Direct. AL Direct is an e-newsletter distributed by ALA. It’s distributed to all ALA members, except ones like me who have unsubscribed. I was a little surprised by the (unattributed) inclusion of my image both because it’s a bit icky and because it’s a direct rip-off of an ALA trademark. As I recall, when Audible came out with their Don’t Read campaign, ALA sent them a strongly worded letter.

I was a little surprised to see this post on LISNews about how to make your own legit READ posters. Apparently the gal from ALA called Blake about this item. I didn’t get specifics but it’s clear from the wording that

  • ALA would certainly prefer that you paid $134 for a set of templates. You can then import these into your own editing software and are subsequently licensed to use what you create, though you can’t sell anything you make with it.
  • The people at ALA Graphics are not “speaking with one voice” with the people from AL Direct. I am not suprised at this, since it’s a huge organization, and American Libraries is technically editorially independent, but it’s a little jarring nonetheless. From a business perspective, ALA has a legal responsibility to “defend” its trademark which in this case is the word READ, as indicated by the license agreement [text below] which has a whole bunch of other interesting points (one computer at a time, no “redistribution” of the image etc)

The word READ is a registered trademark of the American Library Association (ALA). With the purchase of this disc, ALA grants the purchaser a license to use the trademark, but only within the context of the images on the disc subject to the conditions below. ALA grants you a personal, non-transferable, non-exclusive right to transfer the images on the accompanying CD-ROM disc to one computer at a time and to use the images on that computer with one user, subject to the following terms and conditions. The images and layouts are for use only by registered non-profit purchasers only to enhance reading programs and to promote them. The images may not be incorporated in products offered for sale. An image(s) may not be incorporated in a product for the purpose of redistributing the image(s), and the images themselves may not be sold or rented, or downloaded or transferred electronically such as on an electronic network or bulletin board. Pornographic or defamatory use of the images is prohibited. You may not copy the disc in its entirety.

From my perspective, this is a “no harm, no foul” situation with the homemade READ Posters. However, the sudden presence of someone acting like a referee, essentially an agent from an advocacy organization tut-tutting a bunch of librarians for taking their good idea and running with it, makes me feel just a little bit shamed.