About half the people at my second talk and very few at my first talk knew what Digital Rights Management (DRM) was. Since librarians will be dealing with more products with increasing amounts of DRM, it’s a good term to get cozy with, carry a few examples in your toolkit, etc. The DRM blog is a good place to start learning as is EFF’s DRM section. My favorite examples, phrased in the form of patron questions:
“This DVD won’t play on my computer without me having an Internet connection and installing special software. Why?”
“I paid for a song using the iTunes store but now I can’t move that song to a different computer. Why?”
“I can’t play music I’ve legally downloaded from the Internet in open source format on my iPod. Why?” [note: not strictly a DRM issue]
“Is it really illegal for me to use my screenreader software to listen to the ebook I’ve cheked out? Why? “
Category: access
open source ILS project releases pre-alpha demo
The open-ILS blog has announced a release of their open source integrated library system demo available, if I am not mistaken, as a Firefox plugin/extension.
what is going on with federal depository libraries
Government Information in the Digital Age: The Once and Future Federal Depository Library Program. The Federal Depository Library Program run by the GPO is changing, dramatically. How will this affect you, and your patrons’ access to goverment information? James Jacobs and Shinjoung Yeo have made a preprint of an article they’ve written available.
We believe the GPO’s proposed model will do more to endanger long-term access to government information than ensure it. Libraries have been slow to offer alternatives. Many librarians have even supported GPO’s proposals — perhaps because the long-term implications are not clear.
DRM and fair use
Though this article in D-Lib is a bit of a “complex text” it’s worth reading if you’ve been asking yourself “How can I try to ensure fair use rights in the brave new world of DRM-ed content?” No matter what happens with DRM over the next few months, librarians that manage DRM-ed content are going to have to get a whole lot more tech-savvy, and quick.
The case of library licenses can be implemented by providing libraries with Library customer templates to request Library customer licenses valid for a fixed period of time. Prior to giving out a new copy of a Library customer template, the library can check the PCM to see whether the number of customer licenses in use is fewer than the maximum allowed.
blog policy questions
Now that organizations are starting to get their own blogs, people are starting to have some of the blog-policy questions, which is something you get when trends becomes more institutionalized. Karen has been working on blog ethics for a while and her recent post discusses CLA’s new blog and their stated intent to make the blog feeds a CLA member benefit. She discusses the whole idea of member benefits which confront the more wired idea of getting and giving content for free. ALA has back issues of American Libraries as a member benefit. At my library we used to have nine public access computers but only one for non-patrons that could access email. The three other “email computers” were a patron benefit. Not only was this system not particularly useful to our patrons — many people who want Internet access at the library specifically want to check their email — but it made us, as librarians explaining the system, look like we didn’t “get technology” We had to make the computers do something that they wouldn’t do normally in order to put a barrier between what we wanted to give away for free, and what we wanted people to pay for. Similarly in the CLA case, blogs made with any current CMS have an RSS feed. Whether or not you link to it, it still exists, right?
CLA may have produced a great journal in the past; now it can produce a great blog. It will not be a great blog if only its members can access it, because what makes blogs great are their impact on society. CLA, the cluetrain has pulled into the station. Please, I beg of you: get on board.