MediaWeek (Vol 5, No 34): Copyright, Digital Public Library, Colleges & Big Data + More

University of California at Berkeley professor Dr. Pamela Samuelson in The Chronicle from a few weeks ago on Copyright reform and the creation of a comprehensive digital library (Chron):

The failure of the Google Book settlement, however, has not killed the dream of a comprehensive digital library accessible to the public. Indeed, it has inspired an alternative that would avoid the risks of monopoly control. A coalition of nonprofit libraries, archives, and universities has formed to create a Digital Public Library of America, which is scheduled to launch its services in April 2013. The San Francisco Public Library recently sponsored a second major planning session for the DPLA, which drew 400 participants. Major foundations, as well as private donors, are providing financial support. The DPLA aims to be a portal through which the public can access vast stores of knowledge online. Free, forever.

Initially the DPLA will focus only on making digitized copies of millions of public-domain works available online. These include works published in the United States before 1923, those published between 1923 and 1963 whose copyrights were not renewed, as well as those published before 1989 without proper copyright notices, and virtually all U.S.-government works. If a way can be found to overcome copyright obstacles, many millions of additional works could be made available.

It's no secret that copyright law needs a significant overhaul to adapt to today's complex information ecosystem. Unfortunately the near-term prospects for comprehensive reform are dim. However, participants at a conference last spring at Berkeley Law School on "Orphan Works and Mass Digitization: Obstacles and Opportunities" believe that modest but still meaningful reforms are possible.

Her comment about the institutional license for the Google database reminded me of the analysis I completed in 2010.

The Atlantic takes a more detailed look at the Digital Public Library (of America):

The DPLA is the most ambitious entrant on the digital library scene precisely because it claims to recognize this need for scale, and to be marshaling its resources and preparing its infrastructure accordingly. With hundreds of librarians, technologists, and academics attending its meetings (and over a thousand people on its email listserv), the DPLA has performed the singular feat of convening into one room the best minds in digital and library sciences. It has endorsement: The Smithsonian Institution, National Archives, Library of Congress, and Council on Library and Information Resources are just some of the big names on board. It has funding: The Sloan Foundation put up hundreds of thousands of dollars in support. It has pedigree: The decorated historian Darnton has the pages of major publications at his disposal; Palfrey is widely known for his scholarship on intellectual property and the Internet; the staging of the first meeting on Harvard's hallowed campus is not insignificant. Ideally, the consolidation of resources—specialized expertise, raw manpower, institutional backing and funding—means that the DPLA can expand its clout within the community, attract better financial support, and direct large-scale digitization projects to move toward a national resource of unparalleled scope and functionality. "We believe that no one entity—not the Library of Congress, not Harvard, not the local public library—could create this system on its own," Palfrey says. "We believe strongly that by working together, we will build something greater."

The Economist takes a look at an exhibition at the British Library on the life of Shakespeare (Econ):

Shakespeare is such a global brand that the man himself almost disappears. The aim of “Shakespeare: Staging the World”, at the BM until November 25th, is to make the playwright specific and particular, to root him in his time, 400 years ago. The exhibition summons his physical world with an array of culturally evocative objects, many of which were used in “Shakespeare’s Restless World”, a splendid BBC radio series presented by the BM’s director, Neil MacGregor, earlier this year.

The show unfolds in a dark circular space, with curving rooms that wind from one to the next, each subtly lit and discreetly atmospheric of its contents: arrow slits in the room about the history plays, a hint of trees to suggest Warwickshire and the Forest of Arden, a touch of charring on black walls for the gunpowder and witchcraft of James I’s reign (when Shakespeare wrote “Macbeth”), and finally a pale dawn for the Americas, the “brave new world” of “The Tempest”. All this sits within the embrace of the old Reading Room, its shelves and dome dimly glimpsed through gaps here and there. This globe within a globe, as it were—one full of artefacts, the other of books—glances at the play between word and object that underlies the exhibition.

Fascinating (potentially spooky) article at the NYT on how colleges are beginning to use "big data" to manage student performance and even play match maker (NYT):

Data diggers hope to improve an education system in which professors often fly blind. That’s a particular problem in introductory-level courses, says Carol A. Twigg, president of the National Center for Academic Transformation. “The typical class, the professor rattles on in front of the class,” she says. “They give a midterm exam. Half the kids fail. Half the kids drop out. And they have no idea what’s going on with their students.”

As more of this technology comes online, it raises new tensions. What role does a professor play when an algorithm recommends the next lesson? If colleges can predict failure, should they steer students away from challenges? When paths are so tailored, do campuses cease to be places of exploration?

“We don’t want to turn into just eHarmony,” says Michael Zimmer, assistant professor in the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, where he studies ethical dimensions of new technology. “I’m worried that we’re taking both the richness and the serendipitous aspect of courses and professors and majors — and all the things that are supposed to be university life — and instead translating it into 18 variables that spit out, ‘This is your best fit. So go over here.’ ”

From the Twitter this week:

ALA Releases Report on Library E-book Business Models Publishers Weekly

Media Decoder: Google to Buy Frommer's From Wiley Publishing New York Times

ALA: Info Report on eBooks for Libraries

A short information report on eBooks in libraries has been produced by the Digital Content & Libraries Working Group of the American Library Association (ALA).  Working in close collaboration with ALA’s president and executive director, the group has focused on influencing the largest (“Big 6”) trade publishers to sell ebooks to libraries on reasonable terms. Here is a sample from the report (pdf):

Three basic attributes are beneficial to libraries under any business model for ebooks. While it may not be feasible to realize all of these immediately, and a library may elect to do without one or more in return for more favorable terms in other areas, at least temporarily, these features are ultimately essential to the library’s public role:
Essential Features All ebook titles available for sale to the public should also be available to libraries for lending. Libraries should have an option to effectively own the ebooks they purchase, including the right to transfer them to another delivery platform and to continue to lend them indefinitely. Publishers or distributors should provide metadata and management tools to enhance the discovery of ebooks.

• Inclusion of all titles — All ebook titles available for sale to the public should also be available to libraries for lending. Libraries may choose not to purchase some titles if restrictions or prices are deemed unacceptable, but withholding titles under any terms removes the library’s ability to provide the services its patrons need and expect.
• Enduring rights — Libraries should have an option to effectively own the ebooks they purchase, including the right to transfer them to another delivery platform and to continue to lend them indefinitely. Libraries may choose more limited options for some titles or copies, or in return for lower pricing, but they should have some option that allows for permanent, enduring access.
• Integration — Libraries try to provide coherent access across all of the services they offer. To do this effectively, they need access to metadata and management tools provided by publishers or distributors to enhance the discovery of ebooks. Separate, stand-alone offerings of ebooks are likely to be marginalized, or to diminish awareness of other library offerings. Mechanisms that allow ebooks to be discovered within the library’s catalog and checked out or reserved without undue complexity are basic needs.

MediaWeek (Vol 5, No 16): Texas Custom, Apps For Education, William Boyd, Official Chinese Authors, + More

Tarrant county (Texas) attempts to save students money on textbooks runs into faculty resistance (IHEd):

The push for cheaper textbooks isn’t new, and the spat in Tarrant County frames larger debates about the use of open-source texts and the best way to increase student learning while controlling costs. Some community colleges have saved money by working with publishers to create custom books for widespread adoption. Some textbook writers have started making their materials free on the Web, and a recent Rice University effort expanded that medium. Tarrant County administrators hope that using a common textbook in every class will help push costs down, which will allow more students to buy the books and in turn perform better in the classroom.
But some professors aren’t convinced. The faculty resolution expressed agreement with the goal of reducing textbook costs, but questioned whether this was the best way to do it. We "ask that the 'common course textbook' plan be suspended and that the college faculty be allowed to develop meaningful, realistic strategies for reducing student textbook costs to be implemented by the fall semester of 2014," the resolution reads.

Efforts to open up education information might create an App culture which has educators and technologists keenly interested (Chronicle):

In the case of the MyData button being promoted by the Education Department, it's not clear how many different types of information will be made available, although the data will exist in machine-readable, open formats. Participants will be required to specify how the exported data are formatted. Because participants are not required to export data in an identical format, a department official explains, developers may have to do more work upfront, but the information will get into students' hands more quickly.
At least one company, Fidelis Education, has committed itself to use the data students can download from the Veterans Administration's blue button.
As an enterprise that helps veterans pursue higher education and training for civilian careers, Fidelis plans to use the blue button's military-service data in the admissions process to verify that applicants are who they claim to be. Gunnar Counselman, a co-founder and chief executive of the company, says having access to an even more robust set of data about alumni satisfaction and employment could provide students with a personalized way to pick colleges that goes beyond rankings.
He's not convinced that such data will be available anytime soon. But the emergence of start-ups has had a "Hawthorne effect" on universities, he says—they're more open as a result of being observed so intently by outsiders.

 Profile of William Boyd who has been tasked with giving James Bond some new assignments (Independent):

They're still reviewed, however, in the serious, literary-fiction pages of the national press. Although Restless was a "Richard and Judy" selection in 2007, it won the high-profile Costa Award. Literary editors and judges refuse to relinquish their view of Boyd as a superior literary being, a writer of subtlety, poignancy and psychological nuance, as his earlier novels revealed him to be. He is, they admit, a 21st-century avatar of Graham Greene, who blithely interspersed "serious" works (The End of the Affair, A Burnt-Out Case) with action-thriller "entertainments" such as Brighton Rock and Our Man in Havana. The reading public couldn't care tuppence about such matters. They buy Boyd's books in hundreds of thousands because they know him to be the most reliably page-turning of modern English novelists, full of old-fashioned storytelling virtues, of place evocation, pace, drama and sex.
Of the generation nominated "Best of Young British Writers" by Granta in 1983 – the generation of Amis, Barnes, McEwan, Rushdie, Rose Tremain, Pat Barker, A N Wilson, Adam Mars-Jones et al – Boyd's probably the author for whom ordinary readers feel the most fondness. The Queen is known to be a fan, though possibly more because of his Commonwealth background and blue-eyed charm than his prose style. He lives in a handsome Chelsea townhouse, with his wife Susan, editor-at-large at the American Harper's Bazaar magazine (he married her at 23 – they've been married for 37 years, and have no children) and in a converted farmhouse in Bergerac, where he owns a vineyard, Chateau Pecachard. For a chap who turned 60 in March, it seems an enviable life.

China is the focus at London Bookfair which predictably has raised some commentary about how some authors where chosen over others (Independent):

Did the BC have any alternative? Almost certainly not. But, via its literature director, it has chosen to tell us, chillingly, that "There was no disagreement with the Chinese government about the final list of... writers who regularly appear on well-respected lists of the best novelists and poets in China." Indeed. But so do many other Chinese writers - who live not only in exile but also at home, where they may have a vexing relationship with the cultural authorities. That's not to mention the dozens brutally silenced in the courts. At Amnesty International, the Tiananmen Square veteran Shao Jiang has greeted the run-up to the Book Fair with an invaluable day-by-day log of imprisoned Chinese writers: learn their stories at amnesty.org.uk/ blogs/countdown-china.
The non-state Chinese Independent PEN Centre comments, with grave courtesy: "We cannot but ask: to understand Chinese literature, should the British people rely on... recommendations by the Chinese government alone?" The Centre has objected to the British Council's collaboration with the GAPP, saying that if it "wishes to promote an authentic cultural exchange in a free and civilised way, please do not disregard the independent writers whose works are dedicated to shaping Chinese civil society".

Juicy gripping true crime story reviewed in the Observer:

In 1877, Harriet Staunton's husband and three others were accused of starving her to death and lurid newspaper reports of the Penge murder trial held the nation's rapt attention. A bestselling novel about the affair – written in 1934 and now republished – proves as gripping today .

Creating, writing editing and producing a magazine as performance art (Observer):

The idea to create twenty-four began selfishly: I wanted to make a magazine. For me, print magazines are a fascinating medium, combining content, design, a crafted physical object and the opportunity to curate an ongoing conversation around a single idea. Twenty-four is simultaneously a print magazine, an online experience and a creative challenge. The goal is simple: a small team of creative professionals conceptualise, design, write and photograph a print magazine in 24 hours and document everything via Flickr, Tumblr, YouTube, Storify and Kickstarter, making the process part of the product. Time-restricted projects have been done for comics, art shows, albums and other magazines before; it seems we increasingly invest in experiences over products and we want more transparency from the artists we love. This is why twenty-four was designed with documentation in mind; revealing our process live meant that we were not only producing a magazine for print but also creating a sort of online improv show.

From Twitter this week:

Amazon Massively Inflates Its Streaming Library Size http://bit.ly/IaQ0XW

(In case you missed it) BBC News - US sues Apple and publishers over e-book prices http://bbc.in/Hxfe8R

ALA Releases State of American Libraries 2012 Report. http://ow.ly/ab3NB

Random House: In Dreams of My Data

It would be hard to imagine that a less equal business relationship exists than that between publishers and libraries.  Without even the semblance of discussion, negotiation or consultation Random House did what HarperCollins did last year and imposed a solution to mitigate a problem no one can even prove exists.  The problem: That loaning eBooks from a library is so easy that retail sales will be destroyed.  Curiously, Amazon and Barnes & Noble, both of whom would naturally have a problem with free books, have always been fairly mute about how libraries retain a competitive advantage over these retailing behemoths.

Random House’s solution is to triple down on the price of the book; the logic of the tripling is just as opaque as Harpercollins choosing 26 loans until their books ‘expire’.  As a cop out, Random House suggests that more data is needed and on the delivery of said data they may adjust their pricing accordingly.  Those with rose colored glasses will want to view that as a possibility that they will bring their pricing downwards; but, really?  The whole notion of use-data is both a canard and disingenuous.  For one, I’m not aware of any publisher sponsored research or collaboration (with ALA, OCLC, etc.) where the purpose was to define the library patron and their purchasing behavior.   
It’s not like the behavior hasn’t been there to study for 100 years.   In fact the data is available – certainly not in one database but in three or four; for example, circulation data from an OPAC, bibliographic information from OCLC, psychographic information from GfK Group and retail sales information from BookScam.  What’s missing is the willingness to do the hard work.

Sadly, libraries have very little negotiating leverage or power.  And it’s not like they can go to their cities or states for more money so that they can buy these more expensive eBooks.  What’s the last public sector anything that had their budget raised 300%?  So, libraries are dependent on public outrage and even there most people will shrug their shoulders and move along.  Current ALA President Molly Raphael's statement was part cajoling, part plea – and who can blame her?  There aren’t that many options:

“While I appreciate Random House’s engagement with libraries and its commitment to perpetual access,” Raphael said, “I am deeply disappointed in the severe escalation in ebook pricing reported today. Calling on our history together and our hope to satisfy mutual goals moving forward, the American Library Association strongly urges Random House to reconsider its decision. In a time of extreme financial constraint, a major price increase effectively curtails access for many libraries, and especially our communities that are hardest hit economically.

“Also, ALA appreciates the data gaps that exist, and we commit to work quickly and collaboratively to address this concern. We must have better data to inform decisions that have such wide and deep implications.

Random House did not jump on the band wagon with the other large trade houses when they all went over to the agency model but with this unilateral action they probably have every trade house cheering them on.  Random House is unlikely to ‘make it up in volume’ because most libraries are simply going to buy other publisher’s eBooks (until they go up as well), and I can say categorically – because I have no data to back this up – that they won’t see a corresponding increase in retail sales either.

Any willingness y publishers to really work with public libraries to work out a solution has been spotty at best.  The fact that the prime distribution avenue into the public library segment seems to act as much like a bumbling doofus as it does a concerned partner probably serves the publishers perfectly.  Fellow traveler Eric Hellman perfectly numbers the real issues associated with eBook distribution into public libraries but resolving these to any degree is probably beyond expectation.