E-book readers' bill of rights

 This awesome post has been bouncing around the internet, where I saw it on Andy Woodworth's blog and Sarah Houghton-Jan's blog. For those who aren't aware, discussions about e-books have been taking place after Harper-Collins' announcement that they would be limiting e-book circulation at libraries to 26 uses. This causes tons of problems for access, and while I understand publishers need to make money to continue functioning, my main concern is for library patrons, readers (including students) and for authors.
LIS students--this is a must-read and the topic is one we should all follow. If for no other reason, as a patron who wants to read e-books or even share a book with another student, you want to know that you can use those texts. I have seen a number of people say that e-books are not paper books, and that we need a new set of rules to deal with them. Maybe, but whether or not the suggestions they make are the be all and end all, they are an awesome start because they deal with access and with getting books to readers: the purpose for which they were written in the first place. Since digital books open up the potential for even greater access and sharing because they can be copied almost instantly and without the overhead and resources necessary to create print books. I'm keeping my eyes peeled to see what happens.
I've included the text of the original post below: the authors have graciously made it a public domain work so that you can alter it to add your own insights about user rights you would like to see.


The eBook User’s Bill of Rights

Every eBook user should have the following rights:

• the right to use eBooks under guidelines that favor access over proprietary limitations
• the right to access eBooks on any technological platform, including the hardware and software the user chooses
• the right to annotate, quote passages, print, and share eBook content within the spirit of fair use and copyright
• the right of the first-sale doctrine extended to digital content, allowing the eBook owner the right to retain, archive, share, and re-sell purchased eBooks

I believe in the free market of information and ideas.
I believe that authors, writers, and publishers can flourish when their works are readily available on the widest range of media. I believe that authors, writers, and publishers can thrive when readers are given the maximum amount of freedom to access, annotate, and share with other readers, helping this content find new audiences and markets. I believe that eBook purchasers should enjoy the rights of the first-sale doctrine because eBooks are part of the greater cultural cornerstone of literacy, education, and information access.
Digital Rights Management (DRM), like a tariff, acts as a mechanism to inhibit this free exchange of ideas, literature, and information. Likewise, the current licensing arrangements mean that readers never possess ultimate control over their own personal reading material. These are not acceptable conditions for eBooks.
I am a reader. As a customer, I am entitled to be treated with respect and not as a potential criminal. As a consumer, I am entitled to make my own decisions about the eBooks that I buy or borrow.
I am concerned about the future of access to literature and information in eBooks.  I ask readers, authors, publishers, retailers, librarians, software developers, and device manufacturers to support these eBook users’ rights.
These rights are yours.  Now it is your turn to take a stand.  To help spread the word, copy this entire post, add your own comments, remix it, and distribute it to others.  Blog it, Tweet it (#ebookrights), Facebook it, email it, and post it on a telephone pole.

 
To the extent possible under law, the person who associated CC0 with this work has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.

Another article on Scribd

Second time this week! 

I posted my article: "Learning from the Past: Digitization and Information Loss" on Scribd where you can read it for free using this link. It was originally published in B Sides this last May, but since B Sides is awesome and lets authors keep control of rights over their work, I can distribute it as I wish! To see the article on the B Sides site, go here.  

"Learning from the Past" is an article that provides an overview of digitization issues and current solutions to information loss for those who are somewhat new to the subject. 

As always, let me know if you have any questions or noticed anything in the article that piqued your interest!

ALA Talk available online

Hello readers!
I had initially planned to publish my talk from the Library History Round Table symposium at the American Library Association's Annual Conference in a peer-reviewed journal, but it occurred to me that my other talk (from Library History Seminar XII) is going to be on the same research, and most likely in the same journal. So, I added my conference talk to my Scribd account to share with everyone! While you're there, you can follow me with your account too. Sometimes they get picky about downloading things if you haven't uploaded your own work, so I can also e-mail the PDF of the talk to anyone who is interested. Otherwise, go here to read the document in full online.
The talk discusses three of the six libraries I researched (Burlington, Davenport, and Mt. Pleasant) more in-depth, whereas my talk from September discussed al 6 libraries, but with somewhat less detailed attention paid to each in order to keep within time constraints. The published version of that talk will be about 25 pages, so that will give me a chance to pay a little more attention to each of them.
If you have any questions or comments, let me know!

Circular Texts, both Digital and Tangible

If you remember my post on readers and new media from a couple weeks ago, I mentioned this article on an author (Jurgen Neffe) who took advantage of the e-reader format to create circular texts, or ones without a beginning or end. A quick internet search on the author revealed this article entitled "The disembodied book," which is a pretty thorough discussion of the author's views on the future of the book and authorship, and the future of reading. He is optimistic about the possibility of more authors being recognized and readers interacting with texts in new ways, although he frames this within the downfall of the print book. I'm one of those folks that feels like we don't have to choose: I have a Kindle e-reader but still read paper texts as well. However, he doesn't associate the reduction of print books to their complete elimination, which is an argument I feel has been made far too many times (insert frantic 'print is dying! We will never read printed books again!' comments here).
The book is not going anywhere, and I think Jurgen has a valid point by reminding us of that, but also reminding us that game changing technologies do indeed have far-reaching effects. People will read more e-books, and multimedia books will allow people to interact with texts in far more ways than before (you can even publish your own multimedia books). My friends who are bookstore owners can attest to the fact that their shops are struggling (which is why I will use this moment to remind you to buy your books from locally owned bookshops--they really are so much better than the big sellers both in terms of unique selection and service), but I just can't imagine that their shops are all going to disappear under a tidal wave of digital books. People still like print books, but also see the opportunities extant in the digital format (I, for example, plan on self-publishing my library research to the Kindle store, for e-readers, and to Lulu, for tangible books).
With this books/no books argument swirling in my head, I decided to take my assignment from my calligraphy instructor for last week (which was to create and calligraph a book) and play around with Jurgen's notions of a circular text in book format. I found a blog with a number of circular poems, although most of them weren't suitable to my book because I didn't feel they were 'circular' enough for my needs. The idea behind such a poem is, like a circular book, that you can begin from anywhere within the poem because it lacks a clear beginning and end.
For this first book I used 'Where are the Extravagant Spectacles of Yesterday?' because I could not resist the name, but also because it seems very circular. I folded some thick watercolor paper for pages, using only one folio (or piece of paper, for non-binders) per signature (set of page(s), usually a book with have multiple signatures bound together). Using three jewelry findings (in this case little silver loops), I created a series of chain stitched pamphlet bindings, and move them through the loops as I progressed. I'm pleased my little experiment worked, and resulted in a book that can lay flat, but that can stand up and turn into a 'circular text' by distributing the pages around the loops in such a way that it's actually a bit hard to figure out where the book starts and ends.

I'm making another circular book for class this week, using the poem 'Upon the Winds of Time' from that same site. I'll post photos after it's finished!

Digital Publishing for Higher-Ed Students

As some of you know, I'm a co-editor (along with the lovely Katie Devries Hassman) at B Sides: the student journal for the University of Iowa's School of Library and Information Science. As we draw ever nearer to the beginning of a new school year, I am getting more and more excited about sharing the journal with SLIS' incoming class. Because of this, I've spent quite a bit of time lately pondering digital publishing generally and by students in particular, and how we can make the process of publishing itself and educational experience.
One of the things I like so much about B Sides is that the two founding editors, Angela Murillo and Rachel Hall, put a lot of thought into how to adapt the journal to the needs of SLIS students and alumni who might not be interested in publishing scholarly articles, but who want to share their work while learning about the peer review process. This isn't to say that we just publish absolutely anything, but we try to make the peer review process as transparent and un-intimidating as possible so that students aren't afraid to submit work and get feedback on it. We also try to expand what 'publishable' means in terms of format: we publish LibGuides, websites, collection lists, reviews, class papers, slideshows, and more. All of the publications are great in terms of content and quality, and give me a much broader perspective of what's going on in the field outside of strict scholarly research. It also gives me a much better sense of what's being taught and learned in the classroom, and what students consider to be their best/most interesting work.
I know there are other student publications out there, but I am not sure how they present the journal to potential authors. We try to present B Sides not only as a place to learn about the publication process, but also a place to get feedback for your work (i.e. when preparing the final poster presentation before graduating) and a way to build your resume. One thing I'm spending a lot of time pondering right now is what other ways the journal might be beneficial to students, either in its present form or in terms of additional avenues we could explore to engage readers and authors (I would welcome any suggestions!)
The most enjoyable part of B Sides for me is talking with authors about their work and then sharing it with the world. I think in academia we can forget that people approach all types of intellectual pursuits with the same passion that I would approach, for example, my thesis research. B Sides has been a breath of fresh air because it allows me to engage with others who are doing valuable work throughout the field of LIS, but without the stricter constraints on format or subject matter that would otherwise keep me from learning about the work of librarians and students from all walks of life. It makes me appreciate the inclusive and welcoming nature not only of our journal but of the field at large, and has done a lot to shape myself as a professional and as someone searching for PhD programs (I knocked quite a few history programs off the list because I felt like they would not be open to this model of publishing).
Another great thing about B Sides (and other free digital journals) is that it opens doors for those without monetary or institutional resources to access information we present. Obviously there is still some implication of privilege in that one needs access to a computer and internet, but I would like to think that most people who want to learn about what our students and alumni are producing can do easily. I would be interested to see how well the B Sides model translates to other fields, or even to LIS departments at other schools. We don't get paid as editors, but our piggy-backing on the university's institutional repository means that we have no overhead (save for the $60 I spent on a student copy of Adobe Pro so I could work on journal stuff in my pajamas!) We are also able to attract alumni submissions (we have already published several), and have both alumni and current students who are all interested in serving as peer-reviewers. I think LIS is a great place to experiment with how we can broaden our notions of what 'digital publishing' and 'scholarship' mean, to encompass work that is done outside of academia. I can't speak to this personally as someone who is not strictly within the Humanities, but others I've talked to have said that there is some tension and unease in regards to digital publishing (most notably in regards to a digital publication not being as 'good' as that in a printed academic journal). As the cost of subscriptions can be prohibitive, it would be great to see publishing in open access journals rise in status: otherwise I worry that we will be barring all except those at well-funded research institutions the ability to make use of the most current scholarship.
I would be curious to hear about others' experiences with digital publishing: how have you been able (or struggled) to engage students in the publication process? What are your perspectives on digital publishing and access? And what direction do you think this is all headed?