Thing 2

This has been a challenging one, mostly because I could get lost in the blogosphere for a very long time. I've been impressed and delighted to see so many interesting blogs from global perspectives and diverse professions.

What I hadn't expected was to be learning so much quite this soon -- already, I'm bookmarking furiously about DIY librarianship from InfoGlut and conceptions of professionalism from Undaimonia and tips on writing a questionnaire from Lucy Librarian...
Not to mention meeting people (already!) like Erin at Growth of a Librarian, who was lovely and left my first comment.

I'll have to tear myself away from the computer eventually - this may be a more dangerous project for my Internet addiction than I had anticipated!

Thing 1 (No, Not a Dr. Seuss Reference)

Thing 1 is all about 23 Things, of course, the free online professional development course that one of my amazing former professors sent out.

So for this first Thing, I'm talking a bit about why I'm participating and what I hope to get out of this course. There are a few....um, things.

1) Get More Involved
I love the idea of being a part of an online community where we help each other grow professionally. Having just graduated, I'm shocked by how much I miss that interaction, and I hope this can help to keep 'plugged in.'

2) Try New Stuff
As a newly-minted librarian, I'm eager to get my feet wet, my hands dirty, and any other metaphors you can think of for tackling new tools and projects. I may have already done some of the Things on the list, but I think it's important to keep practicing, to find out what works for me, what doesn't, and how I can improve.

3) Revitalize My Blog
This has sadly fallen by the wayside during my studies, and I'm hoping 23 Things will provide plenty of grist for the mill in terms of my blogging presence. #1 should help too, as I'm slightly cheating and checking out everyone else's awesome blogs before my first post is done.

Those are the big three...hopefully I'll discover more reasons and rewards as I continue through this course!

Please feel free to ping me; I'm happy to talk!

Students: The Forgotten Stakeholders?

I've been reading more about copyright recently, and many of the discussions have focused on the problems of proliferating stakeholders and outdated legal frameworks in the e-access era. For a concise examination of these issues, I highly recommend Dorothea Salo's article Who owns our work?, as referenced by Duke University's Kevin Smith.

The idea of the many 'players' in the realms of copyright and access led me to thinking about who might be getting left out of the discussion. There has been plenty written (and drawn) about how institutions and authors suffer when copyright is applied to restrict access and re-use, and I am painfully aware of the impact on librarians...but how about those humble readers?

That is, the students.

Maybe it's because I've been out of the undergrad world for a while, but I don't remember hearing much about open access in the student realm. And even at my graduate school, while there was a dedicated team of librarians promoting open access in the GSLIS program, that effort never seemed to transfer over to the 'rest' of the college programs.

And that's a shame. I think it's important that we get students involved in OA, for several reasons.

First, I'm approaching this from the paradigm of colleges/universities as institutions that 'produce learning.'^

Sure, 'learning' may not be at the very top of every undergrad's priorities list, but let's say there's a good number of students who want to investigate and grow and contribute in their fields of interest (bless them!).

Even on the most basic level, the copyright/access bind causes a problem. Because Joe Awesome may want to write a fantastic research paper on the ethical implications of genetic testing for hereditary disease, but his results are limited by his resources. To use a recipe metaphor: if your ingredients aren't top quality, you're probably not going to be winning America's Top Chef.

So, restricted access means a lower quality resource pool, which impacts the student 'output.'

More devastating, I think, is the impact on the student's attitude towards research and scholarship. I cannot stand that moment when I'm at the Reference Desk with a student, and they see that perfect article, and they click on it only to find -- No Access. Subscription Required. And to have that happen again and again....*

It seems that instead of the 'instant access' playground that the e-publishing model promises, most students are being thrown into an online obstacle course that saps all motivation and patience.

This is especially painful as students, along with everyone else, are markedly short on Time and Money. There may be a perfect source behind that access wall, but many students aren't willing to Wait or Pay, and so the opportunity is lost (and some resentment is likely gained).

This exclusion is also damaging in a more subtle way; blocked student access to research hinders our attempts to get them involved in our scholarly communities on campus and in departments. Instead of opportunities for creation, assignments become taxing exercises producing student work that, too often, ends up tossed out at the end of the semester or quietly degrading in the corner of a hard drive.

An alternative model, with engaged students actively creating content that is then hosted and preserved by the library, shared and re-used among departments and throughout successive classes -- that seems like a much closer step towards the 'community resource' that these library repositories are supposed to be. Professors and researchers may be reluctant to deposit their work for various professional and/or monetary reasons; students may lack these mental roadblocks. And with access to quality research to draw from, there's no reason that they can't produce some really fantastic projects and papers that will enrich the whole community.**

So that's why I was encouraged to discover groups like the Right to Research Coalition, and unsurprised (yet also delighted) to see that the largest organization of medical students in the world has teamed up with them. Because medical students definitely value timely access to quality research.

I'm hoping to see more examples of this on specific campuses, and would love to hear of any movements/groups for OA on the student level. My comments are always open!

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^See Robert B. Barr and John Tagg's "A New Paradigm for Undergraduate Education"

*A caveat: Thanks to our Amazing Interlibrary Loan Librarian, this does not happen very often at all. And in the medical field, where prices are steep and budgets are flat, that is impressive.

**Within reason of ability and academic experience - I'm not saying you should expect thesis-level work from Joe Awesome the Freshman (no matter how Awesome he is).

Georgia and Copyright Conniptions

So the Fantastic ILL Librarian at my institution was kind enough to forward me a link about the Georgia State University copyright case (because I've apparently been living under a rock. Or, graduating).

And I'm still trying to figure out one thing: What are these publishers thinking?

For example, here are a few samples of the original injunction in 2008 (courtesy of UNC Charlotte's Blog [their emphasis])...

First, GSU has to agree to follow a set of copyright guidelines written back in the 1970s - which are obviously still completely relevant and not at all outdated or anything...

Further, the court must make sure that GSU be prohibited from ever again: "creating, reproducing, transmitting, selling, or in any manner distributing, or assisting, participating in, soliciting, encouraging, or facilitating the creation, reproduction, download, display, sale or distribution in any manner of copies, whether in hard copy format, digital, or electronic computer files, or any other format, of any and all Works without permission"

Oh, and also, GSU must:

"• Give a copy of this order and the old guidelines to all faculty and staff involved with any online teaching;
• Ensure that the order and guidelines pop-up every time anyone (faculty, staff, etc.) attempts to upload any copyrighted material to a GSU website (eReserves, uLearn, faculty web pages, etc.)*
• Provide with the report a list of all materials on E-reserves during each semester, including the course reserve page for each posted work and how many “hits” each work got during the semester;
• Provide access each semester to GSU’s computer systems, including online courses, to plaintiffs so they can ascertain compliance for themselves"

And more! Including follow-up programs for monitoring, 'educating,' and generally making sure this sort of sharing never happens again.

But, as noted by Peggy Hoon and others, cost and some fairly significant legal issues make it impossible to actually enforce all of these guidelines.

So why issue such a set of draconian, incendiary demands? Why, when Elsevier has agreed to allow open access self-archiving by authors, would these publishers take such a drastic step in the opposite direction?

I'm not informed enough about the publishing game and the profit models to understand, but I'll be watching this case closely (along with many other librarians, I'm sure).

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*I can imagine this will be a such huge hit with anyone ever using GSU computers. I can hear the cursing now...