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"Lost in Cyber Space: Libraries
in the Cyber Age" Ron Chepesiuk, Dacus Archivist, and I brain-stormed one April afternoon about how we could raise professional awareness and interest in digitization and all its ancillary concerns. We determined that a grant which took its "show on the road," so to speak, would be the best way to do this. We set about writing the grant, securing funding and then working to bring speakers in from all over the United States to shed light on important cyber-issues. We selected cyber-topics that were coincident with professional concerns, mixed thoroughly with popular interests, and remained in concert with the grant's requirement that the Humanities be showcased prominently. After settling on the themes for each forum we posted a website (www.winthrop.edu/dacus/SCHumCyber) within a month of grant notification. Not only did it seem imperative to have a site (this was after all a grant contemplating the vast arabesques of cyberspace) but it also provided us with a means to get as much information out as quickly as we could. We used the address on all publicity and, referenced it in all our articles and addresses in the professional literature. We solicited librarians' ideas from
around the state and in North Carolina. We wanted to know what was
important to them and whom they would like to hear. Combining popular
concerns with academic pursuits we arrived at four forums: Filtering,
Censorship and the First Amendment: Libraries at the Crossroads, Electronic
Publishing and the Future of Scholarship, Copyright: Who Owns What
in Cyberspace?, and The Impact of Digitized Collections on the Humanities.
Each forum had to stand on its own but we also wanted to unite them
with a connecting theme. Of course the forums could not be exhaustive
on each topic, but we felt, given the framework, that they allowed
sufficient ventilation for adequate intellectual exchange. Below is
a precis on each event what we discovered. No other issue sparks as much heated controversy, while raising the hackles of so many on both sides of the argument, as filtering. Nearly everyone has a view on this, and of course it is the only right one. First amendment issues abound regarding filters and librarians struggle with providing good service on the one hand while not violating state law regarding the unseemly on the other. On the whole, librarians do this well but our own arguments often betray us. For years, libraries have sought to protect what people can read by making a most compelling case in support of the First Amendment. Until digitized images and their presentation over the Internet, this argument rarely met with disagreement. The Internet made access to documents easy. Libraries made access to the Internet possible for everyone. Indeed, outside of in-home use, libraries are responsible for 50% of all Internet access. Issues with respect to the First Amendment and cyberspace have not, however, been easily resolved. Libraries have made the First Amendment case but opponents have made equally strong, competing cases as well. Congress has lent a sympathetic ear to these competing voices, as have a host of other organizations and individuals. While libraries defend unfiltered use of the Internet, they have been caught in a paradox: much of the Internet materials objected to by the general public are materials libraries have always excluded in print format from their shelves. Moreover, the once uncontested argument of librarians within the profession has recently seen many notable dissenters breaking rank. Some of the questions we sought to address included: What constitutes filtering? Are filters reliable? Is filtering of pornographic content within First Amendment boundaries? If libraries do not filter out pornographic sites, are they subject to pornography distribution laws? Do parents have a right to expect libraries to exercise modest in loco parentis restraints with respect to the Internet? What roles should parents play in the restriction of their children's reading materials? What impact does filtering have on the library's ability to serve the public? Our speakers for this event were Carrie Gardner (for the anti-filtering side) and Carol Clancy (for the pro-filtering side). Ms. Gardner is author of two chapters on intellectual freedom and technology along with numerous articles. She has given over 100 speeches, classes and lectures on intellectual freedom. She serves as the Chair of the American Association of School Librarians Intellectual Freedom Committee, Chair of the Pennsylvania School Librarians Association Intellectual Freedom Committee, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Pennsylvania School Librarians Association. Gardner also serves as Coordinator of Library Media Services at Milton Hershey School in Hershey PA. She is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Pittsburgh. Her dissertation examines the behaviors of those involved in creating Student Internet Use policies in K-12 School Districts. She also serves as Adjunct Faculty member at Mansfield University. Ms. Gardner comments were as provocative as they were provoking. She maintained that everything, no matter how dubious or prurient, is projected by the first amendment, including pornography. By her own admission, she sends her high-schoolers to ferret out pornographic content on the web. Gardner tied her views to the American Library Association's Library Bill of Rights, wherein each library promises the freedom to read anything. It is an absolutist view of the First Amendment. Carol Clancy's legal practice has focused on matters involving obscenity law and the First Amendment and use of the civil public nuisance abatement action to restrict obscenity and illegal sexually orientated businesses. Ms. Clancy participated in Senate hearings involving: The Effect of Pornography on Women and Children (oversight inquiring into the impact of pornography on child abuse, child molestation, and problems of conduct against women (98th Congress, 2nd session)), and Cable-Porn and Dial-a-Porn Control Act, S. 1090 (99th Congress, 1st Session), regarding illegal use of cable and broadcast televisions and interstate telephone service for the purpose of transmitting pornographic materials. Clancy is a practicing attorney and senior counsel for the National Law Center. She has co-authored numerous appellate and amicus curiae briefs in obscenity and First Amendment cases and has testified before congress on a number of issues, including child abuse and problems of misconduct toward women. Clancy provided a perfect antipode to Gardner, arguing that the Constitution has never protected pornography, regardless of format. She also pointed out that libraries now carried items (such as x-rated websites), the contents of which would never have been subscribed to in paper format, even if donated. The library community is more divided on this issue than anyone would like to admit. The Association for College and Research Libraries (ACRL) has its own view which differs significantly from the American Library Association's own Cole-Porter-Anything-Goes views. Recently court cases, especially the one handed down by the Supreme Court in January 2001, leans toward a more bridled view: sexually explicit materials, while perhaps tolerated individually should not be purchased collectively and with tax-dollars. John Henry Cardinal Newman may be to the point here: Men will die for a dogma who will scarcely stir for a conclusion. Forum Two: Electronic Publishing and the Future of Scholarship Held at the public library of Greenville-Spartanburg, the second forum, planned in April, had the unenviable task of competing with the first presidential debate. Needless to say our total audience was limited. For those who came, however, the forum provided them with a true newsflash. Our speakers included Angela Adair-Hoy, Ron Chepesiuk and John Muchniki. Ms. Adair-Hoy is an e-publisher, cyber-entrepreneur, writer and speaker. She is co-author of the best selling e-book, The Secrets of Our Success, as well as publisher of the e-newsletter, writersweekly.com, boasting a circulation of 32,000 paid subscribers. Publishers Weekly said of The Secrets of Our Success, "Anyone interested in e-books or e-publishing should read this informative--and ground-breaking--guide." Ms. Adair-Hoy spoke about the successes e-publishing offers writers. Her own newsletter began in print but was quickly converted to an e-zine to reach a wider subscribing audience. Ms. Adair-Hoy was quick to point out the obvious about the Internet: it offers unrivaled access to unheard-of, or hard-to-find information. But it also offers palpable pitfalls and those who use it must be as wary of it as any consumer of any "product" should be. Fraught with disinformation, the Internet proffers the latest scientific discovery or the most recent medical fraud, neither, often, with attribution. She also spoke of her own e-publishing firm. Her e-list of published e-books has done very well. Mr. Chepesiuk is professor and a librarian at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C., and a contributing editor to American Libraries magazine. As a freelance writer and content provider, his 2000+ articles have appeared on numerous web sites, including YAPA, Neighborhood America, Logisticsexpo.com, ASPstreet.com and Worthinteractive.com. His fourteenth book, The Scotch-Irish: From Ireland to the Making of America (McFarland, 2000) will be published by netLibrary. Mr. Chepesiuk co-directed this conference. Mr. Chepesiuk discussed with the audience the overwhelming change the Internet has brought to libraries. While librarians may be, in some cases, underwhelmed, he pointed to the importance of not only harnessing the power of the Internet, but also providing students with a fundamental understanding of how the web works and what its inherent dangers are. Any fool can put anything up on the web, and apparently nearly all have since the web now boasts more than a billion pages. The gold is alluring, Mr. Chepesiuk warned, but do not make the mistake of Atalanta, who chased the golden baubles and failed to win the race. Mr. Muchniki has twenty years of publishing experience across a range of professional, scholarly, technical, medical, and trade publishing. He has worked for such companies as Academic Press, John Wiley & Sons, Macmillan Library Reference, and most recently, Routledge/Taylor & Francis as senior vice president, Marketing and Sales. He is currently the executive director of Business Development for Scholarly and Professional Publishing at Questia Media, a start-up internet company with the mission of becoming the source for humanities and social science research on the internet. Mr. Muchniki provided the attending audience with its hottest newsflash. While librarians may be nonplused by the web, criticizing its organization and sneering down our collective noses at its burdensome search engines, some companies, such as Questia, are preparing to take the library over, if not replace it. Questia Media spent $125 million digitizing 50,000 books in the humanities and the social sciences. While the search is free, full-texts (articles and books) may be purchased by the minute, the hour, the day, the week, the month or the year. Further, in an agreement worked out with publishers, Questia will not be making the download feature available to libraries. While it may not be Questia's intent to replace libraries, one can see a heightened advantage of doing just that, were it not for the formidable cost. (A 500,000 volume library, using Questia's cost, would top out around $1 billion.) Easy to use, quick to search, and with full-text downloading, Questia has the added advantage of not being cantankerous and niggling, as some librarians have been known to be. It is enough to uncurl the stereotypical librarian's bun! Do Questia and XanEdu (which bills itself as "the world's most comprehensive digital collection found on the web today") want to take over your library? No, just your customers, and they may well be able to do just that, provided funding rains from heaven, and librarians remain mute of the formidable difficulties inherent in such ventures. Forum Three: Copyright: Who Owns What in Cyberspace? By far the best attended of the four forums, the third forum focused on the issue of copyright in a digital age. Just exactly who owns what in cyberspace and how does one know? Three speakers brought their considerable lights to bear upon the question. MaryBeth Peters kicked off the forums with a rousing defense of a much talked about, much-despised (from the library community viewpoint, anyway) copyright decision regarding the ownership of digitized databases. Ms Peters has served as the United States Register of Copyrights since 1994. Ms. Peters is an active member of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. and the Intellectual Property Section of the American Bar Association, and has served as a consultant on copyright law to the World Intellectual Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. It is Ms. Peters's contention that copyright has always been controlled by the market and now is not the time to change. The market benefits both consumers and creators. To tinker with it in such a way now would be to turn the tables on all that copyright has so far gained. The Internet allows for more potential exploitation and Congress, according to Ms. Peters, will need to act in such a way as to maintain the rights of all parties. Because of the nature of transmission of digitized materials (a copy is made temporarily) a careful eye will have to be placed upon those who wish to use for their own benefit (and not the benefit of the creator) whatever the market will allow. The decision that brought such ignominy to bear upon Ms Peters focused on how ownership would be valued. Librarians interpreted this to mean they would not be able to provide access to electronic databases in the manner that they do so now. But Peters assured them that the change was cosmetic and, furthermore, when it came to the foreground, no one protested until after the decision had been handed down. Ed Colleran of the United States based Copyright Clearance Center Inc. (CCC) pointed out the multifarious benefits that CCC provides authors. Colleran currently works in the Publisher Relations division of the largest licensor of photocopy and electronic reproduction rights in the world. The organization was formed in 1978 to facilitate compliance with U.S. copyright law. CCC provides licensing systems for the reproduction and distribution of copyrighted materials throughout the world. The company currently manages rights relating to over 1.75 million works. Mr. Colleran's responsibilities include managing CCC's Publisher Relations Department and developing new revenue-generating initiatives for CCC's participating publishers. In addition, he has the responsibility of managing CCC's efforts in the area of digital rights management. Mr. Colleran has over seventeen years experience in the communications industry having spent the majority of his career in the advertising/marketing communications profession. Most recently, he was the Vice-President/ Managing Director of Larry Miller Productions (now IXL, Inc.), a firm specializing in the development and design of commercial and educational websites for the Internet and Intranet. Certainly the benefits of CCC to the author are at once recognizable. What remains unclear is whether the consumer is being served, or at least protected, from skyrocketing prices. CCC is a much-needed resource but current prices may leave many scratching their heads over who can afford it. Sarah Bewley took the author's side on the issue of copyright by speaking on Tasini v. The New York Times. Ms. Bewley is an award winning playwright and screenwriter. As a freelance magazine writer, she serves as the Internal Organizing Vice-President of the Executive Committee of the National Writers Union. She also serves as a periodicals contract advisor to members of the National Writers Union. A Florida Individual Artist Grant winner in both play writing (1992) and screen-writing (1998), she lives in Gainesville, Florida. Freelance authors do not have the same union that screen writers do; consequently, when an author is offered a certain amount for a piece and rejects it as too low, it is a foregone conclusion that another writer will take up the job for the same amount or less. Further, the reproduction of authors' pieces are not always paid for. The end result is that the creator is being squeezed by the publisher and the consumer. It is clear, however, that if fully successful, Tasini v. The New York Times will mean more costs for libraries in the long run. Forum Four: The Impact of Digitized Collections on the Humanities The last of the four forums brought spirited debate from three participants on the issue of digitizing materials in the Humanities, with implications for all disciplines. With more and more collections now appearing in digitized format, what future is there for paper? Experts now report that by the year 2003, no publisher will likely undertake the printing of multi-volume, paper encyclopedias. Already this web-based trend is rapidly taking over what libraries now offer through their reference collections. Since the humanities materials figure largely into these digitized collection, even at the expense of their appearance in paper, the questions remains, are we constructing a future that leaves behind those who are not caught up in the digitized age? Furthermore, what future is there for brick and mortar libraries as more and more collections become digitized? The last university in the California system opened with one very important building missing: the library. Is this the wave of the future? Ravi Sharma brought a sobering assessment from the librarian's point of view. Dr. Sharma is Director of the Library at West Virginia College in Institute, and publisher of Library Times International. Dr. Sharma has published more than 200 articles on a variety of library topics and has received numerous awards, including the Humphrey-OCLC-Forest Press Award for "significant contribution to international librarianship." According to Sharma, libraries may well be the brunt of this bad cyber-joke if present trends continue. While budgets have remained static or have dropped, the cost of materials has soared more than 140% in the last decade. That is more than the cost-of-living, more than medicaid or medicare, and twice the cost of health care, which led to a national hand-wringing. During this runaway inflation, nothing was said by anyone but librarians. Not only were libraries expected to come up with the costs, but during the same decade, they were expected to add electronic services. If libraries are to meet the demands of both paper and electronic sources, more creative thinking will have to be forthcoming from administrators who fund their budgets. Further, as electronic resources proliferate, so does their instability. A full-text, electronically accessible package of serials a library purchased at the beginning of the year will rarely be the same package (in terms of the titles the package contains) at year's end. Clearly a crisis looms but the professoriate remains oblivious. Dr. Edward Lee gave the attending audience his view of the digitization of the Humanities from an historian's perspective. Dr. Lee is Associate Professor at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Dr. Lee has served as President of the South Carolina Historical Association and is a charter member of the Winthrop Archives' Senior Research Associate Program. He has published numerous books on American history, including, with Ron Chepsiuk, South Carolina in The Civil War: the Confederate Experience in Letters and Diaries (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2000). Although Dr. Lee embraces the new technologies enthusiastically, he remains somewhat jaundiced on the subject with respect to historical archives. He does not want original documents to be replaced entirely by their electronic counterparts. Historical documents are for Professor Lee a tactile, palpable tertium quid. They should not all be digitized and, furthermore, some should not be digitized at all. Professor Lee sees digitization as yet one more rung in a very long ladder of accessibility improvements. But he fears the convenience of it, and its ubiquity threatens paper unnecessarily. If everyone digitizes, will anyone be preserving original documents, some of which might still bear the traces of blood, sweat and tears? Further, if research can be put up on the web as it is being done-and we all know that it can-will reflection take a back seat to the thrill of the instantaneous? Our final speaker was Bruce Heterick, Director of Library Relations at JSTOR, responsible for managing constituent relations on a global basis. Prior to coming to JSTOR, Mr. Heterick spent more than a decade in the library field, working for such companies as The Faxon Company and Blackwell's Information Services. Heterick spoke about the highly innovative JSTOR enterprise, a kind of digitized archive, to help assuage the feelings of those who share the misgivings expressed by Professor Lee. JSTOR beings with volume 1, issue 1 of each journal it digitizes, giving libraries access to entire runs of important journals in the humanities, social sciences and sciences. JSTOR is not an altruistic enterprise, however. Start-up costs, depending on the size of the library, begin at $31,000 to initiate the service, and $9,000 annually forever after. For most libraries the cost is even higher. Furthermore, JSTOR is not a current service. The most recent journal in JSTOR is at least three years older than the 'newsstand' issue. While JSTOR is on solid financial ground, digitized enterprises are not known for their longevity. Exclusive access to journals is through JSTOR means staking one's scholarly fortunes on modified "dot coms." The NASDAQ has proved this in spades since the beginning of 2001. Planting one's stake in cyber-space is not exactly a sure thing. It can be as stable as planting it in the ground, or staking a claim to thin air. Then there is the added difficulty of JSTOR experiencing unbridled success. Again, if every library (or at least most of them) signed on with JSTOR who would remain to collect paper copies. Should disaster occur in the digitized world, will recovery be possible? For now the answer is yes but it is far from certain that the answer will be the same a decade hence. Conclusions The digitized world unfolds for scholars a number of difficulties that have not been addressed as fully as they should have been, especially at this late stage in the process. There can be no question that the filtering issue will not remain where it is. It is silly for libraries to think the First Amendment will provide protection for pornographers whose only survival depends largely on discovering (or creating) addictions and almost satisfying them. We shut the apple industry down because traces of alar were found on apples. If a person ate 700 alar-treated apples for 70 years he or she would increase their risk of cancer. Given the public's reaction to that remote possibility which all but bankrupted the apple industry in a couple of days, it is highly unlikely that libraries will be successful in making the case for First Amendment rights, especially since this issue, too, involves children. Why librarians want to risk an entire profession for debauchees whose livelihoods traffic in addictions alone is both confusing and bewildering. If librarians do not resolve this issue, it will be resolved for them. If the latter occurs, all public sentiment toward librarians, which now borders on the maternal, will explode in a vituperative not often seen. Copyright issues with respect to digitization will also become increasingly manifest. The Digital Millennium Act (DMCA) is one that must be watched carefully. In essence, DMCA attempts to create definition for "fair use" in cyberspace. Because use of cyberspace by libraries is critical to the scholarly community, how DMCA actually works will be critical to whether or not libraries will have full and complete access to web-based materials at reasonable cost. A strict DMCA interpretation combined with the Tasini lawsuit could spell the end of affordable web-based access to libraries and therefore to scholars. Scholarly interests are so far protected, but it is very unclear whether they will continue to be. This is especially true given the number and financial power of the many competing interests involved in this bill. Publishers do not want digitization to mean a decrease in profits, and in fact will kill any such movement. Further, they would like to increase profits and digitization has made this especially easy. Digitization, while not cost-free is certainly very nearly so when compared to paper productions. So far, digitized costs leave little doubt that any savings realized in these new formats will not be passed on to consumers. Authors also want to be paid, and not just for the first time their digitized materials appear. Like publishers, they would like to see every appearance result in some remuneration. Finally, in the face of static or dwindling budgets, libraries are seeking relief in whatever manner they can find. It should be obvious that the goals of the former hardly coincide with the goals of the latter. Meanwhile, myths abound about the Internet leading some public officials to make the most astonishing claims: why not just buy one book and have all libraries "plug" into it. With such fatuity abounding it's easy to see why court jesters are no longer needed. Digitization also brings with it the question of the have and the have-nots. While society has rightly never refused advancement in one area because not all its citizens could partake of it equally and simultaneously, it will be necessary to monitor the rapid growth. Whether ephemerality or novelty prevents us from fully utilizing the full potential of digitization of materials, humanities or otherwise, is not ours to control. But we can control whether cost provides some with information while completely shutting out others altogether. We are adolescents in this brave new world of digitized materials. Will we be like the teenagers of epigone years who, when given the keys to the family car, more often than not proceeded to wreck it? Or will we harness the power that is clearly within our reach and use it to expand information access to the uttermost parts of the earth? To be honest, the verdict is ours to hand down. We might be tempted to cite contrary market forces, runaway inflation, or snigger in our cuffs about the latest cyber-Pecksniffian myopia we find so hilarious, but none of that will, in the end, ultimately undo us. In the end, we will be judge and jurors of our fates. Our failure, or our success, is ours alone to vouchsafe. We have met the future, and it is ours, if we have sense enough to mold it. |
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