Video: The State of Digital Preservation: A Snapshot of Triumphs, Gaps, and Open Research Questions

At the fall 2018 Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) Membership Meeting, Oya Y. Rieger and  Roger C. Schonfeld provided a 28-minute snapshot on the state of digital preservation.  Schonfled is the director of Ithaka' S+R, Libraries and Scholarly Communication Program and Rieger is a senior advisor to that program. 

Description: 

Ensuring the long-term preservation of digital information for future users has been one of the key aspirations of the research library community. Ithaka S+R has been exploring the current state of digital preservation in order to identify research questions and areas for action. Based on interviews with 21 subject experts, we gathered perspectives on the successes, gaps, outstanding issues, and emerging needs in digital preservation. Although the conversations were open-ended, they were framed with questions to probe what seems to be working well now, new research workflows or cultural practices that require novel preservation strategies, and areas that need further attention and research. Our study shows areas of significant progress in the preservation landscape as the community has grown and has established important collaborations. However, the interviews revealed a number of concerns with the pace and nature of these developments and identified several issues that would benefit from further exploration. For this session, we plan to share what we have learned and gather feedback and additional perspectives, as we work to generate a research agenda for Ithaka S+R on digital preservation.

Wikiversity Page on Intellectual Property Education

At the end of the fall 2018 semester, graduate students in "Copyright for Information Professionals" worked on creating a page with resources for learning more about intellectual property and copyright. This assignment, hosted through Wiki Education (WikiEdu), has now become a page in Wikiversity.

According to Wikiversity's homepage:

Wikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project devoted to learning resources, learning projects, and research for use in all levels, types, and styles of education from pre-school to university, including professional training and informal learning. 

Wikiversity has over 26,000 learning resources across a wide spectrum of topics.  Seeing the breadth of topics has made me realize that if you are learning a topic, you might want to check this site to see what resources it has.

And now among the Wikiversity resources in a page on intellectual property.  The lengthy page is divided into five sections:

1. Governing Laws of Copyright
2. Popular Topics
3. Using What You Want to Learn as a Guide
4. Training available on intellectual property laws in the United States
5. Training available on intellectual property laws in other countries (non-U.S.)

This page will connect you to resources to learn more about intellectual property and specifically copyright.  It is not meant to be a comprehensive list.  However, since it is a wiki page, anyone can add resources and topics to it, and I hope people will.  Those could include books, webinars, classes, etc. on patents, trademarks, and trade secrets as well as copyrights.

Finally, thanks to the students would worked on this page, as well as staff and volunteers at WikiEdu, Wikipedia, and Wikiversity.  What a joy to have people who are passionate about creating shared resources under a Creative Commons license.

ALA eCourse: US Copyright Law in the Library: A Beginner's Guide eCourse

In March, I'm offering an asynchronous eCourse on copyright through ALA ALA Publishing eLearning Solutions.  After giving copyright webinars last year through ALA, I'm please to have been asked to deliver a four-week course entitled "US Copyright Law in the Library: A Beginner's Guide eCourse."  The description is below.  Registration information is on the ALA website.  The four weeks of course material, including materials to extend your learning, will provide approximately 28 hours of learning activity.

Description: 

The library is a hub of content, all of it subject to copyright law. The legal reality of copyright is dynamic—changes in technology have created a landscape that is constantly adapting and can be difficult to predict. If you don't have any formal training in copyright law, it can be intimidating to know how to answer your patrons' copyright questions and to know what you can and cannot do with your library’s content and resources. It can be tough to understand the line between providing information and answering a legal question.

In this new eCourse, consultant, speaker, writer, and educator Jill Hurst-Wahl guides you through the basics of copyright law and provides you with the foundation to become your library's copyright expert.

Each week, you'll learn how copyright law informs what libraries, library staff, and patrons can do with their materials and how you can stay up-to-date as this area evolves. You'll be able to check and affirm your knowledge through focused self-assessments.

January 1, 2019: Public Domain Day

Yesterday published works from 1923 entered the public domain.  Yes, it is was Public Domain Day for real!  This article from  the Duke School of Law Center for the Study of the Public Domain gives a wonderful overview of what is now available. The works include:

• The Ten Commandments, directed by Cecil B. DeMille
• Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
• Yes! We Have No Bananas, w.&m. Frank Silver & Irving Cohn 

As the Center's article states about the information they provide:

In an abundance of caution, our list above only includes works where we were actually able to track down the notice and renewal data suggesting that they are indeed still in-copyright until 2019. We’ve also compiled—to the best of our research capabilities—a fuller spreadsheet showing other renewed works from 1923. You can find it here. But we want to emphasize that this is only a partial collection; many more works are entering the public domain as well, but we could not find the legal minutia to confirm their copyright status. 

Yes, knowing when a work was indeed published is important, as well as if it complied with the copyright rules of that era.  Some works had already entered the public domain from 1923.  Some works aren't yet in the public domain.  It's complicated, but that's okay because the public domain really did get bigger!

Tattoos and Copyright - Again

At the end of 2018, the New York Times published "Athletes Don’t Own Their Tattoos. That’s a Problem for Video Game Developers." This is a story that is told periodically because of the popularity of tattoos and the ongoing lawsuits about them being displayed in video games.  Many athletes get tattoos before they are famous and before they in a players' union, which can give them advice.

Players’ unions, many of which license the players’ likenesses to video game publishers, and sports agents have advised athletes to secure licensing agreements before they get tattooed.

The need to acquire a licensing agreement before getting tattooed is important for anyone who is famous.  For some, that might mean going back and getting an agreement for an older tattoo.

For those who have no plans on being famous, you still might want to think about who owns your tattoo, especially those that are not from flash sheets or stencils.  For example, will the artist be agreeable if you decide to alter the tattoo in the future? I know that could be an awkward conversation to have, but you might approach it in terms of what the tattoo artist's expectations are of their work and that work's future.