Author Archives: camillefrancoise

Libraries mean Business : IFLA to celebrate World IP Day on 26 April

In four weeks’ time, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) is inviting representatives of governments and civil society to celebrate World Intellectual Property Day, under the theme “Small and Medium-sized Enterprises: take your ideas to market”.

IFLA will be taking the opportunity to celebrate the importance of the work done by library professionals to support and accompany small and medium-sized businesses.

Whether they are family businesses, start-ups or otherwise, small and medium-sized enterprises often have limited resources, and do not always have the opportunity to receive professional and strategic advice on how to work with intellectual property.

As a result, access to curated information, resources and services such as coaching, training and guidance provided by library professionals can be crucial for these businesses. This can help them understand how to support the development of a business model related to intellectual property, such as patents, trademarks, trade secrets or copyright.

As OCLC has reported, in the United States alone, public libraries were used 2.8 million times each month to support small businesses.

On World Intellectual Property Day 2021, IFLA and its partner EIFL are therefore pleased to present a webinar on 26th April at 16:00 CET entitled: Libraries mean business.

This webinar will allow us to highlight the work of three library organisations working to support small and medium-sized enterprises in particular on intellectual property issues, through three speakers:

Jeremy O’Hare, Information Expert: Intellectual Property, Business and IP Center, British Library in United-Kingdom.

Tara Radniecki, Head of DeLaMare Science & Engineering Library, Patent and Trademark Resource Center Librarian, University of Nevada, in the United-States of America.

Bernadette Cogan, Divisional Librarian, Central Library Services, Dublin City Council, in Ireland.

If you are interested in this event, join us thanks to the registration link.

Fostering creation of Open Educational Resources

From 1 to 5 March 2021, libraries take part in Open Education Week alongside educational stakeholders.

In November 2019, UNESCO adopted a recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER). This recommendation, a result of a consensus among 193 Member States, recognises the importance of supporting the development, sharing and use of openly licenced educational materials to improve access to education for all.

Libraries, as a driving force in educational issues through their missions of access to information and education, have a role to play in fostering the development of OER and thus in advancing this work.

The UNESCO recommendation is divided into five areas of action:

Building the capacity of stakeholders to create, access, re-use, adapt and redistribute OER;
Developing supportive policy for OER;
Encouraging inclusive and equitable quality OER;
Nurturing the creation of sustainability models for OER; and
Promoting and reinforcing international cooperation in OER.

These 5 areas of action make it possible to identify areas for action by all educational actors, including libraries. They include two levels of action, at the structural level and at the practical level. Libraries can engage in both.

At the structural, or policy level, libraries can work to influence the development of favourable open educational resource policies (many of which will be supportive of wider library missions). Crucially, the Recommendation represents an acknowledgement from countries that education is key and should be open to everyone without regard to their wealth, where they are born, the colour of their skins, their gender, their religion, age or abilities. Knowledge must be open and freely accessible. This is a powerful message.

At the practical level, libraries can also contribute to building a stronger Open Educational Resource chain. This chain involves the creation, access, re-use, adaptation and distribution of OERs, but also the development of institutional policies needed to structure these resources, including national and international platforms.

Here are some suggestions:

  • Identify the different actors that can play a role in the development of open educational resources, including the library team, the educational team, teachers, researchers.
  • Mobilise these actors through different actions: presentation of the objectives of the development of open educational resources, why it is important to tackle these issues of openness and the benefits this can bring to the library, the university and users in general.
  • Create opportunities to raise awareness of these issues or develop resources: webinars, meetings, design workshops,
  • Create opportunities to start creating OERs together: design templates, provide workshops to take the time to focus on the creation of OER but also how to re-use and distribute them.
  • Identify resources or professionals working on the same topic and contact them to exchange practices. Become part of a network or set up a discussion group to exchange good practices or existing structural elements that will enable you to move forward.
  • Identify internal or external platforms that could bring together your institution’s resources in order to facilitate their discovery by users.
  • Draw on the potential of open educational resources to fulfil the primary mission of libraries and knowledge dissemination centres: to build a sustainable means of providing quality open educational resources.
  • Bear in mind the reputational dividends: the constitution of quality open educational resources (materials or courses) by recognised organisations can give considerable visibility to the institution, especially if we consider the impact on the visibility of open access items.
  • Invite external professionals to raise awareness on this issue within your institution: working with an external contact person allows you to combine neutrality but also a national or international perspective.

Discover the document of SPARC Europe on Open Education in European Libraries of High Education.

 

Alice Kibombo, wikimedian in residence at the African Library & Information Associations and Institutions

In 2020, AfLIA welcomed Alice Kibombo of the Wikimedia Community User Group – Uganda as a Wikimedian in residence. IFLA is delighted to see this initiative coming to life and therefore invited Ms Kibombo to share project’ insights with the international library community.

Could you tell us about your background and how you came to Wikimedia projects?

I am a practising librarian as well as an active volunteer/editor based in Uganda. I regularly contribute to both English and Luganda Wikipedia, Wikidata and WikiSource.

Coming into Wikimedia projects? Let’s see… as much as I would like the narration to be a bit more romantic, I am what would be classified as an accidental Wikipedian. I was contributing individually until my boss sent someone to the library because she just did not know what to make of what they wanted. It turns out, he was active with the Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda and they were looking for a library to partner with and host them for a number of activities. Gradually, a number of Wiki-related projects such as WikiLovesWomen in 2017 came in and provided me with the opportunity to get involved with the administrative side of things and the rest is current affairs (see what I am responding to now…)

Since then I have contributed a number of articles and been the beneficiary of various regional training, learning days and scholarships which to a large degree prepared me for my current assignment.

Which Wikimedia projects will be considered and why are they relevant to libraries?

Our primary project of focus is Wikipedia – the encyclopaedia project of Wikimedia. As often stated, libraries and Wikipedia have an overlapping mission which is to provide reliable information through verifiable references and doing proper research to bring quality, accurate information to the world. Wikipedia is as good as its sources and when it comes to libraries, not only do we have the best sources but the experts on these sources. Let’s just say that we should consider Wikipedia as an extension of the work we do albeit in the free knowledge movement.

In addition, library resources, in a number of forms, are relatively invisible on the web and while Wikipedia emphasises quality resources, some of what’s accessed are relatively sub-par because of the sources.

To be addressed in the course will be Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and WikiSource will be addressed in the near future as Wikidata deals with linked data which is the “thing” right now.

As a Wikimedian in residence at AfLIA, what are your goals and next steps to get started?

This I believe is a turning point for all parties – mind you, it has not been attempted before on the continent, well not on such a scale and it is a testament to the benefits of a partnership. There are both personal and institutional goals but both AfLIA and the Wikimedia Foundation (and loudly, I, in the background) agree on some aspects :

We have talked a lot about being able to represent our facts and tell our stories thus the focus on local languages and CCC (Cultural Context Content). The course (which is an adaptation of the will be conducted in English, French and Portuguese but the skills and content therein are very much translatable to a local context. Call it decolonising our realities.

In terms of training/ skills/ empowerment which is really the bulk of the work, this is already underway –  we recently had the honour of “wrapping up” with the pilot cohort who as a group gave us very valuable insights which we were able to incorporate into the material for the main cohort. We are hosting the first main cohort between February 1 st and April 24th and if the number of responses is the only indicator of success, then I can say it has been received positively or our networks served us well or both.

Through a pre-course survey, 54% of respondents reported that they were not aware of any Wikimedia community in their locale. Keep in mind that a number of African wiki communities also reported limitations in their ability to initiate GLAM-related initiatives since they had no access to the network that is the librarian community in Africa. This, therefore, provides the project with the opportunity to nurture relationships between these two communities and hope that the results will be worthwhile.

At this point I need to mention that I do not work alone, I see myself merely as a liaison between this particular outreach of the Wikimedia Foundation and AfLIA’s step in fulfilling its core objectives. We do have all these interesting projects lined up and which you will be hearing about in the near future.

How could the library community support these projects?

The experience with the pilot cohort brought to the fore a number of issues – we knew they existed, we just did not know the depth to which they ran. First, there was a huge disconnect between the librarians’ community in Africa and Wikipedia! 54% of a group of information professionals not knowing about their potential partners in the Free Knowledge movement begs a lot of questions!

With that in mind, we are training librarians from over 30 countries in Africa so we constantly encourage institutional buy-in for them to realise the benefits of such training for their staff. From personal experience, you would be surprised outright negativity we have to deal with and I do commend the librarians who have made an individual effort to be part of this project

With the situation presented by COVID-19, the library community has not been spared the reality of being increasingly distributed and virtual and now more than ever, driven by heterogeneous interests in both training and content. I would therefore encourage information institutions to engage with the librarians we are training on thematic contribution where possible. Depending on the nature or mission of the institution, some may focus on image release, others on community engagement, others on content generation.

The project would benefit greatly from the shared expertise of librarians who have also experienced Wikipedians. A good number work in isolation so if and when they read this, perhaps they should contact us.

Lastly, this presents an opportunity for the community to engage in alternative pathways to individual development mainly by supporting the human resource they have. Institutions and individuals that may not for example offer space could offer publicity or actively encourage their staff to participate in programs such as these, offer access to hard-to-access resources eg those behind paywalls or historical collections to support thematic engagement

Would you like to add anything?

Lots and lots and some more – it’s hard to choose without writing a whole dissertation. Since I have and cannot fully exhaust whatever it is on this here forum, a lot is happening

You can also keep yourself updated by visiting the project page and following us on social media.

To us, the Free Knowledge movement is not the last frontier as much as it is a new frontier.  I like to think with this project that and this project is mutually beneficial.

 

A quick word about an exceptional exception (you should get to know or start to consider using)

As part of the fair use and fair dealing week, IFLA is delighted to welcome Eric Chin, from the General Counsel at the National Library Board of Singapore, to share his views on the importance of making the best use of the flexibilities provided by the fair use and fair dealing provisions.

 

  1. Your mission as a librarian is to enable teaching, learning and research.  How much you can achieve depends on the extent to which libraries can collect, preserve, give access, present and exhibit library materials.  This in turn depends a lot on copyright laws that govern how library materials can be used.

 

  1. For example,  one of the exclusive rights of a copyright owner is the right to make a copy.  This impacts your day to day work ranging from the request by a teacher to make a copy of a photograph for a lesson, to whether the much used book that is deteriorating and is out of print (but still in copyright) can be digitised to preserve the content from being totally lost, to whether a video in an obsolete format (but still in copyright) can be migrated to a new digital format;  and to whether the non-profit museum down the road can make a copy of part of a map for an exhibition.

 

  1. Before we go further, it must be said that there is nothing wrong about the principle that copyright owners have exclusive rights for a period of time as just reward for endeavours and ability and it is beneficial to society because, among other things, it does create incentives for the production of more library materials.  It is not often said but it is not unfair to say that copyright is partly the lifeblood of a librarian’s job!  The question is about how this is balanced against what rights or exceptions there are to also ensure that exclusive rights do not act as unintended and undue barriers to progress in science, in the preservation of heritage and culture and the dissemination of knowledge.

 

  1. So copyright laws typically include a set of provisions that act as exceptions that will  allow for your mission as a librarian.  I say “typically” because copyright law is territorial in nature and each country has its own set of copyright laws. This means the scope of exceptions can vary (very) widely from country to country.  To see where you stand in the wide spectrum of copyright laws, it is useful to look at this study covering 191 countries: https://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/copyright/en/sccr_35/sccr_35_6.pdf (the Study on Exceptions).

 

  1. Starting by knowing where you stand allows you to consider if you need to advocate for copyright exceptions that fellow librarians in other parts of the world can already use but you simply cannot.  What you cannot do will have a negative impact on the amount of teaching, learning and research that can be done in your own country. In an ideal world for librarians,  all countries will learn from one another and all will level up until all countries share the most useful exceptions in common. However,  it must sometimes start with ground up advocacy to the right powers that be in our countries, which is partly in our own hands.

 

  1. Looking at the range of exceptions in each country in the Study on Exceptions, you will see a fair few countries that do not list what is called “fair dealing” or “fair use” (collectively Fair Use) among the exceptions. Fair Use is a general exception that anyone can use and is not a specific exception available only to libraries but libraries can benefit greatly from it.  Each country will of course have an argument to make for its own copyright traditions and doctrine that their society may be comfortable with, but in my own view,  countries that do not have this exception may be missing out on an exceptional exception.

 

  1. Most library specific exceptions are generally prescriptive in nature with fixed criteria that must be met in an unchanging way in order to become applicable and this oftentimes can make it challenging for us especially in the fast changing digital era. On the other hand,  Fair Use is special because it is normally stated in a flexible way.  Certain broad factors (that are also usually not exhaustive) are set out as matters to be considered in a fair use analysis such as whether there is transformative use (i.e. use of the original library material or part of it in a beneficial way to society that is different from the intended use of the original) and whether the amount of the original library material used is appropriate in the circumstances including bearing in mind whether it would unfairly eat into or destroy the livelihood of the owner of the copyright.  Those who have had the benefit of using Fair Use will know that these broad factors for fair use analysis are such that the law in Fair Use can automatically adjust to new, evolving and challenging situations that you will face in your daily work.

 

  1. Around the world, in countries that have the Fair Use exception, it has been crucial in allowing for the use of library materials (including copying to an appropriate extent only) for research or study, criticism or review, reporting of news, to support teaching and learning,  to publicise library programmes, to create exhibitions, to preserve at risk items, to enabling use for those who are disabled and to making a record of ephemeral but culturally significant matters posted on the internet.

 

  1. This short piece cannot hope to set out all the details of what the best practices and exemplars are for Fair Use that gets the balance right between your mission and the rights of creators and publishers,  but urges you, as a librarian, to see where you stand in the spectrum of copyright laws that may be available across the world to support your mission.  As it is Fair Use Week,  and if you are one of those that does not have the benefit of Fair Use or actually do have the benefit of such an exception but have not used it,  go find out about it through the lawyer or other experts supporting your library and see how it can be fairly used.  If you then think it is useful, consider how you can advocate for it to be introduced or used as part of your workplan in the not too distant future.

 

  1. In the meantime,  it is Fair Use week and time to use those research skills to discover and read more about an exceptional exception that is not a fair weathered friend to librarians!

 

Eric Chin

General Counsel (and would be librarian and archivist)

National Library Board, Singapore

 

Note:  The views set out here are personal and do not represent the official view of any organisation I am associated with.

 

How HathiTrust Emergency Temporary Access Service (ETAS) supports Libraries in pandemic times

By Sara R. Benson, Copyright Librarian, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Check out Sara’s podcast titled Copyright Chat at https://go.illinois.edu/copyrightchat

It’s Fair Use/Fair Dealing week and that means it is once again time to let folks know about exciting developments with the HathiTrust Digital Library. Last year on Fair Use Week I highlighted the ability of researchers to engage with copyright protected materials for text and data mining through the HathiTrust Research Data Capsule. This year, I would like to make readers aware of the HathiTrust Emergency Temporary Access Service or ETAS.

What is the ETAS? It is a portal allowing affiliated libraries to permit their patrons to access in copyright works remotely. Why is the ETAS available? COVID 19 has caused many libraries, such as my own (the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign Library) to temporarily limit physical access to library materials. Almost half of our collection, however, has been digitized and is available in the HathiTrust corpus. Normally, users can only perform searches for how many times a given term appears in copyright protected works in the HathiTrust corpus. However, due to COVID 19, the ETAS allows users to view (but not download) entire copyright protected works remotely. Libraries participating must have the physical book in their collection and agree not to lend out the physical book. Thus, the book is being lent remotely on a one-to-one ratio to the Library’s physical collection on the basis of fair use. This type of lending is made possible because it is non-commercial, educational in purpose and justified due to the emergency nature of the pandemic virus. As noted by April Hathcock in a public statement created by copyright specialists and available at https://tinyurl.com/tvnty3a, “fair use is made for just these kinds of contingencies.”

So, as you celebrate Fair Use/Fair Dealing week this year, note that the pandemic has brought with it many challenges, but Fair Use has enabled libraries to keep lending their works digitally so that researchers and the public can continue to create, thrive, and produce . . . even during a crisis.

Celebrating flexibilities provided by fair-use and fair-dealing

This week is Fair use and Fair dealing week, organised by the Association of Research Libraries! It is a week to celebrate these doctrines implemented in many countries all around the world and the copyright provisions that allow libraries to benefit from flexibility to continue their missions.

Although libraries have similar missions around the world, trying to serve the best interests of users, they operate under very different laws.

As libraries have seen their doors closed and physical services interrupted or adapted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the qualities and flaws of the varying legal provisions of each country concerning access to and use of content have been thrown into relief. The results are concrete: disparities result in significant divisions between the capacities of access to library resources by citizens around the world.

These varied laws reveal areas for improvement which in the midst of a global pandemic are only becoming more glaring.

Why and how have fair-use and fair-dealing been able and continue to support the needs of libraries during the pandemic? 

While many countries are subject to very detailed, prescriptive rules, tied to specific interpretations and technological supports, and even sometimes forgetting the spirit of the initial law, fair use and fair dealing have undoubtedly enabled libraries to obtain greater flexibility, thereby supporting the delivery of their missions.

To determine what is fair use, there are typically several criteria which are explored. These include the purpose and character of the use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and the effect of the use upon the potential market. These criteria are applied with reference to the objectives of the uses and not by the materiality of the medium on which the contents will be delivered, avoiding limiting library uses to specific formats of works.

Libraries that operate in countries with fair use and fair dealing benefit from an important advantage – the ability to continue their missions online to a greater extent, in order to meet the needs and expectations of users.

This is because fair use and fair dealing offer a more flexible framework, allowing for the taking into account of societal technological evolutions and therefore, consequently, the evolution of library practices. When a copyright law uses the term “analogous” in its legal vocabulary, this provision will, if not already, become obsolete as we move to other forms of media.

Fair use and fair dealing, an international doctrine

When we talk about fair use and fair dealing, it can seem that this is a doctrine whose scope is only applicable to North America. Certainly, opponents of more flexible laws try to claim that they can’t work elsewhere.

However, the reality of copyright implementations is much more complex than this, demonstrating the possibilities and compatibilities of fair use and fair dealing under current global regulations.

For example, other countries such as Israel, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea have fair use provisions.

In 2007, the Israeli government updated its copyright regulations to include a fair use exception. It did this by creating an open-ended list of permitted purposes of use, with fairness being determined using a set of four factors similar to the US criteria for determining whether the use is fair.

In 2012, South Korea decided to add a fair use exception to its copyright regulations. Once again, the four determining factors are included as in the US. The same applies to Malaysia (2012) and Singapore (2004).

As far as fair dealing is concerned, in addition to the countries traditionally identified as fair dealing countries such as Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom, there are many other countries that still use these principles today. A list of 40 countries using fair dealing provisions has been compiled, including India, Antigua and Barbuda, Bangladesh, Barbados, Canada, Cyprus, Gambia, Namibia, Nigeria, Saint Lucia, Guyana, Jamaica, Vanuatu, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe.

The fact that legal provisions on fair-dealing are implemented on all continents, in industrialized countries and countries in transition, is of considerable importance in demonstrating that there is no reason to limit these doctrines geographically. Moreover, given how long-established they are, without challenge, they are arguably also compatible with trade agreements and international copyright law.

We look forward to sharing further posts this week both about the benefits of fair use and fair dealing, and the practical implications for libraries.

 

Celebrating the Public Domain 2021

2021 has finally arrived, and as always, the new year brings another celebration: Public Domain Day.

This is a big deal. Why? Because the public domain means that works can be used and modified by anyone without authorisation. As such, this enriches the range of books, articles, art and beyond that brings us pleasure, inspiration and insights without copyright-related restrictions.

This matters for libraries, as institutions focused on maximizing access to information, in particular of works which have been carefully preserved for years.

Why the Public Domain?

All works that reflect the original expression of the mind of an author are protected by copyright law as soon as they are created, for a long time.

Copyright protection has been regularly extended through time. The key international law on the matter – the Berne Convention – establishes protection for the life of the author plus a further 50 years. Yet countries can go further. In 1998, the United States agreed via the Copyright Term Extension Act to extend copyright protection to 70 years after the death of the author. This decision has been followed by additional countries, delaying the entry of works in the public domain, with some offering as many as 100 years of protection after death.

Until these works enter the public domain, they are still subject to restrictions on use, despite that fact that the commercial value of works is generally only in the first few years after publication. As a result, plenty of works are not easily available, and therefore subject to oblivion.
As a result, any extension of protection limits libraries’ ability to provide wide access to works.

Further risks come from the fact that the public domain too often does not exist as a concept in legislation (it is rather implicit, resulting from the lapsing of protections). This can create uncertainty, leaving open the possibility to create new restrictions.

What is Public Domain Day?

Public Domain Day falls on is the first of January of each year and is celebrated during the whole month. It is about celebrating the public domain, recognizing the importance of protecting it, and fostering the use of materials by all communities.

This date was chosen because calculating copyright protection can be complicated. As a result, many countries have decided to simplify it by choosing the 1 January following the anniversary of the death of the author as the release date for works entering the public domain.

As a result, in countries with a copyright term of life plus 70 years, the works of authors who died in 1950 are now in the public domain. Thanks to earlier reforms in US law, books and films released in 1925 have also now lost copyright protection.

What are the next steps?

Are you willing to celebrate the public domain and make the most of it with your Library?

Whether you are in an academic library, a heritage library, or a public library, this is an opportunity to showcase works newly in the public domain. The library can highlight works via a conference, communications on blogs and social media, a wiki edit-a-thon to add these new works in Wikisource or to complete Wikipedia pages.

Several approaches are available:

Pick a specific work that is now in the public domain. Who is the author? Why is this book unique and what did it tell us back in time? And now? Make a thread on social media or share it on your blog!

Build understanding about copyright: this is also a good time to share more about copyright laws, and library issues. Use Public Domain Day to discuss the public domain, common goods and the importance of unrestricted access.

If you are interested in more information, a few articles might be interesting: here, here, here (US), here and here (France), here and here (Spain), here in Colombia, here in Portugal.

Here is the Wikilist of works entering the public domain in 2021.