Tag Archives: education

The 10-Minute Library Advocate #24: Think What Your Audience Wants to Hear

The 10 Minute Library Advocate number 24 - Think What Your Audience Wants to Hear. Picture of a person speaking at a lecternAdvocacy is about getting people to agree with you.

When you talk with someone, you want them to understand that you have shared goals, and that you can help them.

Especially for decision-makers, who often have to face problems, libraries should look like a solution.

To do this, you need to adapt your arguments, and select or prioritise them. But how to do this?

For our 24th 10-Minute Library Advocate Exercise, think what your audience wants to hear.

You can do this by looking at the issues they care about.

For example, a K-12 education ministry official wants children who are ready for class.

A health official wants people who can learn about how to live healthier lifestyles.

Parents may just want help in keeping children entertained and helping them develop their skills.

So pick someone – or a group of people – you want to talk to and think what they want to hear!

Good luck!

 

See the introduction and previous posts in our 10-Minute Library Advocate series and join the discussion in social media using the #EveryLibrarianAnAdvocate hashtag!

Intellectual Property Is Important for…

We often forget that intellectual property rights – such as copyright, patents or trademarks – are not ends in themselves, but instruments at the service of development, creativity, innovation and welfare. Today, for World Intellectual Property Day 2019, we want to show this side of intellectual property, and how it has an impact on libraries and similar institutions.

Like all tools, they can be used well, or badly, and in some circumstances may even simply not be relevant. Copyright can contribute to these objectives, as long as the right legislation is in place.

However, it is not the case that more rights mean better outcomes. Scholars have underlined on several occasions how more flexibility contributes to development, rather than stronger protection. Exceptions and limitations are therefore key for many public interest activities. Copyright is not complete and does not fulfill its purpose without them.

In particular, when copyright laws are only written with the industry or and legal practitioners, there is a tendency to forget its strong impact on other sorts of institutions or activities. Unbalanced, unrealistic or unreasonably complicated laws can be a real problem for cultural heritage institutions for instance, whose staff have the important duty of understanding and interpreting copyright, and guiding users, students, authors and researchers through what they can and cannot do.

Copyright needs to be mindful of its impact beyond the most obvious commercial activities. Here are a few examples of where intellectual property has an impact, and so where relevant stakeholders’ views should be taken into account. Libraries, of course, have a key interest in all of these:

Copyright is important for cultural heritage

 Cultural heritage institutions hold collections of items protected by copyright law. Even if some are not necessarily protected, it is sometimes difficult to confirm this (when did the author die? Should the work be considered as being subject to copyright?).

Any activity involving such materials is then affected by copyright law, from public lending (in some countries), to preservation, to digitising and making available orphan works. Unless copyright adapts to support these activities, it will fail to promote this public policy goal.

Copyright is important for research

 Here again, decisions taken around copyright have a major impact. Most research material, for example articles, monographs or theses, have copyright protection. Apart from traditional issues such as plagiarism, or quotation (which should be protected by an exception under international law), new challenges arise as technology evolves.

Text and data mining (TDM), a form of processing information by machine, often involves copying, and so raises questions of whether the content processed is protected by copyright. If it is, then either permission is needed for every single work protected (impossible to manage), or a solution such as an exception is needed.

Exceptions for TDM, as well as other research copying, can make a real contribution to strengthening innovation and scholarship, while protecting the market for original works.

 Copyright is important for education

 Education is all about exchanging and sharing information. Information is present in the classroom, in forms of textbooks or online material displayed, at home with homework, or during examinations. Copyright has a strong influence on how education is provided, as it is applicable to most materials.

Traditionally produced textbooks, as well as digital course ware, play a helpful role, alongside open educational resources and materials produced specifically by teachers for their classes. Such materials should benefit from copyright protection, in order to reward the work of authors.

However, such rules should not stand in the way of educational uses which do not harm markets, or indeed make it unduly hard to create and share open educational resources. As set out in the provisional report by Professor Raquel Xalabarder at the most recent meeting of the World Intellectual Property Organisation’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights, the primary goal must be to make it easy for teachers to teach.

Copyright should be seen as a tool, amongst others, for achieving broader ends, including creativity, innovation, and the public interest activities such as the ones described in this above.

 

 

The EU Copyright Reform: Battles Won, Bullets Dodged, and the Questions that Remain

The text adopted yesterday at the Council, after the Parliament’s vote on 26 March, comes after years of discussion.

The Commission’s proposal released in 2016 has been reviewed and voted upon in five parliamentary committees, at the plenary of the European Parliament, at several levels within the Council, and through trilogue discussions among the Council, the Parliament and the Commission.

IFLA and its partners have engaged in every step of the process to ensure the best results possible for our sector. There are also a number of very good analyses out there, not least those produced by our partner organisations.

This blog, rather than looking to give a comprehensive overview of the legislation, looks at the battles that libraries have, together, won, the bullets we have dodged, and the questions that remain. These last will be important, with the effort to ensure the right rules for libraries now moving to the national level. You can access the final agreed text here.

 

TEN BATTLES WON

First of all, the battles won – those areas where we have seen a significant improvement on the text originally proposed by the Commission in September 2016. Through the work of a number of committed Members of the European Parliament, and supportive Member States, there have been important steps forward in some key areas:

  1. Extension of the mandatory text and data mining (TDM) exception to all libraries and cultural heritage institutions (Article 3): originally, the Commission proposed that only research organisations could benefit. However, research libraries may have faced a lack of certainty, and other libraries and cultural heritage institutions would have been excluded, forced to seek licences in order to carry out analysis on the works they hold. Now they can.
  2. A second and broader mandatory TDM exception, applicable to any individual or institution (Article 4): the first version of the TDM provision created extensive uncertainty by trying to distinguish between types of mining which would and wouldn’t be allowed. The final version of the Directive makes TDM exceptions mandatory in all Member States, for all users with legal access, albeit with some smaller limitations. See below for more.
  3. Clarity on cross-border networks of collaboration for preservation (Recital 28): while the need for cultural heritage institutions to work across borders in order to make the most of digitisation equipment was mentioned in the original impact assessment, the first version of the Directive failed to make it clear that such networks were possible. Now it does.
  4. Application of contract override to preservation (Article 7(1)): libraries can be prevented from carrying out preservation activities when the terms of the licences under which works are accessed state otherwise. The original Directive did not address this issue. Now it does.
  5. A wider number of purposes acceptable under digitisation for preservation (Article 6, Recital 27): preservation does not only imply taking a copy of a particularly vulnerable work. Cataloguing, insuring and even lending to another institution for preservation work may also require copies to be made. Improvements to the Directive have offered a greater indication that these are possible under an exception, although libraries will need to work at the national level to ensure these are covered.
  6. A fall-back exception for out-of-commerce works where no collective management organisation exists for a specific category of work in a given country (Article 8(2)): the grand plan in the original Directive was to allow for extended collective licensing of out-of-commerce works? But what about the many sectors and countries where there isn’t a representative, well-governed collecting society to run this, or they don’t have the right mandates? Thanks to the new exception, libraries can now also find a way to digitise and make available works which aren’t available on the market.
  7. Stronger conditions on when a country can opt out of the education exception (Article 5(2)): the original proposal left a lot of scope for Member States to disapply the new education exception and allow licensing to prevail. However, it is clear that many educational licences are not fit for purpose. The final version of the Directive puts the onus on Member States to ensure that before an exception is taken away, licences have to offer a realistic solution.
  8. Protection of the public domain (Article 14): recent cases have seen actors take simple photos of works which have long been in the public domain and claim copyright. This can represent a barrier to their spread, as key texts and images risk being subject to infringement proceedings. The final version of the Directive makes it clear that straightforward reproductions of works in the public domain cannot themselves claim copyright.
  9. A clear possibility to have broader limitations and exceptions (Article 25): the tendency in international copyright law is to favour higher levels of protection of rights, rather than greater scope to pursue public interest goals through exceptions. However, in the final version of the Directive, it is made clear that Member States should feel able to go further if they want.
  10. Extension of education exception to uses by educators in other settings (Article 5(1)): the original version of the directive allowed for teachers to use digital works in the classroom, or online. This potentially restricts the ability of educators to offer courses in libraries and elsewhere. The final version of the Directive clarifies that this is possible under the exception (or licences if applicable).

 

10 BULLETS DODGED

In the course of the discussions, a number of ideas emerged which would have seriously limited the effect of the new rules, and indeed have created dangerous precedents both for Europe and the rest of the world. Fortunately, they didn’t stick:

  1. Obligation to delete datasets created for text and data mining (Article 3): a number of MEPs tried to argue that if copies of articles and other materials were made in machine-readable formats for text and data mining, these needed to be destroyed afterwards in order to prevent against misuse. This (once again) makes the lazy assumption that exceptions are more or less the same thing as piracy (wrong), and would have meant that experiments carried out with TDM could not be reproduced.
  2. Scientific publications in the scope of the new rights for online press publications (Article 2(4)): in one European Parliament committee, there was an to extend the new planned press publishers right extended to scientific publications. This did not make sense, given the very different market conditions there (not least the fact that authors are not paid for their work). Fortunately, MEPs saw sense and rejected this proposal.
  3. Continued over-protection of technological protection measures (Article 7(2)): the original Directive took the refreshing step of arguing that technological protection measures (TPMs) which prevent the enjoyment of exceptions (for example copying for preservation) should not themselves enjoy legal protection, even for licenced (as opposed to purchased) works. The European Parliament tried to reverse this, leaving any work accessed under licence potentially tied up in TPMs. This proposal did not make it to the final version.
  4. No possibility to cumulate exceptions and limitations (Article 7): a further effort sought to overturn the (highly restricted) TU Darmstadt ruling. This established that it is possible to combine exceptions, as long as these continue to respect the three-step test. Despite this obvious safeguard, rightholders tried to add in a new clause that would prevent ‘stacking’, but which would have at the same time had a huge impact on disciplines such as digital humanities. It didn’t make it.
  5. Automatic right for publishers to benefit from public lending right at the expense of authors (Article 16(2)): one often-overlooked article in the Directive served to protect collective management organisations who had been paying out shares of copying revenues to publishers. Following the Reprobel case in the Court of Justice of the European Union, they risked having to pay this money out to authors instead – the Directive therefore underlines that publishers can claim a share. There were efforts during the negotiation of the Directive to extend this to public lending right, which would have seen authors in a number of countries lose revenue to publishers. The final version leaves the choice to Member States.
  6. Library repositories being covered by new rules on platform liability (Article 2(6)): the first version of Article 13 (now 17) would have meant that any site hosting large volumes of user uploaded content would need to implement filters to check for infringement, or face liability. This would have placed a huge burden on scientific and open education repositories, which play a vital role in giving access to materials. Thanks to extensive work, there is now a clear exception for these, alongside sites such as Wikipedia.
  7. Libraries and individuals being obliged to pay for uses of short snippets of press publications (Article 15(1)): while clearly aimed at GoogleNews, the original version of the Directive gave very broad application to the Press Publishers Right, with non-commercial users such as libraries potentially liable to pay. This would have potentially had a major impact on research work done by librarians for users, as well as catalogues and libguides. Fortunately, the new Directive is clear that non-commercial users are not affected.
  8. Works can only be declared out of commerce when all versions, manifestations and translations are no longer on sale (Article 8(5)): the original version of the Directive indicated that a work could only come under the new provisions when all versions, manifestations and translations were no longer on sale. This would have seriously limited the impact of the Directive, given that different language versions are not necessarily interchangeable, and that researchers may well need a specific edition, and so cannot complete their work with a substitute that is still on sale.
  9. 20-Year duration for press publishers’ rights (Article 15(4)): the first version of the Directive gave press publishers a right for 20 years, despite any evidence of this being proportionate or justified. This would have seriously limited the work of libraries working with the press, as well as research into recent history. In the end, the duration of the right was limited to two years.
  10. Retroactive effect of the new press publishers’ right (Article 15(4): at first, a lack of clarity in the text could have implied that even existing publications would benefit from the new possibilities. This would have put into question work already done using this material, bringing major new uncertainty. The final version of the Directive is clear that there is no retroactive effect.

 

TEN OPEN QUESTIONS

As is almost always the case with European legislation, a lot comes down to transposition – the steps taken to turn EU rules into national ones. An added factor in this is the lack of precision in many parts of the Directive. This is inevitable, and offers opportunities to ensure positive outcomes. At the same time, it also means that libraries will need to play close attention.

Here are ten more things to watch out for:

  1. Rules around permissible security measures in text and data mining (Article 3(3)): the Directive underlines that rightholders are allowed to take security measures in order to protect their works. At the same time, this should not lead to the cancelling out of the TDM exception in the first place. Finding the right balance here – and preventing overly restrictive approaches – will be important if the exception is to have its full effect.
  2. Rules around opting out of text and data mining for all individuals and institutions (Article 4(3)): as highlighted above, a major step forwards was the mandatory TDM exception for the benefit of people and organisations outside of research centres, libraries and cultural heritage institutions (if they have legal access to the works mined). There is a catch here, in that rightholders can explicitly state that they do not want their works mined. It will be important to work with Member States to ensure that the rules around this are specific enough to mean that opting out is the exception, not the rule.
  3. Definition of who can benefit from the education exception (Recital 20): despite our efforts, the education exception formally still only applies to educational establishments, although it can be used (under the authority of a formal education institution) in libraries and cultural heritage institutions. There is, nonetheless, a possibility to ensure that libraries (or groups that offer training and support to people in libraries) are recognised as educational establishments in national law. This would open up useful new possibilities for libraries to fulfil their potential as places for learning.
  4. Application of the opt-out from the education exception (Article 5(2)): as highlighted above, there is the possibility for Member States to decide that the new education exception does not apply in situations where there are licences adapted for educational uses on offer. There is likely to be extensive rightholder lobbying in favour of excluding broad categories of works from the exception. It will be up to libraries and educators to ensure that the conditions laid down by the Directive (that licences are ‘suitable’, ‘cover the needs and specificities of educational establishments’ and are ‘easily available’) are fulfilled.
  5. Application of the exceptions in the out of commerce works exception (Article 8(3)): a major area for work will be how to define where cultural heritage institutions need to ask for licences, and where they can benefit from the exception in order to digitise and make available out-of-commerce works. It will be up to member states to decide what it means for a collective management organisation to be ‘sufficiently representative of rightholders in the relevant type of works or other subject matter and of the rights that are the subject of the licence’.
  6. Application of rules to out-of-commerce works by third country nationals (Article 8(7)): one weakness of the Directive is the focus on trying to ensure that works by people from outside the European Union are not covered by new rules on out of commerce works. For many European countries, this will be difficult, given that they use major world languages, and so telling the difference between a French and a Quebecois work, for example, may be difficult. Member States will need to take a sensible approach to this point.
  7. Application of the definition of a good faith search on whether a work is in commerce (Article 8(5)): the Directive suggests that before a work can be declared out-of-commerce, a ‘reasonable effort’ must be made to ensure that it is not available to the public through normal commercial channels. Given the difficulties already encountered around the Orphan Works Directive, it will be important to ensure that national implementation does not create disproportionate obligations on cultural heritage institutions.
  8. Definition of which works can be preserved under the preservation exception and of the activities and purposes covered (Article 6, Recital 27): the Directive’s preservation exception, as set out above, does allow for copying for preservation purposes, while leaving the possibility for Member States to pass other exceptions and limitations for internal uses. There is, therefore, a key opportunity to ask for exceptions that allow for any core library uses of works to be covered.
  9. Management of the dialogues planned for the text and data mining exception, the out of commerce works provisions and the upload filters provision (Articles 3(4), 11, 17(10)): a number of articles provide for dialogues between stakeholders on how the rules should be applied. It will be necessary to pay attention to the composition, terms of reference and other aspects of these discussions in order to ensure that the results reflect the interest of libraries and their users. This will, in particular, be the case around protection of freedom of expression under the provisions on platform liability.
  10. Protecting the quotation exception (Article 15): The press publishers’ right creates a worrying precedent for protection being given to ‘short extracts of a work’. This risks affecting how legislators and courts think of the concept of quotation in general, as well as criticism and review. While the scope of the Article in the Directive is narrow, the precedent is certainly worrying.

For more, see our resources page about the European reforms. You can also see analysis and reaction by our partner organisations:

LIBER: New European Copyright Directive: A Detailed Look

EBLIDA: Long Read : Final stretch for the Digital Single Market Directive

SPARC Europe: A new Copyright Legislation for Europe. How will this impact Open Access?

EUA: EU Copyright Directive: EUA cautious about adopted agreement

Canadian Flu? The Doctor will See You Now

Canadian Flu ImageDebates around fair use and fair dealing are often fierce. For some, they mark a step away from old certainties and bring new and unwanted risks. For others, they are a means of reducing the rigidity of strict, code-based legal systems that risk harming libraries’ ability to serve their users.

In the middle of this abstract debate, the case of Canada’s 2012 copyright reforms is frequently cited as a case study. In debates in Australia and South Africa, for example, there are references to ‘Canadian Flu’ – the idea that extending fair dealing to education has been disastrous. Of course it is worth noting that it was arguably a series of decisions by the Canadian Supreme Court that effected the change, and that the government merely confirmed this state of affairs.

Nonetheless, given that this is being presented as evidence in debates around the world, it’s worth a fuller exploration of the symptoms. What is actually going on, and what diagnosis can we make?

 

Doctor, Doctor! The Symptoms

The most obvious event in the last few years has been the significant fall in the revenues collected by Access Copyright, Canada’s collecting society for reprographic (photocopying) rights. This has, logically, led to a fall in the revenues paid out to authors and publishers through this particular channel.

It is also true that a number of companies have gone out of business, or international companies have reduced their Canadian operations. Nelson, a major Canadian publishing company, declared a form of bankruptcy, and Oxford University Press closed its division providing materials for schools.

At the same time, a proper diagnosis is not possible without looking at everything that is going on. A crucial point is the growth in sales of electronic content, and that these materials appear to be replacing the sorts of course-packs that formed a key part of Access Copyright’s revenues. In the university sector, library spending on publisher content has grown systematically since 2012. The share of digital vs physical has reversed between 2002/3 and 2015/6.

This has impacted the textbook market (including the market for taking copies of textbooks), alongside falling numbers of young people, greater use of individual books, and textbooks themselves lasting longer. Licences offered for whole eBooks are often indeed cheaper than licences for individual chapters.

Meanwhile, Canadian education is doing well, coming close to the top of the table in the OECD’s PISA study, while its publishing industry as a whole is growing at twice the speed of the United States. As for the educational sector, it is the cost of books compared to budgets that is cited as a reason for not using more Canadian content.

 

On the Couch: a Diagnosis

While the core observations – the reduced revenues of Access Copyright and the closure of some companies – are obviously true, some of the surrounding arguments are more dubious.

The idea that the reform has put companies out of business is undermined by the fact that Oxford University Press’s Annual Report for 2013-14, which notes the closure of its schools division, places the blame on a longer-term decline in the market that is cited as a reason (falls of 50%). Meanwhile, the company celebrates its continued investment in Higher Education and English language programmes. Nelson’s demise seems to be a delayed consequence of taking on too much debt in the years before the financial crisis.

The notion that there have been 600 million pages being copied without payment seems to be based on highly questionable assumptions, with many of the supposed copies actually having been paid for, and the 2005-06 baseline unlikely to be relevant. And as has been highlighted in submissions to the Canadian parliament, the impact of falling revenues from Access Copyright has affected revenues by as little as 1%.

Overall, if the patient is the publishing industry as a whole, it appears to be healthy, although of course there can be claims that it would be healthier still otherwise. Indeed, figures for 2014-16 for example show Canadian-owned publishers increasing sales while foreign-owned ones saw a fall.

But arguably, the most important patient is not the publishing industry, but Canadian education as a whole. Quality publishing does play an important role in this, and certainly schools and universities would be poorer without it. At the same time, it is vital to take account of the interests of students and educators, who have reported that the reforms have allowed them to teach – and learn – much more simply.

 

Conclusion

As highlighted at the beginning, the move to fair dealing for education in Canada, both through the actions of the Canadian Supreme Court and the government, has arguably had a very concentrated impact on one player – Access Copyright. This has had knock-on effects on publishers who, nonetheless, seem in many cases to have benefited from growing revenues from other sources.

Moreover, once a wider perspective is taken, and all symptoms and trends are taken into account – in particular the impact on learning – the Canadian patient is arguably in good health.

6 Days to Human Rights Day: The Right to Education is The Right to a Library

The second in our series of daily blogs leading up to the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights focuses on education. This is also the subject of a major global conference – the Global Education Meeting – taking place in Brussels on 3-5 December.

It underlines the vital and complementary role that libraries play to schools and other formal education institutions in ensuring that everyone has the possibility to learn and improve their life.

 

The right to education features in Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is a key enabling right, one that should give everyone the possibility to play a full part in society in the future. This is borne out by the evidence – some of the most spectacular stories of successful development in the last century have been based on investment in teaching and learning.

Yet when we discuss education, it is easy to focus on schools and universities – ‘formal education’. Indeed, many people associate learning with sitting in a classroom or lecture hall, and absorbing knowledge.

Of course, many libraries are based within schools and universities, providing students and teachers with materials and skilled support. They can even be the heart of their institutions, as is the case for some school libraries.

However, learning is much broader than this. And it needs to be. The world we live in, and the jobs we do, are evolve and become very different from those for which schools prepared us. Formal education can offer a valuable starting point, but it cannot be enough.

This is where the world’s 350 000 public libraries can come in. As was recognised in the original UNESCO Public Library Manifesto in 1949, libraries are ‘a living force for popular education’.

Many of the countries which do best in terms of formal education also invest heavily in their libraries, such as Finland and South Korea, in order to promote the right to education throughout life.

This is just as true today as almost 70 years ago. This blog looks at two ways in which libraries complement formal education.

 

Helping Young Learners in the Community

In many countries, libraries have a strong focus on supporting young learners. They are part of the ecosystem that ensures that children have access to books from a young age, especially when parents are not able to buy books themselves.

There are many examples, for example those run through Boekstart in the Netherlands, which provides valuable support to parents – and a complement to schools – in developing early years literacy.

As children grow, they offer a different environment – quieter often than school or home – which for some at least can make a real difference to their chances of success.

Libraries can also fill in gaps where schools are not able to offer the resources – or spaces – for young learners. Many of the projects run by EIFL’s Public Library Innovation Programme focus on giving young people access to tools, materials, and support they may not get elsewhere.

Libraries can also provide skills, for example media literacy or coding clubs, which help children grow, develop, and seize opportunities.

As set out in an IFLA article for World Teachers Day, librarians and teachers are natural partners.

 

Education Throughout Life

Of course education does not stop at any particular age. As highlighted in the introduction, changing technologies and changing jobs mean that people need to continue to learn.

Libraries can provide a vital gateway in this respect. Many offer basic education about how to make best use of the internet, for example to access eGovernment services or look for a job.

Some provide more advanced course in coding for example, or programmes aimed at personal fulfilment, such as creative writing or local history.

They can be attractive – and effective – as venues for learning precisely because they are public buildings, but are not as intimidating as formal education institutions.

They are particularly important for refugees, the focus of this year’s Global Education Meeting. For people arriving in a new country, at whatever age, there is always a need to learn, be it language, skills, or simply how the system works.

Libraries across host countries have looked to reach out, providing specific resources and support, especially around languages. And in refugee camps, actors such as Libraries Without Border are bringing these benefits to people who might otherwise struggle to carry on learning.

 

If the right to education is to be a reality throughout life, the need for libraries is clear. Libraries need to be a core part of education, training and lifelong learning strategies, engaged in conversations, and supported accordingly.