Presentations
Wednesday 4th July
Graham Titley (University of Plymouth)
Academic libraries
Notes of the exchange of experience workshop
Jenny Greene,
University of Bangor
Graham opened the session by explaining that the
session would be informally led and that he would attempt
to facilitate the discussion. What would be discussed would
be entirely up to the delegates present.
The first item to come up was audio visual lending and Graham
asked why there was such a reluctance to interlend this material.
There followed a fairly brisk session with several people
throwing in comments about anxiety relating to breaching copyright,
fear of damage, lack of confidence regarding sending AV material.
Other reasons given were that such stock was held within short
loan collections, that home library readers only had access
to the material on site - so seemed unfair to lend externally.
It was also commented that the BFI and Royal Holloway will
not lend their material and that whilst those major stock
holders held out against interlending, it would deter a wider
uptake of others providing the service.
Graham usefully reminded people that copies of AV material
intended for hire via video stores costs considerably more
than the price of a personal use copy (which is what most
libraries purchase) - but this still shouldn't be seen as
a barrier to ILL activity. He also reminded the group about
the dangers of accidentally supplying recorded broadcasted
material, most licences restrict use to the locality/campus.
Graham summed up this section by re-affirming his belief
that stock should be seen as stock, regardless of its nature.
"If we 'trust' another library's users to 'care for'
and act responsibly within the law with a print item, why
should we act differently for AV material? After all it is
only a different way to present information".
Electronic journals reared their heads but were swiftly deferred
as Graham pointed out that there was another workshop immediately
afterwards dedicated to this particular issue. The only snippet
to come from this section related to licence permissions to
provide document delivery copies from electronic journals.
Graham indicated that, for instance, Blackwells (Synergy)
and the NESLI model licence do permit ILL supply under their
licences. The excuse often given in response to a request
is that Copyright doesn't permit supply - in actual fact it
is your product licence which may restrict an ILL. More should
be done by ILL staff to find out what can and cannot be done
in the use of e-journal material. This would be especially
important as more and more print material is deleted from
collections and replaced by electronic resources.
There was a brief flurry of comments about repositories and
the possibility of collaborative stores. Southampton University
is involved in such a scheme but little detail was provided.
Scotland operates CASS: a collaborative academic store for
Scotland.
The workshop moved onto electronic signatures. There was
a lot of interest in this as a service development following
the recent article in FIL Newsletter. Graham confirmed (almost
defiantly!) that Plymouth University is now openly using this
method and that they were confident that their process complied
with the requirements laid down. Significant amongst these
needs was that there MUST be a cognitive process involved
in the process. It would NOT be sufficient to set a tick box
to default to yes - the reader MUST actively and consciously
take action to agree to the Copyright Declaration, i.e.: type
the word YES or actually select the YES/I AGREE box. It is
also essential that an element of the process is under the
control of the reader - i.e.: a PIN that they can choose themselves.
At Plymouth the pin is not readable by circulation staff,
who see only five ***** regardless of the length of the actual
pin. The pin default for all accounts is 11111. Whilst the
pin remains set to the default, the reader cannot access services,
including self-issue and request forms. As there is a faint
risk of intervention by library staff, who could in theory
overtype the PIN, there are very strict policy regulations
which dictate that library staff may only reset to the default
PIN, the reader then creating their own new PIN on the OPAC.
Graham was able to answer several questions from the floor
about the process and points raised in the FIL article. He
encouraged anyone with further questions to email him
graham.titley@plymouth.ac.uk
He will be happy to help.
Graham asked us all to consider who would actually ever police
the use of digital signatures:
-
The Government? They make legislation, they don't
enforce or police it.
-
The CLA? They are not a police force. They are a body
created to represent the interests of publishers in receiving
income from a copying licensing scheme. In his opinion
they should not intervene unless specifically asked by
the publishers to investigate.
-
The Police? They are unlikely to involve themselves as
breaches would be a civil matter rather than a criminal
matter.
-
The British Library? Whilst having a professional interest,
their role is not to police the law.
This means that the only people who can act are the rights
holders, principally publishers. However, Graham was not aware
of any occasion in the past 18 years where a library had been
asked to produce a signed declaration!
In summation Graham confirmed that since moving ahead with
digital signatures, Plymouth University now operate an entirely
paper free document supply service.
One brief issue came up at the end - that of payment. The
most interesting point to come from this section was that
according to the law, payment for a copy should be made by
the individual - throwing the system of faculty purchasing
under a shadow of technical illegality, although again the
position has never been challenged.
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