E-Currents

Citation

Falk, H. (2003), "E-Currents", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 20 No. 10. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2003.23920jae.002

E-Currents

Howard Falk

Hard times for Questia

Questia, the online for-profit library, has closed its offices in New York and Los Angeles leaving only its Houston office in operation. The company has also greatly reduced its work force, and its marketing campaign. Questia management initially predicted that they would provide 750,000 volumes to users. However, the company currently offers users only about 45,000 books and 360,000 articles in the humanities and social sciences. That collection is small, compared to what typical college and university libraries provide.

London Libraries launched online

An online catalog covering libraries all over London was launched in September 2003. Called What's in London's Libraries (WiLL), the service is now publicly available on the Internet. Details are available through WiLL on all the libraries in the 33 boroughs of London, including addresses, opening times, facilities and services, children's activities, reading groups and special subject collections. The service is mainly funded by a lottery grant. Inclusion of some museum and archive databases is funded by Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries. The Internet address of WiLL is www.londonlibraries.org.uk/will.

Online items priced lower than print

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (www.ieee.org) has announced that prices of its online publications will be lower than comparable print prices in 2004. Previously, pricing of online items was the same as for equivalent print offerings. The Institute now has over a million users accessing information online each month and wants to encourage further online access to its publications, which include papers and articles from the last several years. Print journals, magazines and conference proceedings are still considered the official items of record for the Institute, but a major project is underway to transfer the item-of-record designation to online versions.

Archive deposit law for non-print items

The Legal Deposit Libraries Bill would require that non-print publications, such as files on CD-ROMs and material on the Internet, be placed in official UK deposit libraries. The aim is to ensure that these items are collected and preserved for the national archive. The bill passed its Report Stage and Third Reading in the House of Commons in July and has now passed its Second Reading in the House of Lords. Speakers on the bill stressed the importance of legal deposit for building the national archive and discussed how to meet both archival and publishing interests, as well as the cost of processing and preserving non-print items. The bill now has to go through a Committee Stage and a Third Reading before it can receive Royal Assent and become law.

Publishers have long been required to deposit books with the British Library. The new bill was drafted by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport under the Secretary of State for Culture. If passed, the law would allow the department to issue regulations requiring archiving of both online and offline publications. Publishers of these items would be required to perform the deposit at their own expense. If they fail to comply, legal action could be taken against them.

Prospects dim for database protection bill

At hearings on a draft bill designed to create new legal weapons for database producers, committee members showed little support for the measure. The hearings on the Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act of 2003 were held before that a joint session of subcommittees of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and the Committee on the Judiciary. The draft bill has been criticized by the American Association of Law Libraries, the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Special Libraries Association. These groups stated that they saw no need for the legislation. In addition, provisions of the draft bill designed to exempt non-profit educational organizations were seen to be "wholly inadequate". A subpoena provision in the bill is "an invitation to a flood of frivolous lawsuits by database owners on a fishing expedition for possible infringers", according to the associations. They also complained about the failure, in the bill, to provide judicial oversight before subpoenas could be issued. Failure to protect public domain information was cited as another shortcoming. Under the bill, a provider that includes legal or government information in its database could prevent others from making that information available. The draft bill was also said to be in conflict with the Copyright Act, since activities such as interlibrary loans that are lawful under the Copyright Act could be a violation of the draft database legislation. Finally the draft bill was seen to be "strikingly at odds" with the advancement of science and innovation through open access to data and information.

Purchased e-books lost to DRM

Barnes & Noble has announced that it will no longer sell e-books. The B&N Web site (www.bn.com) states that: "If you are a Microsoft Reader customer, you will be able to download your e-books until December 9, 2003, through your Microsoft Library. If you are an Adobe Reader customer, you have 90 days from your date of purchase". After these deadlines, it appears that there will be no way for customers to reactivate their e-books. If Barnes & Noble customers lose their e-book files because they reconfigure a personal computer, or reset a handheld device, it seems they will permanently lose access to their purchases. The problem is that even if purchasers have made backup copies of their e-books, reader restriction (DRM) software embedded in the ebooks that Barnes and Noble has been selling can prevent reinstallation.

Open access funded by Wellcome Trust

The Wellcome Trust, the world's largest private supporter of medical research, has decided to finance open-access journal publication for researchers who receive Wellcome grants (www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/1/awtvispolpub.html). The trust urges all authors to make their work freely available online, and advises authors to retain the copyrights to their published material wherever possible. The trust has also decided to encourage and support new open-access journals and repositories. In a report that analyzes scientific research publishing, the foundation finds that use of scientific information is being restricted by "the access policies of publishers" and that "Journal subscriptions are a significant financial burden on institutional libraries and individual researchers, and present a major obstacle to the timely and comprehensive sharing and use of scientific information." A similar policy has been adopted by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (www.hhmi.org)

Labor History staff moves to Duke

The entire editorial board of the Taylor and Francis journal Labor History has switched publishers. In February 2004 a new journal, called Labor: Studies in Working Class History in the Americas, will be published by the Duke University Press (www.dukeupress.edu/labor). The new journal, produced in partnership with SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), will sell for $200 per year (print edition), 20 percent less than Labor History. An electronic edition will sell for $180. The new journal will publish four issues a year. More than 40 people from the Labor History, staff, including Leon Fink, the former editor-in-chief, four associate editors, and 30 contributing editors are on the staff of the new journal. SPARC is dedicated to the development of new alternatives to established high-price journals.

E-books proposed for scholarly publishing

Publication in e-book form has been proposed as a possible means for faculty in the humanities and social sciences to meet requirements for tenure. Cathy N. Davidson, professor of English at Duke University and co-founder of the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, spoke of the promises and problems of electronic publishing at the 2003 annual meeting of the American Council of Learned Societies. She pointed out that "A book and several refereed articles have been the price of admission to tenure in the humanities and social sciences for decades". Because most universities are in perilous financial situations, yet are still responsible for finding a way to support scholarly publishing, she said she felt there is a need to consider the economics and usefulness of ebooks as refereed publications.

Digital rights bill introduced

A bill designed to safeguard the privacy of Internet users has been introduced by Senator Sam Brownback (Republican-Kansas). The Consumers, Schools, and Libraries Digital Rights Management (DRM) Awareness Act of 2003 is designed to keep copyright holders from forcing Internet service providers to identify their subscribers unless a civil lawsuit has been filed. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has tried to identify more than 1,600 individuals, using subpoenas issued by court clerks against Internet providers, and the bill is directed against such tactics. The bill asserts fair use rights for digital media, and the right to donate digital media products to libraries and schools. It also requires labeling of all CDs, DVDs, and software that restrict consumers by use of built-in DRM codes.

Widespread opposition to the PATRIOT Act

More than 130 members of the US House of Representatives are sponsoring a bill (HR 1157) to free libraries and bookstores from intrusive provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act. The bill was introduced by Bernie Sanders an Independent from Vermont, and supporters of the bill include Republicans, Democrats, conservatives and liberals.

A bill witholding funding for PATRIOT ACT sneak-and-peek searches of private property was introduced by Rep. Otter, a Republican from Idaho. These searches allow the government to secretly search homes, confiscate property, and monitor computers. The bill passed the House with a vote of 309 to 118.

About 150 US cities, towns and counties have enacted resolutions or ordinances to protect the civil liberties of their citizens against undesirable features of the PATRIOT Act.

Privacy policies drafted by the American Library Association have been adopted by many local libraries. These include destroying personal information not needed to administer services, and educating the public about problems with the PATRIOT Act.

A Gallup poll, conducted in August found that 67 percent of Americans do not want the government to take steps to prevent terrorism if those steps violate basic civil liberties. Only 29 percent say the government should take "all steps necessary to prevent additional acts of terrorism in the United States, even if it means their basic civil liberties would be violated."

Faculty and students favor electronic resources

Faculty and students like electronic resources and find them especially useful for browsing and linking to related material. Subject experts make much more use of linking than students. Most users print out their e-journals for reading. These are some of the findings in a report by the Council on Library and Information Resources (www.clir.org) that analyzes results of over 200 research studies. According to the report, print media remain much more popular than electronic media for book reading; however, many faculty are letting their print subscriptions to journals expire and are turning instead to electronic editions. The report notes that many college and high school students now appear to believe that they are more expert at searching for information, using the Internet, than are their teachers.

E-book sales continue to increase

A total of 660,991 e-books were sold by retailers in the first half of 2003. That is a 40 percent increase over 2002, and retail revenues have increased by 30 percent. The number of e-book titles available this year is 280,590, an increase of 144 percent since 2002. These statistics were released by the Open eBook Forum (OeBF), a trade and standards organization for the ebook industry (www.openebook.org). The results were compiled from data submitted by 34 publishers and retailers. The three top-selling genres, according to the report, were science fiction/fantasy, reference and general fiction. Participating companies submitted data through a Web site maintained by the OeBF. A detailed report of the full survey findings is available only to OeBF members and companies who participated in the survey.

Paper that displays videos

The latest version of electronic ink is a sheet that looks much like ordinary paper, but is able to display videos. This display technology was invented at the Philips Research laboratory in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Drops of ink on a white background make up the display. The tiny drops are expanded and retracted electrically to create darker and lighter areas on the sheet. A conducting coating carries the electrical control signals and the sheet is covered with waterproof plastic. The drops provide a continuous effect, and images can be very smoothly displayed. Control voltages are so low that only a very small power supply is needed to operate the display. Operation is rapid enough to produce good video images. The developers of the display believe that electrical control of the color of the drops is also feasible.

E-books promoted in Japan

A consortium of about 200 companies in Japan is promoting development of e-books and use of cell phone devices is being explored. The eBook Initiative Japan Co. Ltd is a founding member of the Electronic Book Business Consortium along with Panasonic System Solution Co., a subsidiary of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., Toshiba Corp. and the Keiso-Shobo Publishing Co. Ltd. No specific data format has yet been adopted for e-books by the consortium. However, Matsushita has already developed a prototype e-book viewer which the consortium will initially promote. The prototype displays two pages side by side, mimicking printed books. The two 7.2-inch monochrome display screens use power only when writing a new page. Two AA batteries can power the viewer for three months, while viewing 80 pages a day, according to Matsushita. The company is currently developing a color version of the display.

Howard Falk (howf@hotmail.com) is a freelance author based in New Jersey, USA.