Haworth recently announced the new
Journal of Library Metadata.
I feel a bit irritated every time a new LIS journal arrives on the scene which doesn't let authors retain full copyright. Haworth, to it's credit, is a
SHERPA/RoMEO "green publisher," meaning that authors can archive pre-prints and post-prints of the work if they meet certain conditions. In the case of Haworth, those conditions include: the archiving must be on the author's website or author's institutional web site,there should be notice of the publisher's copyright and citation pointing readers to the published version of the article, and the server upon which pre/post print is archived must be non-profit.
Sounds OK. Articles from this new journal will be available, in some form, as Open Access so why am I irritated? I'm not fond of
Haworth's copyright transfer agreement. Authors transfer full copyright to Haworth and retain limited rights of re-use rather than authors retaining their copyright and licensing publication privileges to Haworth.
As a long term strategy, it's not optimal. Authors don't need to sign away full rights to publishers and they shouldn't. It's a nit-picky thing for me. Publishers need permission to make the article available, to archive it/re-purpose to different formats when necessary, etc. It's great that the publishers allow authors to retain rights. I just think that in the very long term, it's not a good practice to let the publishers have it all just because they let authors keep a manifestation of a work on their own server to do what they will.
It's really a question of how much one trusts publishers to share any profit they may make from your work in the long term.
At least the individual subscription price for the
Journal of Library Metadata is a reasonable $48. I still chafe at any type of reader fee for metadata research, given the interoperability issues that face the metadata community. Less affluent libraries should be able to access the research up-front without relying on the individual vagaries of personal archiving practice. Just because Haworth allows authors to archive their articles, doesn't mean that those authors will archive those articles.
Under currant practice, the only guaranteed, timely, access to the "published" work is via the journal. When there are barriers to that journal, it doesn't serve the LIS community. It's not an easy black/white issue. It does cost money to review and produce the final article and the journal publishers are providing a service. Somebody needs to foot the bill.
We cannot develop new economic models, however, if we continue, as a profession, to support the status quo. I haven't decided yet if I'll read the new journal or write for it. Depends on the content, I suppose. I'm inclined to avoid it, however, and continue patronizing freely available OA journals instead.
Labels: metadata, open access
I'm glad that
Meredith, and others have brought up the issue of staying sane. Librarian life can be stressful. There are reasons I sought such a long break between gigs. I need to decompress. I let myself get overworked, discouraged, run-down in the past few months and I owe to myself to regain my health. My first month of vacation has been hectic and not quite the respite I need.
Part of regaining my health involves getting s**t done. There's a bathroom and bedroom to be painted and a home office needing a purge. I've been drinking the David Allen Kool-Aid so I'm going through all the steps of integrating those time management principles into my life. The idea is to get all those unfinished niggly things out of the way so I don't stress about them. I haven't gotten very far with the niggly things yet because I've been busy with gadgets, CC:DA work, culinary school, and ALA travel.
I lucked into a bit of money and was able to procure a MacBook and upgrade my cell phone to a Treo -- I'm hoping it will help me implement GTD. So far, it's just been yet-more-stuff-to-learn. The MacBook is (oestensibly) for my daughter. She has graciously allowed me to abscond with it for a couple of months. I've been geeking out installing a bunch of open source software and learning my way around Appledom. As a bonus, it's good for practicing the
techbootcamp unix cheat sheet commands (password=library). It is not a bonus for getting sh**t done. Evaluating and installing software takes time. Especially when your software installations fail because you didn't know to drag the installer to the application folder to do the installation. Nothing like beginning with a new operating system to humble one's-self. Add another new OS (Palm) to the mix and one really needs to get into the groove of
beginner's mind. My struggles to learn new tech have been ongoing since the day I left MFPOW.
My first few days off were spent with virtual colleagues writing
the preliminary report of the CC:DA Task Force on Internal and External Communication. I was hoping to write more about RDA ch.3. I haven't forgotten my promises to comment. I just have trouble finding dedicated time for writing coherently. See the part above re: stressing myself out. Task force deadlines have trumped analysis and opinion pieces for the blog. I can't even keep up with NGC4LIB. In the interest of staying sane, I hereby renege on my promises and add a very weak, "what they said!" to the others who have already very ably commented on Ch.3.
Speaking of getting sh**t done, CC:DA has the most work of any committee upon which I've ever served. I've been getting to know the history and purpose of CC:DA committee quite well during my participation on the TF. That is worth blogging about. I sense a bit of a disconnect between our purpose and our work. I've added it to my tickler file. I spent the better part of June madly reading all of the paperwork coming from the JSC and attending
culinary school in Ft. Bragg, CA. I've now got two courses towards my certification as a raw vegan chef under my belt.
I'm working on house and personal stuff so I can make space for all this writing I'm not doing. I have lots of opinions about the RDA scope document update and the various goings on. Right now, however, it's all I can do to keep up with the reading and committee voting stuff. ALA was its typical mad blur of meetings and travel. I'm happy to (finally) be back at home, even if only for a brief respite.
I'll be driving cross-continent and
cycling the Underground RR with the wife and kid for the last half of July/early August so posts are likely to be intermittent. There will be a lot of RDA stuff coming down the pipe for me to review for CC:DA, so that will form the bulk of my time online along with continuing to learn about my new Mac/Palm personal computing environment.
I really need to do better at doing nothing with my vacation time.
Labels: CC:DA, RDA
Diane Hillmann comments on a May 11 post to NGC4LIB by Karen Coyle. Karen says "The problem that we see today in the library world is that when there is a standard that is rising up to the point of being useful and usable by many in our community, it isn't clear where to take it so that it can move from being a neat hack to being a community standard," and suggests that ALA is the obvious body to promote library interests, at least in theory.
Diane asks "given this standards reality check from Karen, what are the implications for us?"
I say the implication for ALA is that the Divisions need to coordinate better on standards. They need to speed up the official channels of communication between committees. The extreme busyness of people contributes to the lack of standards work being done. Nobody wants more work. The other part of it is that we're not making effective use of social tools to do the business of the association. We create more work for ourselves by not using the time-saving new tools. The difficulty is that learning the tools takes time+effort=more work. There's no incentive to change.
That's starting to change (hooray for ALA communities,wikis, and blogs despite their growing pains! hooray for hiring Jenny Levine! ). But I still have trouble convincing people to use web-based conferencing a go. The reason it takes months for a committee to write a report is that, even with email, it takes time to send out a doc, get responses, compile responses, synthesize and summarize, check back in with committee members, then take necessary actions.
Come to think of it, a committee probably only recommends actions. Another problem is assigning responsibility for action and following through to make sure it's done!
As a task force chair, I'd much rather have one single real-time discussion with the task force members to gather all comments at once. It's faster. I'd like to spend less time volunteering please. Perhaps if we did better with the social tools, we'd do better with the standards work? ALA already has some channels in place for standards development. I give you the example of CC:DA.
I just submitted a preliminary report from the
CC:DA's Task Force on Internal and External communication. The TF reviewed
CC:DA's charge as well as
"Building international descriptive cataloging standards..." (the promotional "pamphlet" to explain to the masses just what-the-heck CC:DA does).
In the CC:DA charge section of the
"Building international.." document it says:
To develop official ALA positions on proposed international cataloging policies and standards pertaining to the committee’s area of responsibility and to advise the official ALA representative; or, if there is no official ALA representative, to act as the clearinghouse within ALA for review of these policies and standards and to serve as the formal liaison between ALA and the originating organizations.
Most of the committee scope described "Building international..." is related to the development of AACR and interactions with the JSC. Yet it also says CC:DA's role is to develop official ALA positions on cataloging and related standards. This bullet point quoted above indicates, to me anyway, that CC:DA should be taking a proactive role in standards discussions within ALA. It also means we need to pay attention to the first two words, "to develop." The FBI calls that a clue, son. To develop implies taking action. (smile). I think this action needs to be both internal to ALA and external to other standards bodies. CC:DA has sucked at taking the external-to-ALA actions.
Take a look at the CC:DA roster, for example. Most of the external liaison members are from library or librarian associations. There weren't any non-library bodies represented until Diane Hillmann (for DCMI) and Curtiss Priest (for IEEE) were added.
The "Building international ... standards" document also says that CC:DA welcomes suggestions
*In applying standards for bibliographic control to new and emerging technologies
*In employing automated solutions to the development of descriptive cataloging records.
Yes, CC:DA welcomes suggestions but has really only been taking them from librariankind.
If CC:DA is supposed to do standards work, why hasn't it? The snark in me wants to say that it's because the minutiae of dealing with AACR and MARC takes up all of CC:DA time and probably a forest's worth of paper. To be fair, there is the "pertaining to the committee’s area of responsibility" clause in the "Building international ... standards" document. AACR really is the bulk of CC:DA's area of responsibility as per the written charge. I can understand how we could collectively miss following through on a wee little suggestion to develop positions for ALA beyond AACR/RDA. I don't think it excuses the neglect, however. At CC:DA meetings we really don't much discuss standards beyond AACR/RDA (if we consider that a standard).
Betty Landesman, ALA's NISO rep, gives us a report each Midwinter and Annual, and she announces NISO proposals/votes on the CC:DA email list which gives committee members the opportunity to respond. I've tried to review those and give Betty feedback, but I just couldn't. My life is f.u.l.l. And I have no idea if other CC:DA members, voting or non, give Betty any feedback either. My sense is that nobody does, but you'd have to ask Betty.
I bear some of the blame for this lack of attention to the standards proposals as a voting member of CC:DA. Diane hit the nail on the head when she said the work of standards development doesn't happen, "mostly because we already have busy lives and sometimes our institutions don’t support such activity very well. " The RDA publication process has CC:DA members in a mire of reading/thinking/responding work. Not an excuse for not paying attention to standards. Especially when I hold the radical view that ALA should insist on decoupling RDA development from the Committee of Principles' publication schedule. I can't very well argue that radical stance unless CC:DA members are willing to be proactive in their involvement with the other related standards work.
I think it means that we need to add more people to CC:DA in order to spread the work load around a bit more. I also think it means that the CC:DA TF on Communication really needs to come up with concrete, do-able, alternatives to CC:DA's current methods of disseminating information.
Labels: CC:DA, metadata, RDA, standards
The version of ALA OITP's
Principles for Digital Content is available from the Digitization Policy Task Force's blog. It incorporates feedback from the comment period and will be going to Council for approval at Annual.
