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We use CONTENTdm's capacity to restrict at the item-level or collection-level for many situations, most notable of which is to keeping licensed and/or R-rated art images behind closed doors, so to speak. 

Glee

-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Mike Taylor
Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2011 2:37 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] GRAP: The granular restricted access problem

Not the kind of suggestion you're looking for, I know, but as a broader philosophical point ...

I wonder how much of the infrastructure we're building now to manage access rights, including dark achives like CLOCKSS, is going to end up looking rather quaint and old-fashioned as the progress towards an Everything Is Open world accelerates.  Of course, "Everything" is an exaggeration, there will always be *some* restricted materials, but we're already seeing a strong trend towards author-pays open access in scholarly publishing, and towards musicians not trying to limit access to their music, but using it as an advertisement, and both trends seem to be accelerating.

I guess the truth is that none of us knows where all this is going to end up.

In the mean time, it's hard to get excited about building software to
*restrict* access to materials, when what we all really want to do is
*improve* access.

-- Mike.



On 3 November 2011 03:36, William Denton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Some of us at work were talking about a problem the archivist and 
> other digitizing people have: showing particular digitized objects to 
> particular people with particular restrictions.  We called it GRAP:  
> the granular restricted access problem.
>
> Here's the archivist's description.  If you also had this problem and 
> found a solution, we'd love to know.
>
> # ----- begin GRAP
>
> We are generating lots of digital assets (TIFFs of historical 
> photographs, WAVs of sound recordings and oral histories, etc.) not 
> only in the course of our regular digitization-for-access activities 
> but also as a result of researcher requests and requests through Accessibility Services.
>
> We have a institutional digital repository (DSpace) that works well as 
> a mass distribution tool, but as with most primary sources there are 
> often additional restrictions on access based on copyright, donor 
> permissions, third party privacy issues and other legislation.  We are 
> struggling to find ways of promoting these resources that have additional access restrictions.
>
> What we want:
>
> A system of storing and organizing all digitized materials in one 
> place so that everyone (librarians, archivists, technicians, IT, 
> scholars, faculty,
> students) can find them.
>
> A means of managing and tracking all these objects that will allow:
>
> - the creation of unique identifiers (to generate statistical metrics, 
> track chains of custody, access etc.)
> - quick and easy updating
> - access controls, possibly with time limits, for all material (X to 
> the public, Y to this person, Z to students in HUM 101 for one week)
> - seamless streaming of audio and video (with access controls)
>
> # ----- end GRAP
>
> Any suggestions welcome.  I'll pass along and report back.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Bill
> --
> William Denton
> Toronto, Canada
> http://www.miskatonic.org/
>
>