Hi all,

I'm going to be that student in the class who says, "Yes...and no."

Yes, it is unfortunate that so many of our materials are licensed rather
than owned, and there are now legal barriers to having lots of copies to
keep stuff safe. However, for the century-plus between the spread of modern
library systems and the rise of e-resources, libraries were already
functioning as middle-people between publishers and the public.

The mission of most libraries is to provide access to an up-to-date and
relevant collection of materials, rather than to preserve them. In the days
of print books, CDs, VHS tapes, and glossy magazines, we would buy things
and own them for a few years, until their contents grew stale and our circ
stats showed patrons no longer wanted them. Then we weeded them. Most
libraries weren't making local backup copies of their collections. Only
large library systems, governments, and nonprofit historical societies tend
to have archival departments with the primary goal of protecting media for
posterity.

These licensing models are successful because they're convenient for
patrons and for those public and small college libraries who are mostly
happy to get new content without making individual selections, and then see
old content vanish without dedicating staff time to huge weeding projects.
For preservation, maybe publishers would be amenable to agreements with
specific institutions to archive their works. Having a comparatively small
number of contracts with archives to own their materials, while they can
still sell the licensing packages to most other library customers, wouldn't
be a threat to their business.

-Tamara


On Tue, Aug 22, 2023 at 8:49 AM Tim McGeary <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> I do agree with the quoted passage, and I have been thinking something
> similarly in every conversation that goes something like "our website
> should be more like [Amazon]" (fill in brackets with other examples). And I
> consider it every time I reluctantly renew my streaming services
> subscription in which I've made a "purchase" of some content that I don't
> actually get to keep. I also consider it regularly in the conversation
> about publishing research data and the value and cost of sustaining and
> preserving our local research data repository vs licensing a commercial
> product. Because it is becoming more and more difficult to accomplish what
> we set out for with the constraining resources we are fighting for, and our
> collective ability to collaborate is becoming strained in the process.
> Having such a large endowment as the Internet Archive has creates more
> opportunity to build strong and sustainable solutions.
>
> The subsequent lawsuit filed against the Internet Archive on their
> digitization and preservation of sound and moving image recordings is even
> more frightening to me because many of our libraries are doing the very
> same work. The mention of this is nearly buried in the end of the article,
> but it is clear to me that the plaintiffs are emboldened by this first
> judgment. I happen to believe that the IA has a better chance of winning in
> the upper courts because I believe this judgment has over reached,
> particularly in the statement that if a licensed opportunity exists,
> libraries cannot digitize. That is market harm against libraries who
> already made a purchase, and the IA may need more amicus briefs attached in
> the appeal to make that case.
>
> From my experiences and observations, while I agree with the quoted
> passage, I wonder if libraries have the will to return to the original
> form? It is clear no one library can do it alone, and no small consortium
> of a dozen libraries can do it together either. There have been and
> continue to be a multitude of attempts, yet we collectively continue to be
> drawn to the marketplace instead. That allure is strong, so strong that
> even a not-for-profit worldwide membership organization finds that model to
> be more attractive than what the Internet Archive has set out to do. The IA
> is not without its faults and failures, too, but I find their persistence
> to remain true to their vision admirable. Perhaps the reality is that we
> (libraries) need to acknowledge our limitations in scope and return to form
> specifically in the contexts we can, and let go of the aspirational goals
> of being just like the marketplace or competing with pieces of the
> marketplace?
>
> Tim
>
> Tim McGeary
>
> Associate University Librarian for Digital Strategies and Technology
>
> Duke University Libraries
>
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Code for Libraries <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Eric
> Lease Morgan <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2023 11:11 AM
> To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: [CODE4LIB] what does it mean to own a book?
>
> What does it mean to own a book?
>
> That was the headline of an article from this past Sunday's edition of the
> New York Times. For the most part, the article was about Brewster Kahle's
> legal troubles with publishers, and the differences of owning physical
> books versus licensing digital items.† The following snippet struck a chord
> with me:
>
>   Librarians came before publishers," Mr. Kahle, a 62-year old
>   librarian, said in a recent interview in the former Christian
>   Science church in western San Francisco that houses the
>   archive. "We came before copyright, but publishers now think
>                                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>   of libraries as customer service departments for their database
>   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>   products.
>   ^^^^^^^^
>
> I have heard such a sentiment from a few fellow librarians, and from my
> point of view libraries are increasingly and merely fiscal middlemen
> between publishers and patrons. This is at the cost of not really creating
> collections nor preserving the historical record. Furthermore, I don't
> believe the current situation is sustainable, and when it finally breaks
> down, we will have nothing to show for our cash expenditures. Think of all
> the money we spend towards licensing fees. Sure, licensing offers
> convenience, but if that same money had been invested in actually acquiring
> the content, then we would have not only had something to show for it, but
> we would have also increased our skills so other content could be collected.
>
> Now, pretend our mailing list is Library Seminar 504, and ask yourself,
> "To what degree do I agree with the quoted passage? Why or why not?"
>
>
> † As you may or may not know, Brewster Kahle runs the Internet Archive.
>
> --
> Eric Lease Morgan <[log in to unmask]>
>


-- 

Tamara Marnell
Program Manager, Systems
Orbis Cascade Alliance (orbiscascade.org <https://www.orbiscascade.org/>)
Pronouns: she/her/hers