Attendess: J. Ginsburg, A. Giral, J. Hoover, J. Klavans, C. Mandel, D. Millman, S. Murray, J. Rosedale, M. Summerfield
The meeting covered three key topics:
1. The meeting began with a discussion of the perceived need to help community members who are producing content to understand their rights and responsibilities with regard to Intellectual Property, especially copyrighted materials and their use in the electronic media. We noted that individuals must understand (a) their rights with regard to their own copyrighted materials if they have contracts with publishers that convey some or all of those rights to the publisher; (b) the law on use of copyrighted materials owned by others, particularly in connection with a course, whether in print or electronic format, and Web publishing; and (c) the University's interest in access to materials produced by Columbia community members for local research and teaching purposes.
Jim Hoover noted that University Counsel has provided guidance to schools and departments on appropriate steps to take in adopting materials for course use, particularly course packs. We hope that Beryl Abrams will provide copies of any written materials produced for this purpose.
The committee agreed that we should sponsor and convene a lunch time colloquium for faculty entitled Practical Issues for Faculty as Authors. Issues will include terms to seek in contracts with publishers, an author's rights to republish his material, and community interest in use of local scholars' work. We will plan to hold this session around mid-term break. The session will be upbeat in tone and include examples of good and bad contract points.
2. Jeff Rosedale, Head, Access & Technical Support, at Lehman Library has been involved in the debate about electronic reserves for several years. At our last meeting, Jeff briefly described the issues; his handouts were distributed with the report on that meeting. We continued that discussion at this session, beginning with the observation that Columbia has not established an approach to dealing with electronic reserves and a general question as to whether the University should set a policy. CONFU discussions have halted without resolution of these issues and various parties to those discussions have divergent opinions as to whether the proposed guidelines were to conservative or liberal. Publishers would like to say fair use does not apply to electronic materials while ARL would like libraries to have greater rights than the draft CONFU guidelines would have granted.
In the absence of law on electronic republication, various faculty members have tried to interpret the current law in the print environment. Others have simply put materials on their home pages, apparently without concern for the law (or just making a liberal interpretation).
The group discussed whether the University should set a policy, in the absence of law, or simply advice community members of the ambiguity of the law and let them move forward as they see fit. We could not reach a consensus on this issue, but there did seem to be a sense that policy setting could draw too much attention to Columbia (if the policy was not one publishers liked) or could stultify adoption of the new technologies. As Jim Hoover noted, we are facing a continuum from home pages to course materials to electronic reserves and who should be responsible for setting boundaries and rules is not clear. AcIS is considering offering instructors space for course web pages. But then what should be said about what can be put on those pages? What advice should AcIS give if someone asks about the relevant policy or law? Carol Mandel raised a related issue about the Libraries setting policy. Again the group could not recommend for or against such an action given the fluidity of the technology and law. Stephen Murray observed that an educational, interpretive campaign, not a policy, is needed by faculty.
3. The CC Reader electronic reserves project described at the last meeting is underway. We are working with CC management to determine what readings will be used next year and then to contact the publishers to request permission to put the readings that would be in the Reader online. Part of the value in this project would be in determining the ease/difficulty of obtaining those permissions and the costs that would be incurred.
Attendees: J. Ginsburg, A. Giral, J. Hoover, J. Klavans, C. Mandel, D. Millman, P. Moholt, S. Murray, J. Rosedale, M. Summerfield
The meeting covered three key topics:
The project to inform the Columbia community, particularly faculty members, about relevant Intellectual Property concerns, Electronic Reserves and policy, and the Columbia effort at putting materials online -- CC Reader.
1. The meeting began with a discussion of plans for faculty education about their rights and responsibilities with regard to Intellectual Property, especially copyrighted materials and their use in the electronic media. We decided that our first efforts will be aimed at the creator angle as this is more likely to attract interest.
A faculty seminar on this issue will be planned for Fall 1997. Issues will include terms to seek in contracts with publishers, an author's rights to republish his material, and community interest. Action Items: J. Klavans, J. Hoover and M. Summerfield will work on determining speakers, timing, publicity and the like over the summer.
2. Jeff Rosedale continued his report on electronic reserves with information on the pilot program at Copyright Clearance Center (CCC). CCC reports that it has had about 100 requests from 20 sites. Response is taking about one month on average. Pricing is similar to that for course packs and typically includes a per student charge.
This is a pilot project which assumes no fair use right for electronic reserves. Is this a position Columbia wants to endorse or should Columbia undertake a fair use premised e-reserves project? Action Items: Social Work has indicated interest in e-reserves; Jeff will continue to explore that possibility with Social Work faculty. He will also talk with the Law School about its experience in putting exams on the Web.
3. Jane Ginsburg described Hypatia, the concept for a Web depository for scholarly papers, and distributed her paper on it that was to be presented at the conference sponsored by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation later in April. Interesting issues surrounding this self-publishing include potential impact on tenure and retaining credit for one's ideas.
4. Mary Summerfield and Carol Mandel updated the group on the pilot project for getting permissions to put items from the CC Reader on the Web. There was an initial flurry of positive responses but follow-up letters or phone calls seem necessary for most of the publishers. Action Items: The Online Books Evaluation Project team will pursue this effort.