What Can I Do With This?:

Deciphering Copyright and Fair Use Notices

By Fred Dingledy

Librarians find themselves dealing with numerous issues in their everyday work; one of their least favorite issues is probably dealing with copyright. How much of a journal can you copy to fulfill an interlibrary loan request? Can a professor play a movie clip in a class without getting permission from the movie studio first? Overreaching copyright notices included in some publications don’t help matters, making the reader think that doing anything besides reading the article on the screen requires permission from the publisher. There are alternatives to traditional copyright licensing, such as Creative Commons, but those alternatives are not always well-known or understood.

To help answer librarians’ questions about copyright and fair use, Ben Keele and I from the William & Mary Law Library - presented “What Can I Do With This?: Deciphering Copyright and Fair Use Notices” at the VLA/VALL Joint Conference on October 27. The presentation was aimed at a non-law-librarian audience, so I began with an introduction to copyright basics: what rights a copyright holder gets, what can be copyrighted, what infringement is, the Section 108 defense to infringement for libraries, and fair use.

Next, Ben discussed the importance of copyright notices and where to find them: copyright notices are the best place to discover exactly what the copyright owner is willing to let you do without having to specifically ask their permission. However, as Ben pointed out, sometimes the copyright notice will try to preclude the user from exercising their fair use rights, as with the notice on the website for the journal Nature. Ben provided another example, though, of a database provider (EBSCO) that specifically allowed for fair use in its copyright notice.

Ben then went on to describe alternative models of licensing copyright, such as Creative Commons and the GPL (General Public License). These models allow the copyright holder to easily tell readers what they have permission to do with a work in standardized terms, such as allowing educational use but precluding commercial redistribution or requiring attribution.

The questions from the audience demonstrated the weakness of fair use as it currently stands: no one knows what it is. These days, public discussion of fair use seems to be dominated by antipodean camps: content owners who think there should be no such thing as fair use, and the “information wants to be free” group which believes that everything is fair use. Librarians, caught in between, want a clear answer: how much of a work can I copy and still have it fall under fair use? Unfortunately, the answer we have to give is: it depends. We outlined the factors that go into deciding fair use and provided links to worksheets that librarians can use to determine if their use would probably be considered a fair one. We also made sure to emphasize to the audience that they shouldn’t panic – as a rule, not many libraries have been sued for copyright infringement to date; while it’s always best and simplest to ask permission first if they’re not sure, as long as someone have analyzed the use ahead of time, if it seems like a fair use, librarians should be fine in proceeding.

We had a good time presenting at the conference – the volunteers were friendly and the audience asked good questions. We hope to be able to present again in the future!
The Powerpoint slideshow from the presentation is available at http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/libpubs/28/ .

Questionable Content-Remove It? Keep It?

By Lara Dresser

Tim Coggins and Suzanne Corriell, from the University of Richmond School of Law, delved into the thorny topic of First Amendment restraints on collection management choices of libraries. Selection, removal, and even relocation of books in libraries have all been challenged on First Amendment grounds.

Despite the lack of clarity and cohesion in this area of the law, Corriell and Coggins did an excellent job of summarizing the salient points from the seminal U.S. Supreme Court case on book removal, Board of Education v. Pico, as well as relevant analysis from several lower courts. In a plurality opinion, Pico stated that the school board’s removal of books was impermissible if the intent was to deny access to ideas the school officials disagreed with. The key element in this case was motivation, and many lower courts have adopted this standard as well.

The message is that removal of materials is likely to be viewed as suspect, and that motivations that discriminate based on content or viewpoint are likely to be unconstitutional. Although courts have conceded that school boards have discretion to remove materials that are “pervasively vulgar,” lacking in “educational suitability,” and contain “factual inaccuracies,” public libraries probably have less discretion in the decision to remove materials.

Helpful tips included avoiding the appearance of arbitrariness and adopting and adhering to procedures. The presentation ended with a lively discussion about the University of Richmond School of Law’s experience with a patron objection to one of their resources. The presentation sparked interesting and robust debate on a critical issue all librarians should be contemplating!

Behind the Scenes of the Legally Literate Librarian

By Greg Stoner

At the recent VLA/VALL Annual Conference, I helped contribute to the program "The Legally Literate Librarian," with my colleague, Jeanne Ullian, and Terry Long, from the Virginia State Law Library. Our program focused on providing an introduction to commonly used legal terms and explaining how to read and interpret a case. While the topic may seem somewhat elementary, we imagined this presentation could be very helpful to librarians who encounter legal questions in their work and may not be able to understand a legal citation or have little familiarity with core resources such as reporters, legal dictionaries and encyclopedias.

I found that the process of planning a program and working with a team of dedicated VALL members was personally very rewarding. Isabel Paul, who was unable to be at the conference, helped us brainstorm about ways to approach the topic and concepts to cover. Jeanne quickly took the lead on the project and helped develop the program plan, identified a case to discuss, and compiled a series of useful handouts for the attendees. I worked on creating the PowerPoint presentation, and Terry contributed sage advice and additional ideas for the program. In the end, I think we all helped contribute to a program that combined our experience and unique insights in working with different types of patrons (attorneys, judges, public, etc.). Our feedback was very positive and suggested the program was right on target for many of our attendees.

Overall, as noted, I very much enjoyed being able to help out in delivering a program of interest to such a diverse audience. It is my hope that this program, as well as others held at the conference, draws attention to the hard work going on in law libraries and the dedication of our members to promoting legal information literacy to the larger community.

For those VALL members who are considering presenting in the future, I highly encourage it! Not only will you be able to help others learn - you will probably learn something too. My thanks to Jeanne, Terry, Isabel and Ben Almoite (who gave our group a great introduction) - it was both an honor and a pleasure working with you!

Private Screenings:

Using Short Individualized Screencasts as a Library Instruction Modality for Off-Campus Students

by Suzanne Corriell

Can you use the power of pictures in your job as a reference librarian? Yes, you can – easily, effectively, and economically, according to Brad MacDonald, Distance Learning Librarian for Jefferson College of Health Sciences in Lynchburg.

MacDonald’s program focused on the process for creating short, customized tutorials specifically tailored to student research requests. This program looks at “screencasting” in a different light from many other library conference programs: MacDonald is not a perfectionist. He advocates for loosely scripted screencasts, done on the fly, in response to a single student query.

MacDonald recognized the power of pictures in education when in the Peace Corps in Papua New Guinea. While there, he worked with over 11,000 graphical technology documents on microfiche. At 9000 feet elevation (and in a time of no internet), these documents’ graphics were used to teach about agriculture and water use. Once he began working as a distance reference librarian, he realized that he could use the same techniques for teaching through pictures using screencasts.

Distance learning students submit requests to MacDonald using a form created on EmailMeForm; information to be provided on the form includes professor, due date, and databases and keywords already searched. MacDonald then uses Jing to create a short, customized screencast to send to the student showing all of the steps to complete the request.

When responding to the student, he sends an email with a brief explanation (including length) of the video, a reminder to turn on the speakers, a suggestion to view the video once before re-watching it to take notes, and an offer to follow up if the video’s steps are unclear or the student needs further guidance. MacDonald later sends a user satisfaction feedback survey (using a Google Docs survey) to find out if the process worked for the student and if the student would use it again.

The program showed that screencasting can be done inexpensively, without a significant time or monetary investment. Jing videos are limited to five minutes, requires no download on the recipient’s side, and are stored remotely. It seems like an ideal method to demonstrate to a student how to conduct a search in an appropriate database or highlight new features in a database for faculty members. Just don’t forget to turn on the speakers!

Welcome to Catherine!

Catherine G. OBrion has joined the Virginia Supreme Court Law Library as Librarian-Archivist.

Catherine grew up in Richmond, Virginia, in the Bon Air area. She attended the University of Virginia, where she earned both undergraduate and master's degrees in history and, in 1997, a Ph.D. in history. In 2002, she earned a graduate certificate in archives and records management from Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. Catherine has worked as an archivist at Virginia Tech, the Presbyterian Historical Society in Montreat, North Carolina, and, most recently, the Library of Virginia.

She is married to Chris OBrion, who is also from Richmond. They have two daughters, Carrington, who just started her first year of college, and Grace, who is in the fifth grade. Catherine lives in western Henrico County. She enjoys trying new restaurants, going to plays, shows, and movies, reading history, hiking with her two dogs, and visiting historical sites and parks with her husband and daughters.

In addition to responsibility for identifying, appraising, documenting and directing the safekeeping of judicial branch archival records, both print and electronic, and other historically valuable items in the Supreme Court of Virginia Archives, Catherine will coordinate the Oral History Program and other projects of the Supreme Court of Virginia Historical Commission. She is already busy processing items in our archival collection including the personal papers of four justices, historical court records, manuscripts, photos, and other items, supervising the library's student interns from VCU's history department, and, last but not least, assisting judicial staff and researchers by identifying appropriate research materials, retrieving items, and assisting in their use.

VALL welcomes Catherine and looks forward to seeing her at upcoming meetings.

To WestlawNext or Not? That is the Question.

by Nancy Loewenberg

I’d like express my appreciation to VALL for its generous grant that enabled me to attend the AALL Annual conference in my hometown of Philadelphia. In addition to the meeting’s excellent and relevant programming, being able to visit some of my old stomping grounds, such as the Rittenhouse Square branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia, made this one of the more memorable AALL meetings for me.

I attended the highly anticipated session entitled “The New Generation of Legal Research Databases: Eighteen Months Later”. Based on the healthy size of crowd that gathered for this last session on the last day of the conference, many librarians shared my interest in the impact that WestlawNext, Thomson Reuters’s next generation of research service, has had on the legal research landscape since its introduction in February, 2010. The panel represented both the law firm and law school environments.

Prior to the conference, a survey was sent out to the AALL membership to gauge how WestlawNext has been received and the May, 2011 results were both interesting and instructive. The survey demographics were skewed towards law firms, with 76.7% of the respondents from firms; law schools were represented by 18.4% and government agencies/court/corporation libraries by 4.9%. The survey indicated that 48% of the total respondents had already rolled out WLN with 52% having not yet implemented the new platform. The survey showed a much greater adoption of WLN by law school libraries where cost considerations are not a factor. An informal poll was taken of the audience in the meeting room and it confirmed that there has been much greater adoption of WLN by law schools.

The survey revealed that there was still a lot of indecision among libraries that had not yet rolled out WLN, with 63% indicating that they had not yet made the decision to introduce it. Reasons for a delayed roll out included most prominently cost and pricing structure, the quality of the product, the limited scope of its content, and the fact that the product was still evolving.

Comments made by the panel about their experiences with WestlawNext, as well as additional survey results shed light on both its strengths and drawbacks. The strengths included ease of use with a simple, Google-like interface, particularly and predictably popular with students and younger attorneys; the folder and folder-sharing feature; faceted/aggregated search results which expose the researcher to new material; and the new search algorithm. Biggest drawbacks to WLN included most emphatically the cost; pitfalls with an oversimplification of research; a lack of precision; and the new platform not being conducive to power searching.

This program was very thought-provoking and inspired me to closely follow the dialog being conducted in the law library community about this new addition to the legal research arsenal. The stakes are high in terms of the quality and reliability of research results and we are understandably motivated to make the right decision for what best serves our institutions. If you are interested in a further discussion of the implications of WestlawNext, I recommend Ronald Wheeler’s article in the Summer 2011 issue of Law Library Journal, found at http://www.aallnet.org/main-menu/Publications/llj/Vol-103/2011-03/2011-23.pdf. To level the playing field, I recommend you read the response by a senior member of the WLN development team to questions and misconceptions raised about the new service that appeared on the rethinc.k blog this month: http://www.jasnwilsn.com/2011/10/03/on-westlaw/ and http://www.jasnwilsn.com/2011/10/05/part-2-on-westlawnext-westsearch-and-haters-a-brief-interview-with-mike-dahn-of-thomson-reuters/.

Volunteer for AALL AMPC

AALL is now accepting applications for the 2012-2013 Annual Meeting Program Committee (AMPC).
http://www.aallnet.org/Home-page-contents/NewsCallout/volunteer-ampc.html
Applications for AMPC are due November 1. (Note: The committee volunteer form for all other AALL committees will open on February 1. )