At any rate, I agree with the engagement question. I don’t think there is a much reaching out and (if I was going to guess) it’s that people don’t assign a value to that sort of research and relationship building. They want the tangible things such as what is in their library right now and what is coming; beyond that, it is not an immediate concern (when it damn well should be). You’re absolutely right to say that librarians need to invest the time; but I can hear the “I don’t have the time for this” excuse humming through the air to intercept this point. How do we counter that notion?

It’s the next battlefield for certain, Matthew. Some intelligence work on our behalf should be warranted.

Thanks for your comment. I’ve been sharing that one.

I think there is always a point where you are either leading or catching up. We are a patron driven business and it relies on people to throw us a bone as to what is working or not working. This isn’t very clear, but neither is trying to lead and having no one follow you.

The writeup on Redbox is really nice since it shows a good balance for the business and the library. People have an option if they really really want it while the library collects a rather modest fee. It reduces pressure on the library to carry more copies when it knows people will opt for an alternative route.

Here’s another: How many MLS programs regularly offer either copyright or licensing classes as part of their curriculum?

And a third: why doesn’t the ALA require (at least) copyright law as part of every accredited MLS curriculum?

These are questions I’ve raised occasionally across four years as an Information Today columnist. I’ve yet to get a response.

Licensing sets the ground rules for the 21st century use of digital information; it is based upon uses of one or more of the exclusive rights under Section 106 of the Copyright Act of 1976. Failure to understand copyright (and licensing, to a nearly equal degree) within the context of the contemporary digital information environment means many librarians have absolutely no clue about how to deal with information use or collection issues. This affects virtually every part of a library’s information or service chain: materials review, purchase, lending, interlibrary loan, electronic reserves, open access … The list literally could go on.

There is a line in the film Rounders in which Matt Damon’s character says “If you can’t spot the sucker at the table within 20 minutes, then you are the sucker.” If librarians — so-called information *professionals* — can’t identify the business, legal and policy issues that are at work because of a lack of understanding, or misunderstanding, of copyright, then we’re the suckers at the table. And we’ll continued to get our pockets emptied.

K. Matthew Dames
Managing Editor (and librarian)
Copycense

More to your point, the answer to why companies aren’t sufficiently engaged with librarians is that we’re not being at all proactive about engaging with them. And that’s the case whether we’re talking about consumer oriented businesses or library oriented businesses. Most librarians perceive vendors and publishers as “the enemy”, whine about prices & contract terms, but don’t actually know anybody in the publishing or content development business except the sales reps. So they don’t understand business models, strategic plans & priorities, or almost any of the other issues that lead companies to develop the policies and procedures that they do.

I’ve spent much of my time in the last ten years (when I’m not busy running my library) spending time with people in publishing — going to their meetings, reading what they read, and trying to understand things from their perspective. This certainly does NOT mean that I agree with my colleagues in publishing on every issue (or even on many issues) but I do see them as colleagues, and I do think it is important to understand their points of view.

I’ve been a couple of times (as an invited speaker) to the annual meeting of the International STM Association in Frankfurt and one of the things that has been so striking to me in my hallway and barroom conversations with those folks is how eager they would be to engage with librarians and to have librarians involved in helping to set directions for the future. But they’re not waiting around for librarians to show up — they’ve got organizations that they’re trying to keep alive through this transition and they’re a lot more worried about their survival than librarians are.

This is one of the reasons that I pushed hard for the creation of the Chicago Collaborative (http://www.chicago-collaborative.org) an initiative designed to provide an arena for librarians, publishers and editors to work together on the grand challenges that face us as we move from a primarily print to a primarily digital world. It’s the reason that I worked as hard as I did with the Scholarly Communication Roundtable whose report stresses the need for engagement of ALL stakeholders in developing policies for public access to the results of federally funded research. It’s the reason that I’m involved with the Society for Scholarly Publishing as well as with my library organizations.

Publishers, content developers, and intermediary companies of all stripes are generally willing to work with librarians, but librarians are going to have to step up, spend time building relationships and collaborations, and recognize that we are all in this together. It’s not easy and it takes time, but it’s the only way we are going to build a digital future that meets all of our interrelated interests.

I think we are going to see more and more of this as time presses on. Libraries are already challenging TOS with Netflix, lending e-readers, and in other ways. Sometimes by challenging that, things can change.

It would be interesting to see if the content providers will crack down on Netflix to crack down on libraries. Some distributors have already cracked down on Netflix and created a 30 day window between the dvd release and when Netflix can release.