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 | At IDPF Conference, Publishers Back ePub Standard for Ebooks
Ebooks are making steady—if still rather slow progress—industry leaders told attendees at Digital Book 2008, the annual conference sponsored by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), held yesterday at the McGraw-Hill auditorium in Manhattan. The biggest news of the conference, however, was an announcement by publishers, via a release from the Association of American Publishers (AAP) backing use of the “.epub” standard for ebooks.
In a statement, AAP digital policy director Ed McCoyd said AAP supported “the use of .epub as an e-book file type for reflowable texts from which any ebook delivery format can be rendered,” and hoped that publishers could transition to the standard by 2008. McCoyd added, however, “each individual publisher will make decision about adopting .epub on its own timeline.”
The .epub format was originally introduced as OEBPS (Open Ebook Publishing Standard), in 2006, with the current, final release of issued in mid 2007. Some major publishers have adopted it: Hachette is already using it, for example, while HarperCollins UK and Penguin UK are slated to begin to use it this year. Wiley is using it for some of its less graphic and design-oriented imprints.
The good news: the .epub content now appears well on its way to widespread adoption by the publishing industry and could provide a boon to publishers’ in-house workflow. It isn’t likely to make an immediate impact on interoperability between reading devices, or on consumer choices, just yet. Although the standard would mean that the raw, digital files from publishers would be created equal, publishers could still encase their files in proprietary DRM (digital rights management) technologies that could still prevent users from reading the content they've purchases on whatever device or platform they choose.
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The LJ Academic Newswire Newsmaker Interview: Shawn Martin, Penn’s New Scholarly Communication Librarian
The University of Pennsylvania (Penn) Libraries recently announced the appointment of Shawn Martin to the newly created position of scholarly communication librarian—and what a job it promises to be. With Harvard’s faculty and law school mandating open access, institutional repositories (IRs) poised for growth, and publishers suing Georgia State University (GSU) over its electronic course content, these are, like the fortune cookie says, interesting times. At Penn, Martin, who holds a MA in history from the College of William and Mary, will be responsible for the libraries’ institutional repository ScholarlyCommons@Penn, and offering “guidance on and promoting awareness of issues” surrounding intellectual property rights and academic publishing. The Library Journal Academic Newswire caught up with him to talk about his new role, and some of the big issues he’ll face.
LJAN: Can you tell us a little about your background, and what kinds of things you'll be addressing in your new post?
SM: I come at this from a slightly different background than most. I started out life as a historian and got into digital libraries from my fellowship when I was in graduate school. Most recently, I worked at the Text Creation Partnership (TCP) project at the University of Michigan. There I worked with three publishers, ProQuest, Readex, and Gale, and over 100 academic libraries around the world to create searchable text for commercially available image databases of early English and American printed books. The catch was that all of the text we created eventually would enter the public domain. In essence, TCP was a model of working with publishers, librarians, and scholars to determine how all three could come together and deliver content in new and unique ways. That is the primary way that I'll be approaching open access and scholarly communication.
The IR at Penn will be a major focus of your work, I’m sure. First, your thoughts on Harvard's recent faculty OA mandate?
I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t appreciate the Harvard mandate. Obviously I would love it if Penn moved in a similar direction. Penn is a decentralized institution and will probably move more slowly. It is a goal, however, to at least educate faculty about what is going on at Harvard and elsewhere and try to get them to take a more active role in the dissemination of their scholarship. I intend this to be a major focus, and will be doing outreach with our faculty over the summer and fall.
One thing I would add is that we in the academic community really need to grapple with how this will change the scholarly communication system. How will all of this be paid for and who will be paying? Do universities or publishers have an obligation to add value to content, through enhanced disciplinary databases, for example? How does this affect the revenue streams of scholarly societies who are an important component of peer review? Open access is a major overhaul of the scholarly communication system. Regardless of how noble our goals may be, we must think about the disruptions it could cause and how we modify those disruptions.
Deposit rates for many IRs have been low, and much of that seems to be because many faculty don't seem to understand the role of IRs serve. How do you see the IR’s role?
We need to figure out what the IRs role is in terms of the larger system of research, teaching, peer review, publication, and dissemination of scholarship. IRs certainly can help make the intellectual output of any given university more accessible, but to be really successful, they need to have a more central role. As they are construed now, you’re right, some faculty see little point in them, it is just one more thing they have to do. And when faculty members are shielded by libraries from the costs of journal subscriptions, they often don’t understand how IRs differ from published journals. I'm not sure I have an answer as to what role IRs will play, but I hope to work it out with my colleagues here and elsewhere.
How will you persuade faculty to participate in Penn’s IR? Do you have a strategy you have in mind?
Any strategy has to work on two levels, I think. First, one has to work with higher administration (provosts, deans) to try to encourage mandates for deposit. Second, and perhaps more important, one has to educate faculty about the issues of scholarly communication so that they can then serve as advocates for open access within their own departments or schools. It has to be a top-down plus a bottom-up strategy in order to be successful. So far we have marketed to both individual faculty and departments at Penn. In many cases, schools have a policy encouraging deposit in the repository. I plan on working with individual faculty as well to use them to encourage their colleagues to deposit.
The other big issue: e-reserves. What’s your initial impression of the recent lawsuit filed against Georgia State?
Well, obviously, I don't know the particulars of the case, just what I've read in the news and on blogs. However, I think it is unfortunate that it has come to this. Libraries obviously need a healthy publishing industry in order to survive and vice-versa. When one or the other party feels it necessary to sue then something in the system is not working.
How do you think the suit will play out?
From what I've seen, I think this is likely to be settled out of court, which, in some ways, is unfortunate. I think libraries have become so concerned about the threat of potential lawsuits that we are in essence giving away many of our rights without question. It would be good to have an answer to these questions one way or the other. I would like to see publishers and libraries come together in a public forum to discuss these issues and try to figure out what is the best way of moving forward. Having said that, I would guess that whatever settlement comes out of this case, it will likely look much like what came out of Cornell a few years ago.
In the short-term has the suit had any effect on how Penn handles it electronic content? Any long-term meaning you see in the suit?
We’re actively reviewing our policies on e-reserves now and obviously are keeping the GSU suit in mind. It is hard to say how this will affect Penn long term. Obviously, if you are looking at a spectrum of never paying royalties vs. always paying royalties we need to fall somewhere in between. Regardless of what comes out of this, it is essential that we preserve fair use and try to advocate for positions that embrace it.
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| Joint Problem: San Jose Considers Internet Filters; SJSU Objects to Filtering Student Web Access
Navigating between an 11-year-old city policy supporting unfiltered Internet access at city libraries and a Council member who wants to require filtering, the San Jose City Council will vote June 17 to consider a new filtering mandate, even though a library report was skeptical about the filter’s effectiveness, and the joint-use library’s university partner opposes the proposed change.
Library director Jane Light called the issue at heart relatively minor, citing just 12 arrests for computer-related sex crimes out of 2.1 million library computer sessions in the 2006-2007 budget year, the Mercury News reported. San Jose State University (SJSU) president Don Kassing said in a letter, however, that filtering violated “the spirit of our joint operating agreement by restricting intellectual freedom.” A library memo further stated that “it would not be acceptable to the university to apply this proposed policy to university students or personnel. Implementation of the software filter would have to be carried out in a way that library cardholders whose record shows a patron status of University would have unfiltered access at login.”
According to the Mercury News, Councilman Pete Constant’s proposed filtering policy would require filters on all computers. In terms of categories blocked, it would track the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) but, as with a small number of libraries, it would not allow adults to turn the filter off, but instead would allow for unblocking sites on a case by case basis. City Attorney Rick Doyle, however, recommended against Constant’s proposal, saying that unblocking sites on request might still leave the city vulnerable to lawsuits. (A federal lawsuit in Washington State will address, among other things, whether unblocking sites on a case-by-case basis is constitutional.)
Librarians, meanwhile, have offered another reason to oppose the policy: the filtering software is ineffective. A recent library report noted that testing—conducted by Sarah Houghton-Jan, Digital Futures senior librarian–confirmed earlier published results, concluding that 15-20 percent of keyword searches would be over-blocked or under-blocked, although keyword searching is not necessarily the choice for users. “Our testing did reveal new information about the ability of content software to handle content not accessed through keyword searches or direct URL entry,” the report noted. “All the software we tested was ineffective in filtering and blocking other, newer types of Internet uses, specifically, image search engine results, RSS feeds, and email attachments.” Constant, meanwhile, disagreed with the results, and said he’d present a public demonstration to show filters work well.
Implementation could impose a variety of costs. Library staff, with the assistance of the city’s IT Department and SJSU library personnel, evaluated four options: the least costly option would involve no filtering software but would require $60,000 for the purchase of privacy screens. The most costly, filtering all library computers at all times, as requested by Constant, would mean $424,000 in first-year costs, including hardware, software, and staffing for implementation and operations, plus ongoing annual costs of $278,000 for software licenses and staffing.
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| SPARC Launches “Change” Series with Article on Libraries’ OA Funding
A number of academic libraries are putting their money behind their open access beliefs, notes the first article in a new SPARC series highlighting change on campus. The article, published in this month’s SPARC newsletter highlights three modest but innovative programs to pay for author’s open access charges at the University of California, Berkeley; the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill; and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “As a library community, if we really wanted to change behavior of faculty about where they published,” notes Beth Weil, head of the bioscience and natural resources library at UC Berkeley and champion of the school’s Research Impact Initiative, “we needed to put our money where our mouth was—not only talking about open access, but helping them do it.”
UC Berkeley’s Research Impact Initiative, a pilot program co-sponsored by the university librarian and the vice chancellor for research, launched in January of this year. Faculty who wish to publish in open access journals can apply for up to $3to cover costs.The pilot stage of the program will last 18 months—or until the initial $125,000 allocated to the fund runs out, with the goal of making the fund permanent. In addition to UC Berkeley, at least two other U.S. universities have established such open access support, the article notes: the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill has launched a modest $10,000 fund, offering awards of up to $1000 per article, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has put forth $50,000 from the library’s gift fund.
Berkeley university librarian Tom Leonard acknowledged the program is experimental. “Nobody has an explanation of how this will work permanently,” he concedes. “That is the challenge.” Nevertheless, the program is an important step in building momentum, Weil explained, and help “change the behavior of faculty to embrace Open Access and start to write it the fees into their grant processes.”
The full article is available here . In addition, SPARC officials said members with innovative campus programs they wish to have highlighted should contact Jennifer McLennan.
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Best Sellers in African History, August 2007–present, as compiled by YBP Library Services
(13-digit ISBNs in brackets)
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Slave Ship: A Human History
Rediker, Marcus Bufurd
Viking
2007. ISBN 670018236 [9780670018239]. $27.95
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War in Darfur and the Search for Peace
De Waal, Alex
Harvard University Press
2006. ISBN 0674023676 [9780674023673]. $24.95
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Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Did the TRC Deliver?
Chapman, Audrey R.
University of Pennsylvania Press
2008. ISBN 0812240596 [9780812240597]. $69.95
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Slavery and the Birth of an African City: Lagos, 1760-1900
Mann, Kristin
Indiana University Press
2007. ISBN 0253348846 [9780253348845]. $55.00
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Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa
Meredith, Martin
Public Affairs
2007. ISBN 1586484737 [9781586484736]. $35.00
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Archaeology of Atlantic Africa and the African Diaspora
Akinwumi, Ogundiran
Indiana University Press
2007. ISBN 0253349192 [9780253349194]. $59.95
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Power in Colonial Africa: Conflict and Discourse in Lesotho, 1870-1960
Eldredge, Elizabeth
University of Wisconsin Press
2007. ISBN 0299223701 [9780299223700] $65.00
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Arts of the City Victorious: Islamic Art and Architecture in Fatimid North Africa and Egypt
Bloom, Jonathan
Yale University Press
2007. ISBN 0300135424 [9780300135428]. $75.00
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Angola: The Weight of History
Chabal, Patrick
Columbia University Press
2008. ISBN 0231700156 [9780231700153]. $50.00
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Making of Modern South Africa: Conquest, Apartheid, Democracy
Worden, Nigel:
Blackwell
2007. ISBN 1405154292 [9781405154291]. $31.95
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Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar
Graeber, David
Indiana University Press
2007. ISBN 0253349109 [9780253349101]. $65.00
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Domesticating the World: African Consumerism and the Genealogies of Globalization
Prestholdt, Jeremy
University of California Press
2008. ISBN 0520254244 [9780520254244]. $60.00
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State vs. Nelson Mandela: The Trial that Changed South Africa
Joffe, Joel
Oneworld Publications
2007. ISBN 1851685006 [9781851685004]. $27.95
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Fearless Fighter: An Autobiography
Chirwa, Vera Mlangazuwa
Zed Books
2007. ISBN 1842779656 [9781842779651] $65.95
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Rebel Between Spirit and Law: Ahmad Zarruq, Sainthood, and Authority in Islam
Kugle, Scott Alan
Indiana University Press
2006. ISBN 0253347114 [9780253347114]. $49.95
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Eternal Ancestors: The Art Of The Central African Reliquary
Alisa Lagamma
Yale University Press
2007. ISBN 0300124090 [9780300124095] $65.00
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Cold War and Decolonization In Guinea, 1946-1958
Schmidt, Elizabeth
Ohio University Press
2007. ISBN 0821417630 [9780821417638]. $55.00
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Rethinking Evolution In The Museum: Envisioning African Origins
Scott, Monique
Routledge
2007. ISBN 0415405394 [9780415405393]. $125.00
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Guardian: The History of South Africa's Extraordinary Anti-Apartheid Newspaper
Zug, James
Michigan State University
2007. ISBN 0870138103 [9780870138102]. $29.95
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In Township Tonight!: South Africa's Black City Music and Theatre
Coplan, David B.
University of Chicago Press
2008. ISBN 0226115666 [9780226115665]. $67.50
Library Journal Academic Newswire
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