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 | After Hearing, Sweeping Anti-NIH Bill To Be Shelved—for Now
Within hours of last week’s hearing on the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act, a sweeping, publisher-supported bill that would ban public access measures similar to the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH), lawmakers all but ruled out action on the bill in 2008. With Congress set to adjourn on September 26, Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA), who chairs the subcommittee on the Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, which sponsored last week’s hearing, said the bill would be held until at least next year.
In comments after the hearing, however, John Conyers (D-MI), lashed out at the House Appropriations Committee, which passed the public access mandate as part of an omnibus spending bill in 2007. Conyers told CongressDaily that he was frustrated by the Appropriations’ Committee’s refusal to engage repeated questions from the House Judiciary Committee, which Conyers chairs, about the copyright and intellectual property implications associated with the NIH mandate. Conyers fumed that appropriators acted “summarily, unilaterally and probably incorrectly” in enacting the mandate, and suggested the mandate was at the center of a Congressional turf war, saying Appropriations had encroached on his committee’s “sacred turf.”
Notably, however, when asked for a comment on the bill just hours before its introduction last week, a Conyers’ staffer told the LJ Academic Newswire the legislation was likely coming out of Berman’s office, suggesting Conyers’ post-hearing remarks may represent more bluster than any deep commitment to seeing through the bill he introduced last week. Not only did the bill not come out of Berman’s office, Berman declined to publicly support the bill, saying he needed to “learn more about the issues.”
The bill itself, meanwhile, a broadly-written measure, was criticized by copyright experts. “The bill is an odd duck because it would do far more than simply end public access to NIH-funded research,” noted Villanova law professor Michael Carroll on his blog. Carroll said that if passed, the sweeping bill could “impliedly amend” other provisions by which taxpayers procure services—and suggested there was a good reason why Appropriations didn’t consult Conyers before passing the mandate: because “assertions that the policy somehow diminishes copyrights lacks any basis in law.”
The bill’s supporters in the publishing community, meanwhile, all praised the measure. In a release, the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) said the bill would ensure that its members’ ability to derive revenue from their copyrights was not diminished. The rhetoric was far more charged, however, in a release from publisher-supported advocacy group the Copyright Alliance. “The mere fact that a scientist accepts as part of her funding a federal grant should not enable the federal government to commandeer the resulting research paper and treat it as a public domain work,” noted executive director Patrick Ross. “Authors and publishers don’t need the feds playing Rumpelstiltskin by returning after a year to take their children away.”
Open Access blogger Peter Suber, who has commented extensively on the NIH efforts blasted that rhetoric as flatly false, inaccurate, and dishonest. “First, the NIH policy regulates grantees, not publishers,” he observed. “Second, the policy…doesn’t archive the published versions of the articles, let alone deprive publishers of them or nullify any of the rights in them that authors may have transferred to publishers. When NIH grantees transfer rights to publishers, publishers may hold and exercise those rights in full.”
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IMLS Announces $18.2 Million in Grants
This week the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) awarded national leadership grants to 44 institutions, totaling $18.2 million, including libraries, library schools, museums, and other cultural institutions. National Leadership Grants, the largest grant program sponsored by IMLS supports projects that “advance the ability of museums and libraries to preserve culture, heritage, and knowledge while enhancing learning.”
Among the grants awarded to academic institutions:
- The University of Michigan University Library, Ann Arbor, was awarded $578,955 (matching amount $655,898) to create a copyright review management system (CRMS) to increase the reliability of determining copyright status of books published between 1923 and 1963.
- Florida State University College of Information, Tallahassee, will use $415,673 (matching amount $207,557) to partner with neighboring Chipola College and Tallahassee Community College to identify ways for students with various proficiency levels to develop information literacy skills in both traditional and distance environments.
- The University of Oregon Libraries, Eugene, and other members of the Orbis Cascade Alliance were awarded $38,844 (matching amount $21,094) to continue the planning process for a 31-member archives consortium. Academic libraries in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington are the beneficiaries.
- Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, VA, will use $250,000 (matching amount $123,236) to further develop its LibX tool, currently in use by more than 277 libraries. This technology platform offers developers a way to create and deliver library services and prototype new ones.
The University of Michigan (UM) grant, no doubt is at least partly born out of the library’s collaboration with its Google Book Search effort to scan all of the library’s holdings, but only to make fully available on the web those books in the public domain. Determining public domain status for many books, given the changes in copyright law over the years, is no easy feat, and often runs up against what’s become known as the orphan works problem. With nearly $1.2 million in total funding, UM libraries aims to create a system to “ease some of the doubt” over a book’s copyright status, and help make public domain books available online to the general public.
“Nearly half a million books were published in the United States between 1923 and 1963, and although many of these are likely to be in the public domain, individuals must manually check their copyright status,” the project description notes. “The CRMS will allow users to verify if the copyright status has been determined.
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| LJ Academic Newswire Will Have New Look, Starting Thursday
With Thursday’s edition of the LJ Academic Newswire, you’ll notice a new look and a few changes. We hope the transition to a new template will go off without a hitch—but, c’mon, as academic librarians, researchers, and publishers, you all work with technology and surely know all too well how these things can go! If you experience any issues with delivery of your LJAN, by all means, let us know. Or if you just want to say hello and let us know what you think, please do email LJAN editor Andrew Albanese.
The changes beginning Thursday are the first steps in helping us serve you better, both with better delivery and a more robust platform—including embedded images, expanded content, and eventually, more social networking capabilities, such as comments, etc. Whatever new features may come in 2009, rest assured our cornerstone will remain serving you with great content and breaking news.
It seems hard to believe, but April 2009, will mark the LJ Academic Newswire’s tenth anniversary. We’re no stranger to change: we started out as a paid product, a pioneering text-only edition, mainly available by institutional subscription. Today, LJAN is an HTML newsletter on the web, available via free personal subscriptions. We’re now approaching 1000 editions, thanks to your support and encouragement, and have published over 4000 articles, as well as interviews, people news, and weekly bestseller lists. As the web enables us to expand what we can offer, we’re confident the best is yet to come.
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| Call for Nominations: Library Journal Teaching Award
The Library Journal (LJ) Teaching Award, sponsored by ProQuest, recognizes excellence in educating the next generation of librarians; deadline is September 29, 2008. The annual award, now in its second year, honors the winning LIS teacher with an article in the November 15 issue of LJ, a $5000 prize, and a reception at the 2009 ALA Midwinter Meeting in Denver.
Nominees should illustrate student-centered thinking in all aspects of teaching; have a track record as career builder, and be a mentor; communicate core principles of librarianship, such as intellectual freedom, privacy, and a belief in the value of library service; effectively integrate theory, practice, and research, infusing teaching with real-life librarianship; be forward thinking, keep up with cutting-edge issues in the profession and in teaching, including those dealing with technology and its uses in the library field.
Eligibility: anyone who has taught a course at an ALA-accredited master’s program since September 3, 2007, as full-time faculty or as an adjunct, is eligible. Current students or recent graduates and faculty members are encouraged to nominate candidates. Students must have taken a class from the nominee within the past two years.
Candidates will be evaluated primarily on the basis of the nominating letter (no more than two pages in length or email equivalent), but nominators are welcome to submit also letters of support and supplementary material (examples of coursework, etc.) for the judges to consider.
Please send nominations to:
LJ Teaching Award
Library Journal
360 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10010
or via email to akim@reedbusiness.com.
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Library Journal Academic Newswire
Contributing Editor: Andrew R. Albanese
Phone: 646-746-6852 E-mail: aalbanese@reedbusiness.com
Editor: Francine Fialkoff
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Executive Editor: Rebecca Miller
Phone: 646-746-6725 E-mail: miller@reedbusiness.com
News Editor: Norman Oder
Phone: 646-746-6829 E-mail: noder@reedbusiness.com
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