Rick Anderson
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The Difference between Copyright Infringement and Plagiarism—and Why It Matters | Peer to Peer Review
Reading a recent article in the Atlantic and the subsequent comments, I was struck again by how much confusion there is among the public about the difference between plagiarism and copyright infringement.
Frenemies 2: The Noisy and the Important | Peer to Peer Review
In a recent column I discussed some of the complexities that we have to deal with when trying to figure out which tasks and processes should be performed as perfectly as possible and which ones can be done to the point of "good enough" and then left behind for more important ones.
How Sacred Are Our Patrons' Privacy Rights? Answer Carefully | Peer to Peer Review
My last column addressed some of the tensions that underlie the idea of "not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good" in library leadership, and at the end I promised that my next would deal in a similar way with trying to balance the occasional tension between problems that are truly important and those that are merely "noisy." However, an issue has come up in the meantime that is more timely and urgent, so I'm putting off the "noisy vs. important" column until next time. This month I want to address the issue of patron privacy in the context of the recent revelations about privacy incursions in the latest version of Adobe Digital Editions.
Frenemies: The Perfect and the Good | Peer to Peer Review
We've all heard—and many of us have probably invoked ourselves—the admonition "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." It's a concept that has kind of a fraught history in library discourse, because it embodies a tension that exists between two conflicting aspects of library culture: on the one hand, we place a lot of value on accuracy, completeness, and quality in the work that we do; on the other hand, we are painfully aware of the limited resources we have to work with.
Asserting Rights We Don't Have: Libraries and "Permission To Publish" | Peer to Peer Review
In late June, a minor brouhaha erupted when the library at the University of Arkansas suspended reporters from the Washington Free Beacon, an online newspaper, from using its special collections. The reason given by library administrators was that on multiple occasions the newspaper's reporters had published content from those collections without asking permission, as library policy requires. Much has been made in the right-wing press about the politics supposedly surrounding this conflict. I want to focus on a different issue: the practice of making patrons request library permission before republishing content drawn from documents in our special collections.
Being Essential Is Not Enough, Part 2 | Peer to Peer Review
In my last column, I discussed the importance of aligning library strategies and programs to institutional priorities, and I promised, in this next column, to share ideas on how to do that and some examples of libraries that seem to me to be doing it particularly well.
Being Essential Is Not Enough, Part One | Peer to Peer Review
Is there any applause line in our profession more tried and true than the assertion that "libraries are essential?" The problem with such statements is not that they're wrong. It is that they pose a danger: they all threaten to leave us complacent about our future. What will determine our future is not whether we and our services are essential in fact, but whether we are seen by our stakeholders as more essential than the other essential programs and projects that are competing for the same resources.
The Battle over Library Spaces. Pt. 2: Being a Host with the Most | Peer to Peer Review
In my last column, I talked about some general principles that academic library administrators should bear in mind when faced with requests from other entities on campus to occupy space in the library (either temporarily or permanently). Those principles were: first, remember that the library does not belong to you; second, say "yes" or "no" based on strategy, rather than on a knee-jerk defensive reaction; third, remember that cooperation creates political capital. With this column I would like to share some of what we've learned in my library about building and maintaining happy and mutually beneficial relationships with those non-library entities that do find their way into the library building.
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