Category Archives: Technology, the Internet, and Telecommunications

Georgia Librarian Heads to Washington to Support State Libraries

Posted on May 1, 2012 by | Leave a comment

State Librarian Lamar Veatch Makes 15th Annual Trip to D.C. for National Library Legislative Day

Federal and state budget cuts to library programs has not stopped Georgia State Librarian Lamar Veatch, 63, from traveling to Washington, D.C. to meet with congressional lawmakers to save funding needed for our nation’s libraries and library services.

This year marked Veatch’s 15th annual trip to the nation’s capital to participate in National Library Legislative Day, the American Library Association-sponsored event where more than 3Veatch with Legislative Assistant50 librarians and library supporters met with members of Congress from April 23–24, 2012, to discuss key library issues.

While in Washington, Veatch met with representatives from Congress, including the offices of Reps. Austin Scott, John Lewis, Rob Woodall, as well as Sens. Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson. Veatch discussed Appropriations funding in those meetings, advocating specifically for funds supporting literacy, such as the Library Services and Technology Act.

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Posted in Events, Grassrooots & Advocacy, Technology, the Internet, and Telecommunications, Washington Office News

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ALA Supports Amash Amendment to CISPA Bill

Posted on April 30, 2012 by | Leave a comment

During ‘Cybersecurity Week’ in the U.S. House of Representatives last week, the American Library Association announced its support for the “Amash/Labrador/Nadler/Paul/Polis Amendment” to H.R. 3523, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 (CISPA). The ALA asked Congress to amend H.R. 3523 and move it toward a proper balance between our nation’s privacy laws and the need to fight cybersecurity threats. CISPA trumps all current privacy laws including the forty-eight state library record confidentiality laws as well as the Federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Wiretap Act, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The Amash amendment sought to protect library patron records and other personally identifiable information from wholesale sharing among private companies, ISP providers and the government. The amendment passed 415 to 0, although the bill did not include other proposed amendments that the ALA supported. The Amash Amendment was the type of amendment essential to address the serious problems in H.R. 3523 and the library community remained disappointed in the outcome of the final bill.

ALA President Molly Raphael joined many organizations, including the American Society of News Editors, American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Media and Democracy, in opposition to the cybersecurity bill by signing a coalition letter. ALA had urged Congress to accept the Amash Amendment and to seek other improvements to the bill.

“Cybersecurity is a serious, legitimate concern for our nation as well as for libraries, library patrons and the public at large. But CISPA would establish a whole new system for our nation’s privacy laws and policies by permitting the sharing of extraordinary amounts of personal information and electronic communications with little oversight and overly broad definitions of cybersecurity,” Raphael said. “The House of Representatives did not heed the ALA’s call and the future of CISPA lies in the Senate’s and the White House’s hands. We hope that the Senate will do better,” she added.

Jazzy Wright
Press Officer, ALA, Washington Office

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Intellectual Freedom, and Privacy, Grassrooots & Advocacy, OGR, Public Libraries, School Libraries, Technology, the Internet, and Telecommunications, Washington Office News

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Introducing “Community Practices in the Fair Use of Video in Libraries”

Posted on April 27, 2012 by | 1 Comment

Librarians at schools, colleges and universities play an important role helping their users understand and apply copyright law. This makes sense because educational institutions are sites for learning, and the advancement of learning is the purpose of the copyright. Congress recognized the unique status of non-profit educational institutions, libraries and archives under copyright law and developed allowances – copyright exceptions – especially for them. But some of these exceptions are notoriously complicated and open to varying interpretations. Even keeping track of this legal patch work can be difficult.

In response, a group of media librarians from the ALA Video Round Table approached me with a project aiming to make sense of these exceptions and come to some consensus on how media librarians should interpret the law. Piggy backing off of the “best practices” work of the American University’s Washington School of Law and the Center for Social Media, we wanted to find out what media librarians were actually doing with the exceptions. Instead of asking media librarians how they interpret the copyright law and statutory exceptions, we asked media librarians to explain what kinds of uses of media they believed were reasonable uses necessary to fulfill the mission of their educational institution. We asked, “Do you think these uses are fair?” Then we asked “Are you actually doing these things?”

We discovered areas of commonality among the responses that we identified as community practices, lawful fair use activities. Of course, there are caveats and issues to be considered which we also detail in the document. We hope it is helpful to librarians—by exercising fair use in these ways, librarian demonstrate their understanding of fair use and help shape the meaning of the law. Our hope is that these fair use community practices better able media librarians to meet the mission of their educational institutions – advancement of knowledge, learning and new discovery. We welcome feedback.

Carrie Russell

Video Fair Use Work Group

Judy Thomas, Chair (University of Virginia)

Claire Stewart (Northwestern University)

Steve Brantley (University of Illinois at Chicago)

Carlton Jackson (University of Maryland)

Nell Chenault (Virginia Commonwealth  University)

Justin Wadland (University of Washington)

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Posted in Copyright, Public Libraries, School Libraries, Technology, the Internet, and Telecommunications, Washington Office News

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Cybersecurity bill votes start in three days – Keep the pressure on

Posted on April 20, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Library and privacy supporters: Keep pressuring House members to vote NO on H.R. 3523 and other bills that will restructure our nation’s privacy policies and laws. ALA remains staunchly opposed to this bill.  Petition your elected representatives with the ALA Legislative Action Center.

The major problems remain:

  • CISPA would permit private “entities” (ISPS, utilities, etc.) to share huge amounts of information about our electronic communications with the government without a legal review or warrant;
  • CISPA permits these private providers to provide dumps of information without necessarily anonymizing or aggregating the information to protect personal privacy;
  • CISPA would authorize the National Security Agency (NSA) – an intelligence and military agency – to receive all of the Internet records to be used, not just for cybersecurity, but for other “lawful purposes” as well;
  • CISPA trumps all other privacy laws – state, local and national – if the sharing of the information is deemed “cybersecurity.”

The House of Representatives is still scheduled to address a number of troubling cyber bills during Cybersecurity Week, the week of April 23. One of the most troubling bills remains H.R. 3523, The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011, CISPA.

At this writing, the text of CISPA is still in flux and behind-the-scene discussions continue. Additional amendments must be filed next Tuesday, April 24, 2012. While things are in great flux, it could be that H.R. 3523 will hit the House floor next Wednesday or Thursday, April 25-26, 2012. This is the key time to keep your calls going into House offices.

Other privacy advocates such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Democracy and Technology, Free Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Constitution Project also remain in opposition to H.R. 3523. As the ACLU noted in their blog: “The changes are so underwhelming that even the Obama Administration issued a statement [April 18] that their privacy concerns persist.”

The mix of bills in the House emphasizes sharing vast amounts of electronic communications between private service providers (and other “utilities”) and the government. These bills would give immunity and permission to share the traffic on their systems if the information is deemed for “cybersecurity” purposes.

Tell Congress: No Cyber Spying! No CISPA! 

The one improvement we can report is that the specific term “intellectual property” was removed, although there is still too much ambiguity elsewhere in the bill to know for certain that copyright issues couldn’t be swept in with all of the other information sharing activities and purposes.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Intellectual Freedom, and Privacy, Grassrooots & Advocacy, OGR, Technology, the Internet, and Telecommunications

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OverDrive Digs into Data

Posted on April 18, 2012 by | Leave a comment

As forecasted, OverDrive has begun analyzing the masses of data collected across its network of public and school libraries. The first report – made available to ALA, UK libraries, and publishers participating with OverDrive – includes information about eBook and digital audiobook title circulation, book demand and holds, as well as web traffic and general demographics.

For instance, in March 2012, nearly 60 percent of readers browsed – defined as exploring the catalog without a targeted search term – public library ebook collections to discover new content. Browsers viewed more than 636 million title cover images. Serendipity and discovery continue in the e-world!

“OverDrive’s valuable eBook data confirms the benefits that books and authors in library channels enjoy in terms of exposure and discovery to a highly desirable audience,” said Alexis Wiles, OverDrive Manager of Publisher Relations. “We’ve seen the popularity of both frontlist and midlist titles soar in the library, building a loyal following not only through the volume of impressions, but also in conjunction with targeted publisher campaigns and the various social and readers’ advisory features included in the library websites.”

During March 2012, 5 million visitors viewed 146 million pages over 12.6 million visits to OverDrive-hosted digital catalogs.

The OverDrive data initiatives are being developed in consultation with an advisory panel that includes librarians and marketing professionals from libraries in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. The program will not disclose any personally identifying user information.

I’m very glad OverDrive has taken on the big job of harnessing this data to help participating libraries and publishers better understand what’s happening now so we can plan for tomorrow. The more I know, the more I want to know! ALA looks forward to working with and learning more from OverDrive data and seeing trends over time.

If knowledge is power, we’re building some muscle from this effort, as well as work underway by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

Larra Clark
Associate Director, Program on America’s Libraries for the 21st Century

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Posted in Public Libraries, Technology, the Internet, and Telecommunications

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