Reflection by Amanda

Reflection on TPM and DRM

In the article “Thinking Through a Strategy for Digital Rights Management” by Joseph Espostito, he explains several options that publishers can take with regards to DRM. They can fight every little infringement, which he calls the legal enforcement strategy. They can learn to abide by some infringement and target only big infringers which he calls the editorial strategy. They can lobby for their company to be seen as a civic structure and inquire and learn from their customers. He calls this the NPR strategy. Lastly he says that publishers can rethink their very product and the way they market. He calls this the innovation strategy.

                I think that most companies will follow the editorial strategy. I believe that most companies don’t have the time to track down every offender. However, they will go after people who they see as blatantly stealing.  I also agree with Joseph Espostito that most established companies don’t believe they can redo their company’s model or are too frighten too. Joseph Espostito says, “Few established publishers are in a position today to work with #4 (innovation), but start-up s may indeed begin there.” I can only hope that new publishers/companies will see new possibilities and will go with the innovation strategy.  

"Big Deal" Deconstruction--A Summary

In 2012 Mississippi State University's library system was faced with a $500,000.00 budget gap and only a short amount of time to decide how to proceed.

In the past years MSU encountered some "holes" in their metrics and analytic estimates--so it was more difficult to analyze user statistics than it should have been. In previous years MSU had filled these holes through estimation increases. However daunting, MSU librarians did find a way to estimate user statistics for every year by adding a 6% price increase to 2010 statistics in order to determine 2011 statistics (this seemed quite brilliant to me). The year this analysis was performed, MSU libraries did not cancel any "Big Deal" acquisitions.
In 2012, with the budget cut looming, it was impossible to keep every "Big Deal" acquisition in the library system.

To make a long story short, since that is the point of a summary, MSU presented all the statistical findings to the Library Administrative Council. The decision was made to cancel "Big Deal" packages from Wiley-Blackwell and Springer. Once these packages were cancelled, the library then purchased individual subscriptions to the 200 journals with the best user statistics/most downloads/etc.

This decision saved the library about $400,000.00 for the year, but many of the losses to the library's electronic collection were significant.

The most important part of this article provides insight about the impact of cutting the "Big Deal" packages based on user statistics, instead of using a broader scope for examining the different journals and resources included in each deal.

As a result of cancelling the subscriptions for these packages, "Current access to over 2,800 journals was lost. Many disciplines, especially in the Social Sciences, lost all of their titles from Springer and Wiley-Blackwell. Some small departments on campus that have fewer students and faculty

than large departments have been most affected. The library did retain perpetual access to some paid subscriptions and consortia titles, but only for older materials. Old perpetual access rights do not help with access to the current material that is typically the material in high demand by the students and faculty."

 

 Librarians at MSU would like to involve faculty, students, and other involved parties next time they have to make such a large decision about cancelling resources. 

The user statistics certainly tell an important part of the story, but they do not tell the whole story. 

I hope we can discuss in class how other students in LIS 755 would measure the necessity of different online resources!

-E. Anthony

Breaking Up and Moving On: Summaries of Emery/Stone’s Chapter 7 & 8

On Breaking Up:

As a follow-up to their chapter on annual reviews, Jill Emery and Graham Stone offer advice to librarians who have decided that they need to cancel some of their electronic resources. Cancellation cannot be a decision that you make on your own (nor can you keep it to yourself). It is important to communicate with stakeholders and help them understand the repercussions of the change. For example, I would imagine that sometimes when budgets are cut, the budget “cutters” may not always realize what is being lost. Meeting with the faculty to help them understand what needs to be done may help them prioritize and puts the onus of a difficult decision on them. Stakeholders may also shed some light on reasons for underperformance of a resource.

Even if you are ending a relationship with a vendor, you shouldn’t burn any bridges. After all, you never know if that representative you just yelled at for raising your subscription rates will decide to move and become your new representative with a different vendor. Or, your funding may return in a couple of years, and you might want to take them back--who wants to go back with their tail between their legs. Instead, it’s best to approach cancellation with the attitude that feedback helps the market. Regardless of your reason for leaving, letting the vendor know why might help them improve their service or someday help you again.

Of course, your patrons will also need to be notified--the more notice, the better. Change is hard for folks and the transition will be smoother if they know it’s coming or if you can give them some time to get used to the replacement. It’s a good too to keep notes on your reasons and plans for canceling for your staff. You wouldn’t want someone to accidentally re-order something that you just tried to cancel. Also, down the road, that stinker of a cancelled database might be on the table to be purchased again and we wouldn’t want to repeat a mistake just because you didn’t communicate the problem with them.

Moving On:

Emery and Stone suggest that the state of e-books is in the same mess that e-journals were in about 10 years ago. Here’s hoping that vendors, librarians and researchers figure out what they want and how to use them soon. There’s some disagreement on the best format for e-books in libraries, so like a lot of things, they feel like a risky place in which to sink a lot of money. Traditional publishing may look different in the future and scholarly content delivery may come from sources we wouldn’t expect. The trick is to be on the cutting edge, but not the bleeding edge.

In my opinion, the most exciting prospect for electronic resource management is the refinement of the workflows in ILS and ERM Systems. Like Ken Chad says, ILSs are “ripe for disruption.” As electronic resources have taken their place in libraries and we’ve need ERMS to keep track of them, it only makes sense that the ERMS and the ILS start working together. Why not look for a consolidation that saves time and keeps us from duplicating information? New systems will help us work smarter, not harder. To get better, we’ll need to keep looking at TERMS and understand the frustrations, needs and wants of the information professionals on the front lines.

Summarizing Shapiro's Database Cancellation: the How's and Whys

On the surface, cancelling a database may seem like a fairly straight forward process. However, Shapiro believes that cancelling a database “is one of the most difficult tasks performed by a librarian.”  Most librarians put a lot of time and effort into selecting the best resources for their patrons. It can be disappointing and librarians may be chagrined when they are forced to eliminate carefully selected electronic resources. It is an unfortunate reality, libraries must make cuts when there are budget shortfalls and declining use of materials. 

In order to make an informed decision, librarians must carefully study usage stats; consult with faculty, students, as well as vendors. There is also a huge bureaucracy to contend with when deciding which databases to cancel. 

As an alternative to canceling database subscriptions, Shapiro argues that libraries could negotiate with vendors to “downgrade databases subscriptions.” He suggests removing high end products with fancy features to more basic packages. This would be a win-win for libraries because it will reduce cost and still provide resources to library patrons. Another option available to libraries would be to “change licensing terms for a given product where possible from unlimited access to single user access.” These are great ideas that I was completely unaware of until now. I hope that libraries are using these and other creative ideas to serve their patrons even in the midst of financial challenges.

DRM Reflectifesto

Joseph Esposito began his article with a narrative of three choices; $14 print, $12 electronic, and free electronic. His conclusion was that the user would always choose $0.

Esposito's little narrative incorrectly assumes they both come from reliable sources therefore malware free - he must never have downloaded from Adobe or C-Net. Esposito uses this to argue for the necessity of DRM.

The reality is that free comes at a great cost. You can't or don't get free from reliable sources, that is true with an eBook or print book. Any reliable source would be shut down, DRM or not, for selling a product they owned no rights to.

Esposito has it backwards. DRM is not the effect of the free, pirated eBook, but the other way around. It is because the DRM eBook limits certain functionality that users are willing to take great risk for a free copy without those limitations.

Ironically, DRM which producers assume protects their content, devalues it. Users don't go for the pirated version because it is free, but rather because it has more value than the DRMed version. A user risks much more going to Pirate Bay downloading an eBook for a summer read, than paying Amazon $2.99 for a DRMed version. They make that risk not for the saved $2.99 but to "own" the eBook.

Esposito's assumption is that DRM is warranted because users will always choose $0 over some higher amount. That assumption is tested on an ongoing basis by Humble Bundle. All of their content is DRM free with usera setting the price. The assumption is the content may not have the same value for all users, some will read all the books whereas others just one.

A recent Humble Bundle included 10 books If you met the average purchase of $10.91. Interestingly Windows users tended to pay about $10 whereas Linux and Mac users closer to $12.50.  The top 10 contributors ranged from $100-$250. The most popular eBooks Little Brother by Cory Doctorow and Just a Geek by Wil Wheaton could have been purchased along with 3 others for $.01. If Exposito's assumption were to hold the average should have been far lower than $10.91. 

Recap of DRM and TPM

In Wednesday’s class, Professor Kristen Eschenfelder spoke with us at length about Digital Rights Management. From our readings and her lecture, there are a lot of different kinds of tools, or Technological Protection Measures (TPMs), used to control digital rights. These can range from digital watermarks to IP address authentication, to clickthrough license agreements to the use of special software decoders. Professor Eschenfelder describes these measures as either “hard” or “soft” measures. “Soft” measures are vey common and are intended to create friction against unauthorized use, but are not foolproof and can be circumvented with relative ease; an example of this would be a digital watermark. “Hard” measures are less common but create significant challenges for the unauthorized user to overcome. Overcoming a “hard” measure involves relatively sophisticated technology or know-how.

Circumventing Technological Protection Measures can come at a high price! Unauthorized use made by cheating the TPMs is illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), section 1201. Fortunately there are some exemptions to this law; every three years the Library of Congress creates new exemptions to the DMCA Circumvention provision, presumably to protect rights of fair use and make sure that people are not being penalized for acceptable behavior. One important exemption currently in place is the E-book accessibility exemption, which allows people to circumvent TPMs if necessary to make the e-book accessible to the visually-impaired. This is helpful considering some e-book publishers have sought to disable text-to-speech for their books in the past. Another exemption allows media studies faculty and students to circumvent TPMs on DVDs for educational purposes. This allows individuals in the academic context to use clips from DVD films for purposes that would ordinarily have been protected under “fair use” doctrine. This is interesting because, although fair use should always apply to these kinds of copyrighted materials, with the DMCA prohibition against circumventing TPMs, making a copy of a DVD would be illegal, even if the copied material was being used for fair use purposes. This exemption tries to fix that, though by only extending these rights to academics, everyone else is stripped of what arguably are their fair use rights.

DRM and TPMs are controversial because of the limits they place on materials and the friction they create for users. As Professor Eschenfelder stated, however, these tools should not be hated too much because they protect libraries from liability as well.

Analyze This

Cheryl Highsmith is an expert librarian, she is the Coordinator of  Electronic Resources and Serials at Chapman University in Orange, California. In addition, she is the chairperson of the Electronic Resource Committee. Highsmith is responsible for leading an annual review of usage stats. Based on the stats reviewed, the committee makes suggestions on retaining or canceling various e-resources.  

In this article, Ms. Highsmith talks about the importance of drawing on usage statistics to make informed decisions when selecting electronic resources. In order to do that, there are specific terms that librarians should understand so they can properly analyze usage statistics. 

One of the most important terms to understand is Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources (COUNTER). COUNTERS are reports from vendors that quantify the use of electronic content resources in a library. Another important term is Pay Per View (PPV). The way I understand PPV is that it is a tool that only allows authorized users to access electronic materials on a pay to view basis.  The final term is Cost Per Use (CPU). This is a self explanatory term and is very similar to PPV.

There are a few areas that stood out to me as problems that need to be addressed. The first is embargos on full text articles on e-journals. I think it is important for vendors and librarians to work together to gradually eliminate embargos. Lastly, I am concerned when vendors bundle expensive databases and then toss in so called “free” additions. Those free add-ons are tantamount to junk. Usually when something is free, it is not of high quality. Libraries should beware of free an avoid it if at all possible.

Preview of the "Annual Review" (a summary)

Jill Emery and Graham Stone described the reviewing process in chapter 6, “Annual Review,” of Techniques for Electronic Resource Management (2013). The process itself is pretty straightforward and the authors offer several valuable tips. For example, it is a good idea to divide your resources into batches and schedule yourself to review each quarter, making sure that you are allowing time to meet cancellation notices if you need to. Another wise piece of advice is to compare new licenses to the existing contract to be sure that unwanted changes haven’t snuck into the deal.

Since we often have access to usage statistics, this data should also play a big role in the decision-making process for continuation or cancellation. COUNTER-compliant usage data makes it easier to compare usage across vendors, with indicators like cost-per-use or percentage of total e-resources budget. Like they say, you can prove anything with statistics, and it’s nice to see how a vendor fits in among its peers—where it’s apples-to-apples, not apples-to-Volkswagens.

You can check up on vendors to see if they are actually providing compliant data by finding their listing (or lack thereof) on the COUNTER website. Even if they aren’t COUNTER-compliant and you still value their service, you should ensure that they minimally are sending you some kind of usage data in some form. However, besides usage data that comes directly from the vendor, it’s also smart to keep track of trouble, outages and downtime on your own. This could be useful in your decision-making process when searching for loser products, or even getting a refund or lower price on renewal.

Emery and Stone suggest that many vendors are open to re-negotiation once they realize they might be on the chopping block. This came as a surprise to me, especially after learning about the Big Deal packages of databases. If your library subscribes to a Big Deal plan, prices and amounts of content seem to be fixed. I would be surprised if vendors would be willing to allow you to negotiate a smaller package or drop your number of simultaneous users in that context. With Big Deals dominating large percentages of material budgets, the ability to have a bargaining chip on the vendor is definitely appealing—however, wouldn’t it mean that re-negotiation would actually change the deal into a “medium deal”?

Reflection on ERM systems by Amanda Youngs

Reflection on ERM systems

      Reflecting on Wednesday’s class will be a little difficult for me since I and Janetta gave a presentation that day. However, I thought the online video and PowerPoint by Dawn Hale Head of Technical Services at the Sheridan Libraries, had some very interesting information that I hadn’t considered. Previous to ERM systems, librarians at her library organized their information with cabinets for license agreements, Excel spreadsheets, Email folders and sticky notes. Clearly, this is not the most efficient way of organizing information. This is why ERM systems were invented; librarians needed a more effective way of handling information about electronic material. However as we know from the presentation given by myself and Janetta that ERM systems did not cure everything. What I hadn’t considered were the issues with publisher updates for the ERM systems. Publishers/Vendors don’t always have the most accurate data or they don’t publish their metadata on a timely schedule. This is why I think it would be important that someone with a master’s degree in librarianship and knowledge of cataloging be hired by publishers and vendors. Google, now hires librarians to help organize their information, it is time that publishers and vendors do the same. 

You can find the video here http://www.potomactechlibrarians.org/2012meeting