News Report #5

“Revised Google Books Settlement Tackles Foreign Titles, Orphans”

Gordon Flagg, American Libraries Online

November 18, 2009 http://www.ala.org/ala/alonline/currentnews/newsarchive/2009/november2009/revisedgoogle111809.cfm?persistent=&expy_dt=

On November 13, Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers filed a revised version of their proposed settlement that had been reached in October of last year. The revised settlement limits the Google Book Search project to works registered with the U.S. Copyright Office or published in the United Kingdom, Australia, or Canada, and addresses the treatment of orphan works, or works where a copyright holder cannot be located. The new proposal also permits rights holders to let their works be distributed at no cost. However, the new settlement seems to have failed to address the antitrust and privacy concerns that drew the largest criticism in the first place, and the concerns of writers and writer’s organizations, who fear that the Google Books program will interfere with author-publisher contractual relationships.

Every time I see an article about the Google Books settlement, the situation has grown more complicated. Looking at the timetable for when the final hearing will take place, I start to glaze over a little. I realize all of these changes are policy, but it’s hard now to visualize the ramifications of an amended agreement that “permits Google to increase the number of terminals that can be used at public libraries to access the database of books”. It’s weird because I forget very quickly that this is a settlement of lawsuits filed against Google for the project, but at the same time I have no clear idea of where the settlement stands in relation to the scope of policy that allows Google to move forward on the Book Search project. I’m not sure what happened between the beginning of the semester when I wrote on the subject, and now. However, I feel like Google has a very profitable plan in mind to keep fighting for it.

News Report #4

“Hawaiian Librarians Aid in Tsunami Recovery in American Samoa”

Gordon Flagg, American Libraries Online

November 11, 2009 http://www.ala.org/ala/alonline/currentnews/newsarchive/2009/november2009/amsamoarecovery111109.cfm?persistent=&expy_dt=

In the aftermath of the tsunami that struck American Samoa, Samoa, and Tonga on September 29, two librarians traveled from Hawai`i to Pago Pago to lead salvage efforts of vital records and other documents from the country’s demolished libraries. Lynn Davis and Jane Barnwell, head of preservation at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and director of Pacific Resources for Education and Learning in Honolulu, respectively, went to American Samoa from October 14-29 as part of a document recovery taskforce sponsored by the Western States and Territories Preservation Assistance Service (WESTPAS). Ms. Davis had previously conducted disaster-preparedness workshops for government agencies in Pago Pago a year earlier, which involved the development of disaster plans and aided in the recovery and loss-prevention of essential documents. The tsunami destroyed four school libraries and killed over 190 people in the three countries.

News about the tsunami in American Samoa was very scary. I have family in Western Samoa and the tsunami caused so much destruction. However, I’ve never thought about the possibility of the destruction of government and historical documents through a natural disaster. The article notes the long recovery time it takes for such documents to go through conservation treatment, citing the flash flood at the University of Hawaii in 2004 that destroyed a large portion of the library’s rape map and government documents collection. Five years later, thousands of documents still wait to be treated. I am glad this article has come to my attention. I’ve never thought about it until now, but to lose a piece of the past, especially when it comes to the comparatively relegated past from Polynesia, makes me glad for the work of these librarians and makes me more aware of the importance of libraries and conservation.

Reading Report #5

"Information Navigation 101"

Andrea L. Foster, Chronicle of Higher Education

3/9/2007, Vol. 53 Issue 27

This article discusses the disconnect between the way college students use technology to text, manipulate music files, and customize their MySpace pages, and the way they perform research. It seems that college students are sadly inept at performing academic research. Forster argues that the sheer volume of information is giving student’s an overload, and that they are unable to distinguish between scholarly sources and what is spit out to them by Google. In response, many universities are implementing “information literacy” programs and adding it to the required graduation curricula as accrediting agencies look to them as a new measure of an institution’s performance. These programs are being spearheaded by librarians and aim to teach students how to locate and evaluate data on the Internet. The article then discusses the history of the term and its development in the academic community. Foster also presents an alternate view that some librarians share – that information seeking is going to become easier over time, citing the almost obsolete Boolean qualifiers as an example. She goes on to describe some of the standardized tests that have been developed in order to measure students’ information literacy skills, and their relative effectiveness.

I think that Andrea Foster and other strong supporters of the information literacy movement don’t give students enough credit. I have previously thought that most students are in fact information literate, and any problems with their research practices stem from laziness rather than ignorance. If indeed that be the case, then I believe that providing greater motivation for the student to learn how to access scholarly information would be more beneficial. Perhaps my own case is singular, but when I given a research paper assignment by a professor that told me to find information through the library catalogue, I quickly learned how to navigate the catalogue and online databases. Like most technology, all it takes is the time to play around with the software. However, I do not think that the growing information literacy programs are a bad thing – they can only be beneficial. I am also intrigued by these standardized tests that Foster describes, in particular the EST one. I believe myself to be decently information literate, in whatever sense of the word one chooses, and I would be interested in the opportunity to test myself.