Defining authorized users

I'm really interested to see where this ability to tightly define users and who has authorized access to databases goes. There are certainly some pros and cons for such a system.

Tightly defining users: Pros

1. It will very likely be cheaper. If libraries work with database vendors to give only pharmacy students access to pharmacy databases, for instance, then the price of the database might go down. This might be of particular importance to an academically diverse research institution, with lots of specific departments and tens of thousands of users.
2. Most people will not miss the loss of access to other databases. As a library student, I am mostly interested in the library and information science databases and some social science databases. Pharmacy students are mostly interested in pharmacy databases. I would not lose too much sleep over my loss of access to the pharmacy school databases, and the pharmacy student would probably be okay with losing access to the library science databases.
   

Tightly defining users: Cons

1. This really goes against libraries' commitment to creating access for users. Libraries have been moving to an access rather than ownership model for decades, now. (It is debatable whether or not this is a good idea, but moving to access certainly seems to be the recent and foreseeable trend.) Strictly defining authorized users go against a core mission of the library by limiting access. (Although, see Pros #2.)
2. There might be a handful of people who would lose access to databases that are critical to their research, simply because their credentials put them in the "wrong" department. For instance, a history of science student who studies the history of pharmacies in the United States, would be put at a serious disadvantage if he did not receive access to pharmacy materials. Tightly defining users might put some students and researchers at a serious disadvantage.
3. Limiting users to certain databases is moving against a very strong trend towards interdisciplinarity in academia. More and more often, university researchers are working across disciplines to advance research on specific problems (e.g., public health, crisis management, global warming, etc.). Limiting access to databases because you are in the "wrong" department could stifle interdisciplinary research. An new example of an institute that would pose a more extreme problem is the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, which is both interdisciplinary and a public-private partnership. (Read: some of it could be defined as commercial activity.) How would such a varied institute fit in as an "authorized user"? Sounds problematic to me.
4. This one is the kicker: database vendors are not idiots. They have a bottom line to defend. My gut feeling is that the cost of a database would actually not be that much cheaper if you tightly defined authorized users. The databases are the same and the amount of use is still going to be more or less the same for subject-specific databases. Any cost-savings would surely be modest at best, even if a database goes from being accessible to 100% of the university population to being accessible to 1%. Any librarian that thinks that there would somehow be a 99% discount is totally delusional. It seems like libraries could be giving up broad access (again, related to libraries' missions) for what is probably going to be a meager discount. Database vendors will not likely give up nice profits to cut libraries deals based on authorized access.
   

My cons list is a bit longer than my pros. But I think that there is room to experiment with this. This might be suited to certain institutions more so than others. (For instance, it might not be worth it to implement such a system at a small liberal arts or community college.) And it might also depend on the exact implementation of such a system. Would users themselves be able to define what they might like access to? Maybe each user could have default databases assigned by status type, but also be able to choose something like 3 databases outside of their default group. For instance, that history of science student could get all of the history databases plus choose 3 relevant pharmacy databases. That seems like an interesting alternative that would add flexibility while still limiting authorized use. I'm sure the technology for such an implementation already exists or could in the next few years. The problem would come in negotiating the license to reflect such flexibility. Sigh, it never ends!

Very tangentially related comic strip

"Shibboleet"
http://xkcd.com/806/

Something that I just can't stop thinking about: Value and cost

I keep thinking about the value of information. Value is important for information because it often determines cost. And as we all know, costs for licensed databases are extremely high. How did they get to be that way? How does a journal article go from something that someone essentially gives away to being in a database that costs thousands of dollars? Authors of journal articles generally hand over their material and copyrights to the journal publishers. The publishers then repackage the material into journals, both print and online. Those journals are then put into databases. So a question that I have is if this is the general process for scholarly article publication, then why are some databases so much more expensive than others?

For instance, many chemistry and physical science journals are notoriously expensive. What is so special about these journals, and the databases in which they are distributed? Now, I understand that publishers can make some claims that they add value to the journals. Yes, they might lay out the article and perform some copyediting (maybe). But what is so special about chemistry databases, over say nursing or library science databases (which are generally much cheaper)? Could journal publishers/database providers really be adding that much value to chemistry journals but not to nursing journals? It's really hard to believe.

I also keep pondering the notions of excludability and rivalry. Usually information goods often exhibit characteristics of non-excludability (that is, you don't exclude others from using the good) and non-rivalry (that is, you can share the good and it doesn't get used up). Licensed databases really push information goods into the realm of excludability: if you don't pay for this information, you can't have access to it. The information generally will not lose value if more people know it (although, that really depends on the situation, and would not be applicable to trade secrets for instance.) So we can still share this information (i.e., scholarly journals) without all the knowledge being used up, but now we are strictly delimiting who has access to that knowledge. (This is starting to remind me a lot about that Open Access presentation I did last year...)

All in all, these thoughts bring me back to this idea of value and cost. Information can be free and easily shared. So if that is the case, why are these databases so expensive?

Georgia State Update

There are some very recent udpates to the Georgia State case. I suggest that you head on over to Scholarly Communications @ Duke's Going forward with Georgia State lawsuit and LibraryLaw Blog's Who infringed at Georgia State? for more information.

There was a recent ruling on summary judgments for the Georgia State case. An important part of the ruling is that the court did not find Georgia State guilty of direct and vicarious copyright infringement, but the case will continue based on concerns of contributory infringement. Discarding the direct and vicarious copyright concerns is good news for Georgia State. Overall, this recent ruling is more favorable to Georgia State than the plaintiffs. The judge presiding over the case has included discussions of the economics that influence providing resources for students. Also, the judge indicated the plaintiffs have a narrow window for proving infringement. Finally, the judge seemed to look favorably on the fact that Georgia State has since changed its copyright policy that brings it more in line with what other universities do. (See the Duke blog for more info on the details.)

LibraryLaw blog makes an interesting point about indirect infringement: if the university (or here, the individual defendants) are not the direct infringers, then who are? Librarians who did the scanning? The faculty that requested the individual scans? Or the many students who would have downloaded the scans? It's an interesting question that has the potential to influence the case. (One of the things that I have learned about the practice of law in the US is that there is often a very pragmatic approach. Judges often seemed concerned about what will actually happen after a court ruling, and they do not just have an ungrounded-from-reality, theoretical approach.) It seems like it would be crazy to go after each individual who had ever been involved in e-reserves, so I suppose the individual plaintiffs had to do.

LibraryLaw blog also points out an interesting tidbit: turns out that the Copyright Clearance Center is paying for 50% of this legal action. Isn't it upsetting that the institutions who pay CCC are now being indirectly sued by them?

Guest lecturers are a fun alternative to regular lecture!

No offense, dear Professor K, but hey, that was really fun! Many thanks to Ms. C, who came to visit our class. I really enjoyed working on those hypothetical scenarios. Even after several weeks of Electronic Resource Management, plus a course in Information Ethics and Policy, a lot of this stuff is still confusing, or at the very least, not obvious.

How do you really apply fair use standards to e-reserve, and other library, situations? Working with the scenarios really made me realize that there isn't an obvious way to answer that question. I think that for 2 out of the 4 scenarios, I thought, "Well, clearly this is what any library would do." And then Ms. C would say, "This is what we did..." and it was the exact opposite of what I though. I tend to think that I am very pro-fair use and have a "use-it-or-lose-it" mentality. But I found that I tended to give a more-risk averse answer.

I learned that there are "riskier" decisions being made out there than I would have thought. This is apparent from our activity, and also from the Georgia State readings. To which I say, Yay! I think that is a good thing. As representatives of institutions with few resources, we need to take advantage of the few benefits that we have coming our way. (Although, you might ignore the low-resources part altogether and just focus on the fact that we should take advantage of a right built into the law.) That's getting back to that use-it-or-lose it idea. So in the future, I can be reassured that there are institutions pushing back on those who would force an overly broad concept of copyright on everyone else.