Access by UK SMEs to journal articles

Access by UK small and medium-sized enterprises to
professional and academic information
Mark Ware Consulting Ltd for the Publishing Research Consortium
http://www.publishingresearch.net/documents/SMEAccessResearchReport.pdf

This is an interesting report as it addresses the problem that led to the creation of SINTO in 1932 - the provision of specialist journal articles to small businesses. The report points out that research journal literature is important to the success of many SMEs. While a majority (71%) of respondents for whom journal access was important reported reasonably good overall access to journals this figure was smaller than for large businesses and academic bodies. A majority (55%) reported that they had recently experienced problems in accessing articles and a payment barrier was the most likely cause. Again this was larger than the figure for large companies (34%) and universities (24%).
The majority of respondents in SMEs obtained journal articles via Pay Per View services. Where they had problems in obtaining articles in this way, the following alternatives were used
Look for an early version of article on web 28%
Check access via in-house library or information service 15%
Check access via colleagues subscription 15%
Approach author directly 11%
Check access via local academic library 7%
Request an ILL from library 7%
Check access via local public library 0%
Did not try any of above 11%

Respondents were also asked if they had used a variety of sources for meeting their general information needs (not just journals). Replies included professional society membership (81%), in-house information services (56%), local academic libraries (51%), ILLs via local libraries (42%) and local public libraries (38%). When asked about monthly frequency of use of different sources the results included professional society membership (10%), in-house information services (15%), local academic libraries (2%), ILLs via local libraries (1%) and local public libraries (1%). (The percentage represents the proportion of total uses).

The report concludes that access by SMEs via local academic libraries is currently negligible. Suggested reasons are lack of interest or resources among librarians, inconsistent or ambiguous publisher licences and the requirement for access to be provided on a walk-in basis.

SINTO has received e-mails from local companies that suggest that cost as a barrier to access to journal articles is a major problem for SMEs in the SINTO area and there is not much that SINTO can do to help. Although some of these journals will be held by local academic libraries, local SMEs cannot get on-line access to articles for a number of reasons.

SMEs are an important part of the local economy, as they were in the 1930s. It is a pity that we seem less able to respond now than we were then due, in part, to the present dominance of free-market thinking.

Leadership and Emotional Intelligence

Dr Camila Alire, President of the American Library Association is visiting Sheffield and has agreed to give a talk to SINTO on the afternoon of Tuesday 13th October 2009. This will be a special opportunity to hear a leading library professional talk about leadership. Dr Alire is Dean Emerita at the University of New Mexico and Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado. She has additionally served as Dean/Director of Libraries at University of Colorado at Denver. Camila received her doctorate in Higher Education Administration from the University of Northern Colorado. She also holds an MLS from the University of Denver.
Camila's presidential initiative is "Libraries, the heart of all communities". In this talk she will cover two of her interests - advocacy of libraries and leadership.
Camila’s writing focuses on library marketing and advocacy, library services for Latinos and other minorities, library disaster recovery, leadership development, and recruitment/retention of minorities in the library profession and in higher education. She recently co-authored Serving Latino Communities (2007), Academic Librarians as Emotionally Intelligent Leaders (2007), and edited Library Disaster Planning and Recovery Handbook (2000).

For further information about the speaker go to http://www.camilaalire.com/ and see the Sinto web site http://www.sinto.org.uk/ for details of how to book for this event.

Can 11 words breach copyright?

Thanks to Corus for alerting me to an interesting ruling on Copyright from the European Court of Justice - the highest court in the EU in matters of European law.
The ruling refers to a court case in Denmark between the Danish newspaper industry body DDF and a clippings service Infopaq over reproduction of 11-word snippets from newspapers for sale to clients.
Infopaq's clients identified keywords that they wanted monitored. Infopaq scanned newspapers and used software to locate those keywords and print them out with the five words on either side to provide a context.
Infopaq claimed that this copying was "transient" and so was covered by exceptions in the EU Copyright Directive. However the ECJ ruled that "transient" only covered the creation of files resulting from the process of converting image files which were then deleted automatically from the computer memory. Printing out these files produced a non-transient record which was not exempt.
The court then looked at whether these 11-word extracts formed a element that was protected by the law, in other words were they a substantial part? The court stated that "words as such do not… constitute elements covered by the protection". It is the "choice, sequence and combination of these words" that creates a protected element. It continues:

"That being so, given the requirement of a broad interpretation of the scope of the protection conferred by Article 2 of Directive 2001/29, the possibility may not be ruled out that certain isolated sentences, or even certain parts of sentences in the text in question, may be suitable for conveying to the reader the originality of a publication such as a newspaper article, by communicating to that reader an element which is, in itself, the expression of the intellectual creation of the author of that article. Such sentences or parts of sentences are, therefore, liable to come within the scope of the protection provided for in Article 2(a) of that directive."
The court did stress that the question of whether a particular sentence or part of sentence did come within the scope of protection had to be decided by national courts.

So what does this mean for information professionals, especially those that provide abstracting services or keyword alerting services?

Although the EU Copyright Directive has been implemented in to member's legislation we are still working with separate Copyright laws so you should not assume that all aspects of the Danish case apply to the UK.

The Copyright Directive removed the concept of fair dealing from copying for a commercial purpose. In a non-commercial context this may still apply.

Personally I am surprised that Infopaq tried to argue that their extracts were exempt because they were transient. Copyright expert Graham Cornish in his presentations and writings on copyright has indicated that the temporary copies exemption applies only if they are a necessary part of the technical process to transfer the information and the copy does not have any independent economic significance. However this does demonstrate that nothing in legislation can be taken for granted until it is tested in a court.

The issue of whether extracts form a "substantial part" of the whole is also interesting. Again Graham Cornish has pointed out that "substantial" is not defined in the legislation and that you cannot assume that a short extract is unsubstantial. The ruling confirmed that individual words cannot be copyright protected so if Infopaq had just printed a list of keywords and their location in an article this would not have infringed copyright. The problem arose from trying to put the keywords into context by printing the words on either side. If they had just printed one word on either side it would probably be unsubstantial and not infringe copyright but at the same time it would not provide enough context to be of any use. The paradox is that the closer you get to providing a useful context the more likely you are to infringe copyright. Of course, if you write your own abstract, or provide a context for a keyword in your own words, then you are not infringing copyright. The problem is that organisations are looking to reduce the amount of staff time spent on these professional activities by using automated systems. Possibly Infopaq or someone will come up with a piece of software that can generate a context for a given keyword without resorting to cut and paste - although this still seems to be something that the human brain can do better and faster than a computer.

A final point is that copyright legislation is only breached if you do not seek the permission of the copyright holder for these acts. In theory Infopaq could have asked DDF for permission on the basis that providing keyword alerts to its clients would benefit the newspapers by directing more customers to those titles. Of course DDF may well have asked for a licensing fee to permit this.

The main lesson from this case for librarians is that any copied extract, no matter how short, may be covered by copyright. If it is worthwhile to someone to copy it then the chances are that it could be a substantial part.

The full text of the ECJ ruling can be found at http://tinyurl.com/m6autk

Events from SINTO

I am organising the programme of SINTO training events for the Autumn and I think we have another strong programme. In particular I think that some of our events are not just about developing the skills of library staff - they will help libraries think about and develop their policy in important areas.

13th October. Leadership and Emotional Intelligence for librarians. Dr Camilia Alire, President of the American Library Association is visiting Sheffield and has agreed to give a talk to SINTO. This will be a special opportunity to hear a leading library professional talk about leadership. You can find out more about Dr Alire by visiting her website http://www.camilaalire.com

15th October. Libraries vs Recession: how libraries can help communities during the recession. This is not about how libraries can survive the recession, but rather the contribution that they can make to help people, businesses and communities. The seminar will also look at how libraries can promote the value of their services.

3rd November. Disaster! How to plan and how to cope. As Sheffield Central library discovered recently, disaster can strike from a clear blue sky (or at least a cloudy one). This day will consider how to plan for a major incident and how to cope when something happens.

November (date to be confirmed). Managing change. How to deal with change, how to help other people cope with change, how to introduce change into organisations.

Further details will be circulated soon and I will be blogging some more on these events. If you want more information or want to register an interest, contact the SINTO office.

Brendan Loughridge

Brendan Loughridge died last week. Brendan joined the Department of Information Studies University of Sheffield in 1978, after six years as an Assistant Keeper of Printed Books and Assistant Secretary of the Library at the National Library of Scotland and eight years as a Sub-Librarian at the New University of Ulster in Londonderry and Coleraine. His teaching and research interests at Sheffield were chiefly in the field of academic library management and information resources. He also had several long spells as Programme Co-ordinator of the MA in Librarianship programme.

My condolences to his family.

Graphic novels in public libraries.

Do you deal with graphic novels in your public library? Arwen Caddy, a postgraduate student at the University of Sheffield, is doing some research into this topic. The aim is to gather the opinions of public library staff on whether all graphic novels, comic books, comic strips, manga, and similar materials should be shelved in the same place in simple alphabetical order, or whether they should be ordered using genre, subject, type, author or illustrator name, reading age or other method. The researcher is also aware of uncertainty over the contents of some graphic novels and similar material and their suitability to be shelved in a public library at all. This is particularly an issue when the library in question is used by children and young people. This is one of the reasons why the researcher is interested in the possibility of splitting such material into age-ranges or subject types. This project is especially interested in the views of library staff on these sensitive topics.

The survey can be found on Survey Monkey and an information sheet can be obtained from the Sinto office c.j.clayton@shu.ac.uk

Is your library faceless?

Lorcan Dempsey makes an interesting observation in a recent blog
He says:
"I continue to be amazed at how difficult it is to find the name or contact details of the library director on many library websites. And in some cases to find the names of other relevant library contacts. This is especially the case given the emphasis on the human touch the library provides, and the expertise of library staff."

I have to agree with him. I often need to find contact details for Heads of Library services and the libraries websites often fail to provide this information. Most websites provide general contact details or an enquiry form but these are often anonymous and do not identify a specific individual.

Looking at local examples, Rotherham Libraries is a model of good practice. Under Contact Us it has clear instruction for contacting the library service by phone, e-mail or in writing. It then goes on to list the job titles, names and contact details of all the senior staff. Bernard Murphy as head of service even has a photograph.

Sheffield Libraries is also good at providing general contact details. It then invites the public to contact the senior management team by e-mailing the City Librarian, Janice Maskort. It does not provide details of the senior management team and this may be deliberate. There have been many changes recently and perhaps it is preferable that enquiries go right to the top and can then be delegated as appropriate. It does however leave them faceless.

Leeds and Doncaster libraries again have general contact details but neither gives any clue whatsoever to the identity of the head of library services or senior library staff.

Academic Libraries seem to do better. The University of Sheffield Library has a detailed listing of staff with contact details (no photos though!)

How important is this? As Lorcan says, libraries do like to think that we have a human touch. Many local government authorities insist that front line staff wear name badges on the grounds that users prefer to know who they are dealing with - so why shouldn't this apply in the virtual world as well? And libraries are all about information. Isn't it reasonable to expect that the library website should give information about the library service as well as library services? If you go on the website for Marks and Spencer or Sainsbury you can find a link somewhere that gives you the names of the senior managers. Why should Chief Librarians be so reticent?