Report

While many research libraries have begun to digitize their collections and share best practices around the steps required to create digital content, much less is known about what happens post-launch. Building on previous research by Ithaka S+R that defined key aspects of sustainable digital content, Appraising our Digital Investment: Sustainability of Digitized Special Collections in ARL Libraries offers a first look at the practices, attitudes, costs, and revenues associated with caring for digitized special collections. The report shares results from a survey conducted on the sustainability of digitized special collections at ARL member institutions.

 digitizing-special-collections-report-21feb13.pdf

Research libraries have a responsibility to make library collections and services universally accessible to their patrons. And as research libraries provide more content electronically to students, faculty members, researchers, and others, the role of libraries and other partners in their institutions and beyond is changing in the provision of information resources and services to patrons with disabilities.

print-disabilities-tfreport02nov12.pdf

Does the approach of creating a code of best practices, anchored in professional practice, actually work to expand the utility of fair use? What has happened to others who used codes of best practices to gain access to their rights? This document describes specific examples of success with using codes of best practice.

fair-use-codes-success.pdf

fair-use-code-faq-libs.pdf

Memorandum discussing legal issues in website archiving.

 band-new-day-for-archiving-2.0-23feb12.pdf

The ability to make reasonable "fair use" of copyrighted material is both economically and culturally important to the enterprise of education. In asserting fair use, teachers, librarians, and others cannot rely on a claim of "educational exceptionalism," for which there is no clear basis in U.S. Copyright law. Instead, they should seek to take advantage of current trends in copyright caselaw, including the marked trend toward preferring uses that are "transformative," where the amount of content used is appropriate to the transformative purpose. Over twenty years, we have accumulated considerable information about what constitutes "transformativeness," and members of the education community are well-positioned to provide persuasive narratives explaining how educational uses significantly repurpose and add value to the copyrighted content they incorporate. Published in Law & Literature, Vol. 24 No. 3 (Fall 2012).

jaszi-education-and-fair-use.pdf

Flyer discussing copyright education and academic integrity codes.

Code-brief-copyright-education-2012.pdf

Flyer discussing fair use and the reproduction of material for use by disabled students, faculty, staff, and other appropriate users.

Code-brief-chaffee-amendment-2012.pdf

fair-use-code-faq-profs.pdf

fair-use-code-faq-students.pdf

This Note from the Harvard Law Review organizes research on pro-social motivation around the motivation-fostering effects of empowerment, community, and fairness. By incorporating these norms into the cultural architecture of the public domain, we can promote greater information production at less cost than by relying solely on the intellectual property system's traditional tools of exclusion.

fair-use-code-harvard.pdf

Discusses copyright and its problems, why librarians need useable fair use, and the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries

fair-use-code-slides-lib.pdf

Argues the value of the Code of Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries to help librarians determine fair use guidelines for their institutions.

fair-use-code-cost-of-conservatism.pdf

This is a code of best practices in fair use devised specifically by and for the academic and research library community. It enhances the ability of librarians to rely on fair use by documenting the considered views of the library community about best practices in fair use, drawn from the actual practices and experience of the library community itself.

A PDF is available here code-of-best-practices-fair-use.pdf

Print copies are also available for $2.00 each plus shipping & handling.

Charge developed in collaboration with the Chairs of TRL Steering Committee and of the Working Group, and with input from the Executive Committee. Endorsed by Executive Committee Feb 11, 2010

scwg-charge-final-11feb10.pdf

In April and May of 2010, Stratus and ARL conducted interviews, focus groups and a survey of ARL members and external thinkers on the future of research libraries and the strategic challenges they face. This report is a summary of the findings from that process, including a draft strategic focus that captures the scope of thinking of the ARL membership that participated in this effort.

scenarios-data-gathering-summary-aug10.pdf

Principles endorsed by the Association of Research Libraries Board of Directors on July 26, 2010.

principles_large_scale_digitization.pdf

arl-profiles-rllf-report.pdf

This is a longer version of the April 2010 ARL Membership Meeting budget presentation by Charles B. Lowry.

year-two-great-recession-report.pdf

This report summarizes research into the current application of fair use to meet the missions of U.S. academic and research libraries. Sixty-five librarians were interviewed confidentially by telephone for around one hour each. They were asked about their employment of fair use in five key areas of practice: support for teaching and learning, support for scholarship, preservation, exhibition and public outreach, and serving disabled communities.

arl_csm_fairusereport.pdf

Late last year, Google, the Author's Guild, the American Association of Publishers, and the individual plaintiffs in the lawsuit over Google's massive book digitization program negotiated several revisions to their original Proposed Settlement Agreement (original agreement). The revisions were designed to address concerns raised by the Department of Justice and other critics who advised the court to reject the original agreement. The deadline to file comments on the new Proposed Amended Settlement Agreement (amended agreement) was January 28, 2010. The Department of Justice filed its comments on Thursday, February 4, 2010. This document describes the second round of comments.

gbs-2nd-round-comments10feb10.pdf

On December 13, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Costco v. Omega in a manner that eliminated none of the uncertainty caused by the lower court's ruling in that case. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had ruled that the copyright law's "first sale doctrine" did not apply to copies manufactured abroad. This ruling cast doubt on a library's ability to circulate books and other materials manufactured outside of the United States.

lca-costco-31jan11.pdf

On July 28, 2010, SkyRiver Technology Solutions joined with Innovative Interfaces to file suit in San Francisco federal court against OCLC Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) alleging numerous anticompetitive business practices and antitrust violations. SkyRiver, a bibliographic services company, and Innovative Interfaces, a library automation company, claim that OCLC is "unlawfully monopolizing the bibliographic data, cataloguing service and interlibrary lending markets and is attempting to monopolize the market for integrated library systems by anticompetitive and exclusionary agreements, policies and practices." (p. 1) The outcome of the lawsuit could have significant impact on the library software and technology services industry by opening up OCLC's services, such as WorldCat, to use by commercial competitors. ARL members have asked for a review of the current state of the suit.

skyriver-oclc-antitrust29nov10.pdf

Notes and agenda from a webcast held on December 11, 2002.

patriot-act-patron-privacy.pdf

Until this 1998 survey, no systematic data had been collected on special collections in ARL libraries for nearly 20 years. The results of this survey provide a snapshot of these collections at the end of the twentieth century and identify areas for further investigation.

special-collections-arl-libraries.pdf

This report responds to a recommendation of the 2006 ARL Task Force on the Future of Preservation in ARL Libraries. The task force encouraged ARL to conduct a high-level investigation of the range and balance of preservation activities represented among the ARL membership. The report is a thoughtful and thorough qualitative examination of how research libraries' preservation activities are evolving and expanding in the 21st century. It not only consideres activities traditionally captured by ARL’s Preservation Statistics, but also a host of emerging activities largely, but not exclusively, centered on developing digital collections and involving collaborative efforts.

safeguarding-collections.pdf

google-settlement-13nov08.pdf

The Section 108 Study Group released a Background Paper and requested comments on issues relating to library and archival exceptions under Section 108. The library community provided written and oral statements to the Study Group. Based on the additional input from the library community, the responses in this document provide greater detail and in some instances, clarify the earlier statements filed in conjunction with the March Roundtables and the request for comment by the Study Group.

section108-working-group-2006.pdf

ARL Strategic Directions Steering Committee Topical Briefing, presented at the 147th ARL Membership Meeting, October 2005.

mm-147-lefurgy-rasenberger.pdf

Bamboo is a community-driven cyberinfrastructure initiative that includes faculty and researchers engaged in humanistic inquiry, computer scientists and information scientists interested in innovative models for shared services, and librarians, academic content partners, campus information technologists and other professionals who want to work together across disciplinary, organizational, institutional, and geographical boundaries to better enable and foster innovation in the arts and humanities. Presented at the 152nd ARL Membership Meeting, May 2008.

mm-152-kainz-faulhaber.pdf