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Copyright of Bibliothek Forschung und Praxis is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The documentary's core argument is that big data and targeted data have been used successfully to influence enough "persuadable" voters to influence the outcome of key elections such as the Brexit referendum and the 2016 US presidential race, and the film pushes this theme by picking just the right facts to make a case. This review will attempt to put The Great Hack in its historical, political, and technical context, and will try to answer the question: How dangerous was Cambridge Analytica? The documentary claims the technology is to some considerable degree dangerous, although perhaps less dangerous than those involved with Cambridge Analytica like to think. The film is certainly worth viewing, as long as the viewer remembers that it is good journalism, but not a scholarly analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article begins with discontinuity. Its review of Web-based historical information discards traditional taxonomies and builds instead on the new capabilities that separate digital publishing from its paper-based predecessor. The article emphasizes dynamic, transformative, and multimedia sources that specialize in images, sound, search-ability, and the conversion of data into visually digestible tabular and spatial forms. The goal is not to make a one-to-one comparison with print resources, or in any way to denigrate them, but to highlight the kind of sources which a generation of historians brought up on Alistair Cooke's Americaand Ken Burns's Civil Warare learning to exploit. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Looks at Web-based historical information, with emphasis on dynamic, transformative, and multimedia sources that specialize in images, sound, searchability, and the conversion of data into visually digestible tabular and spatial forms. Discussion groups; Maps, data, and transformative systems; Multimedia collections; Photographic image collections; Indexes and reviews.

Data are the eunuchs of the information world because data and data sets are functionally sterile and meaningless without reference to the intellectual, spatial, temporal, and social environment that represents their context. A serious researcher can prove nothing with data without knowing where they came from and what they mean. Information must always include context, and Information Science as practiced today represents the union of context and data. Information privacy is an especially important topic in the modern world, and is often poorly understood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review how historical research data are managed and mined today. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology builds on observations over the last decade. Findings – Reading speed is a factor in managing the quantity of text in historical research. Twenty years ago historical research involved visits to physical libraries and archives, but today much of the information is online. The granularity of reading has changed over recent decades and recognizing this change is an important factor in improving acce. Practical implications – Computer-based humanities text mining could be simpler if publishers and libraries would manage the data in ways that facilitate the process. Some aspects still need development, including better context awareness, either by writing context awareness into programs or by encoding it in the text. Social implications – Future researchers who want to make use of text mining and distant reading techniques will need more thorough technical training than they get today. Originality/value – There is relatively little discussion of text mining and distant reading in the LIS literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of the development of libraries in the geographical area of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) after it joined the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in 1990. It briefly describes the situation of libraries in the GDR and the major changes that accompanied the unification process. It also touches on a series of three nationwide studies on reading and library-user behavior, and on library legislation and major national-planning initiatives since 1989. For academic libraries, the unification process was mainly favorable, as a structured plan and continuous funding were introduced as part of higher education development. For public libraries, the process was less structured, severely reducing a previously very dense system within a very short time. Recent library statistics indicate, however, that the integration of the two library systems has benefited the remaining libraries and left no clearly visible difference between library systems in the eastern and western parts of Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an editorial on the history of the study of information science at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin university in Berlin, Germany. Information is provided on the history of the university, the state of the library science and information science department, and the university's cooperation with both the King's College London of London, England and the Royal School of Library and Information Science in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Copyright of Information -- Wissenschaft und Praxis is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to examine a project where resource description framework (RDF) is expected to function both in the short term and over long periods. Because RDF is comparatively new, the library and information science literature has scarcely addressed the issues. Design/methodology/approach – The article analyses RDF from the perspective of the requirements for long term digital archiving, with special emphasis on the need for maintaining integrity and usability. Findings – RDF and RDFa (resource description framework in attributes) encoding can be archived, but the external references that make RDF function may change their meaning or vanish over time, unless efforts are made to archive them too and to provide time-based context information through mechanisms like Memento. RDF-based "triple store" databases can likewise be archived. Originality/value – The value of this article lies in its examination of how RDF and its variants will work within the constraints of current long term digital archiving systems. RDF is relatively new, but its proponents see it as a long term enhancement of the web and of internet-connected projects. This requires some consideration about how it will function in 100 years or more. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – This issue of Library Hi Tech aims to offer a retrospective over the last 30 years of information technology as used in libraries and other memory institutions, particularly archives and museums. This Editorial will add the Editor's reflections. Design/methodology/approach – The method uses historical documentation and relies heavily on personal recollection. Findings – Thirty years ago information technology in libraries largely had to do with ways in which libraries could make their ordinary operations more efficient. Today the information science frontier has broken out of the comfortable institutional paradigm of the past and made libraries aware that they need to redefine themselves in a world where their buildings no longer represent a storehouse of knowledge unavailable elsewhere. Originality/value – This paper reveals that information technology advances have not made libraries obsolete, but they have made it imperative that libraries redefine their role to be digital information managers and service providers for their readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to look back on the last 30 years of technology development for libraries. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents an interview that took place at the American Library Association Annual Meeting in Anaheim, California. Findings – The paper reveals that many of the developments are slow. There are very few really sudden revolutions in social-scale technologies. They do not switch on quickly and cannot be sudden because the installed base is too thin. Originality/value – The paper reveals that there should be some renewed conversation about how libraries can help the public. In the early days of the internet libraries played an enormous uncredited role in teaching the adult population about the it. There are some opportunities like that now, and one place where we are starting to see signs of it is digital preservation, not as libraries doing it for the cultural record, but helping individuals to do it for their own content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – This article aims to discuss how concepts from the analog world apply to a purely digital environment, and look in particular at how authenticity needs to be viewed in the digital world in order to make some form of validation possible. Design/methodology/approach – The article describes authenticity and integrity in the analog world and looks at how to measure it in a digital environment. Findings – Authenticity in the digital world generally means, in a purely technical sense, that a document's integrity has been checked using mathematical algorithms against other copies on independently managed servers, and that provenance records show that the document has a clearly established succession from a clearly defined original. Readers should recognize that this is different than how one defines authenticity and integrity in the analog world. Originality/value – Most of the key issues surrounding digital authenticity have not yet been tested, but they will be when the economic value of an authentic digital work reaches the courts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this article is an ethnographic description of a particular slice of the digital archiving scholarship. The point is to get a sense of where the library and information science profession is today in dealing with the issues of long-term digital archiving. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology comes from cultural anthropology. It looks at a particular virtual place (ProQuest's Library and Information Science Abstracts database), a particular time period (2000-2012) and a particular set of authors writing about digital archiving. Findings – The topics of migration, emulation, integrity, authenticity, LOCKSS and Portico have limited resonance among the authors in LISA in the last dozen years. Articles about repositories and metadata are more common. Technical topics in digital archiving may be better suited to a computer science database, though this is surprising considering how information science borders on computer science. LISA remains, at least as far as digital archiving is concerned, strongly library oriented. Practical implications – The digital archiving community that LISA reflects and represents is a community with a concern about the long-term future, but one that has not come to terms with the core technical issues necessary to enable content to survive in a useful form over long periods. Originality/value – This paper investigates the issues of long-term digital archiving from the perspective of the library and information science profession by examining a particular database, time period and set of authors on the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – This article aims to look at the relationship between Library Hi Tech and the academic field of information science. Design/methodology/approach – This is an opinion piece whose methodology is in part historical review, and in part observation of present and future trends. Findings – Library-based information is no longer almost exclusively text. Research libraries in particular are increasingly responsible for numeric data sets in their repositories. Practical implications – Librarians need to think about information literacy not merely in terms of finding and evaluating traditional publisher data. Originality/value – This paper reviews the relationship between Library Hi Tech and the academic field of information science, and observes present and future trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – This article aims to look at the last 30 years of Library Hi Tech to identify which topics have continued and what priorities have changed. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology is a review in which the author looks back at articles from each of the past decades to discuss how they represent core topics for the journal. Findings – When Library Hi Tech first appeared 30 years ago, the key topics involved how to make our work as librarians more efficient. Today the question has become: how do we make it easier for those using our resources? Originality/value – Key future issues for the library community, as well as for Library Hi Tech, include not only how to preserve digital information over long periods, but how humans interact with computers and digital resources, and how the human physical environment – in this case the library buildings – can adapt. This paper is of value in looking at the implications of these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – Plagiarism has become a salient issue for universities and thus for university libraries in recent years. This paper aims to discuss three interrelated aspects of preserving plagiarized works: collection development issues, copyright problems, and technological requirements. Too often these three are handled separately even though in fact each has an influence on the other. Design/methodology/approach – The paper looks first at the ingest process (called the Submission Information Package or SIP), then at storage management in the archive (the AIP or Archival Information Package), and finally at the retrieval process (the DIP or Distribution Information Package). Findings – The chief argument of this paper is that works of plagiarism and the evidence exposing them are complex objects, technically, legally and culturally. Merely treating them like any other work needing preservation runs the risk of encountering problems on one of those three fronts. Practical implications – This is a problem, since currently many public preservation strategies focus on ingesting large amounts of self-contained content that resembles print on paper, rather than on online works that need special handling. Archival systems also often deliberately ignore the cultural issues that affect future usability. Originality/value – The paper discusses special handling and special considerations for archiving works of plagiarism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – This paper aims to focus on how long-term digital archiving systems are tested and what benchmarks and other metrics are necessary for that testing to produce data that the community can use to make decisions. Design/methodology/approach – The article reviews recent literature about digital archiving systems involving public and semi-public tests. It then looks specifically at the rules and metrics needed for doing public or semi-public testing for three specific issues: triggering migration; ingest rates; and storage capacity measurement. Findings – Important literature on testing exists but common metrics do not, and too few data are available at this point to establish them reliably. Metrics are needed to judge the quality and timeliness of an archive's migration services. Archives should offer benchmarks for the speed of ingest, but that will happen only once they come to agreement about starting and ending points. Storage capacity is another area where librarians are raising questions, but without proxy measures and agreement about data amounts, such testing cannot proceed. Practical implications – Testing is necessary to develop useful metrics and benchmarks about performance. At present the archiving community has too little data on which to make decisions about long term digital archiving, and as long as that is the case, the decisions may well be flawed. Originality/value – The article shows that testing is key to making rational decisions about digital long term archiving systems but establishing metrics and rules by which librarians can compare the results is far from easy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how extensively LOCKSS/CLOCKSS, Portico, and e-Depot provide long-term digital archiving for the journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses publicly available online data, which are processed in a set of PERL programs to measure the number of DOAJ articles in the three archiving systems. Findings – The findings show that only 8 per cent of the DOAJ titles are in LOCKSS/CLOCKSS and only 5 per cent in Portico. The findings also suggest that it could take eight years to archive all full text DOAJ articles in e-Depot based on current plans. Practical implications – The most important implication is that most open access titles listed in DOAJ currently have no effective long-term digital archiving. Originality/value – The paper investigates how extensively LOCKSS/CLOCKSS, Portico, and e-Depot provide long-term digital archiving for the journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to investigate: how many journal titles are both in LOCKSS and in Portico?; what is the relationship of small publishers to LOCKSS/CLOCKSS and Portico?; and what is the relationship of large publishers to LOCKSS/CLOCKSS and Portico? Design/methodology/approach – The paper describes how data from Portico, LOCKSS, and CLOCKSS were cleaned and analyzed using Perl programs to discover duplications. Findings – The findings show a significant overlap among the archiving systems. They also show that Portico has no prejudice against small publishers and that large publishers are as willing to choose the LOCKSS software as to choose Portico. LOCKSS does, however, archive many more small and arguably endangered publishers and may be the only economically viable choice for them. Originality/value – The push for greater transparency has made more and more data available. Both LOCKSS and Portico deserve commendation for providing the detailed lists of titles and publishers on which this paper was based. Such data give the library community an opportunity to build decisions about the long-term digital future on firm and verifiable ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to answer questions about LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) that have arisen in the context of the German National Hosting study. Design/methodology/approach - The paper describes what the LOCKSS software can do and how the LOCKSS community is organized. The descriptions come from direct experience with LOCKSS and from comments by the developers. Findings - LOCKSS offers a robust and cost-effective mechanism to carry digital content undamaged into future centuries. It also offers a distributed network that is robust against natural, social, political or economic catastrophes at one or even several locations. Its financial and organizational philosophy avoids a single point of financial or administrative failure. Originality/value - Regardless of which national hosting system is selected, the chosen system ought to have qualities similar to these. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this article is to discuss the importance of, and problems with, interoperability along long term digital archiving systems. Design/methodology/approach - The article reviews the literature about interoperability and takes an engineering-oriented look at implementation within the LuKII project. It also draws heavily on actual experience in the LuKII (LOCKSS und KOPAL Infrastructure und Interoperabilität) project. Findings - The need for interoperation is well established, but the implementation requires significant technical work to define and test key aspects of interoperability. Originality/value - The need for interoperation among digital archiving systems is very much there, but achieving it is hard. Systems built at different times and along different principles require a degree of reengineering that can test the skills (and sometimes the patience) of the creators. Interoperability also requires fresh thinking about how archiving systems can reasonably measure important abstract concepts like integrity and authenticity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose — The purpose of this paper is to consider whether PDF formats are appropriate for long-term digital archiving. Design/methodology/approach — The approach takes the form of examining how well PDF's capabilities fit eReader devices that future scholars may use in addition to or instead of paper print-outs. Findings — Fixity is the advantage that PDF offers for archiving, while its alternatives generally offer greater flexibility for eReader devices. The question for long-term digital archiving is whether fixity or flexibility best suits the interests of future readers? Originality/value — PDF is widely accepted as a digital archiving format and PDF documents are found in virtually every repository. There has, however, been little discussion as to whether the fixed format is not in fact a long-term disadvantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose--The purpose of this editorial is to discuss problems in gathering and evaluating data in library and information science. Increasingly I find that I advocate an empirical approach to research in our field of library and information science. Others appear to agree and are writing more works based on explicit empirical sources. Design/methodology/approach--The method uses standard social science techniques for examining the reliability and representativeness of data. Findings--The editorial looks at two specific examples, one an experiment with an outlier and another a published source whose data are potentially incomplete. Sometimes the obvious problems are not really problems at all and sometimes completely unexpected issues invalidate results. This is not a reason for avoiding empirical research or for doubting empirical results every time they appear. But it is a reason for authors to engage in a thorough discussion of their data as a part of any scholarly work. Originality/value--The editorial argues for a broader and more explicit discussion of data issues in journal articles. Some data is quite usable despite its apparent nastiness and some is just hopelessly bad. But a majority of data in our field lie somewhere between these extremes and need to be discussed as part of the analysis process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The goal of this column is not to argue the pros and cons of digital archiving, or to propose solutions to its problems, but to describe it as a research subject and a social phenomenon. Design/methodology/approach - This column relies on cultural anthropology, in particular the approach that Clifford Geertz championed, and for cultural anthropology, language and its social context matter. Findings - Archiving systems abound with competing claims about effectiveness. Transparency and evidence of public testing is rare, with a few exceptions. The lack of public testing does not mean that systems do less than they claim, but it does mean that libraries, archives and museums need to press for proof if they want to have confidence in the product. Originality/value - When betting on the future, these cannot be certainty, but bets placed should be based on knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose — This editorial seeks to compare the German Bibliothekartag, the American Library Association Annual Meeting, and the International Federation of Library Associations meeting. Design/methodology/approach — The method relies mainly on anthropological observation. Findings — Conferences in cities with public transit, good restaurants, and decent technology, including wireless internet and projection in the meeting rooms, offer better opportunities for the social bonding that encourages repeat attendance. Practical implications — Conferences at locations without these features risk losing regulars as technology increasingly enables communication without travel. Originality/value — Interaction with the conference environment is not the only factor in making a conference experience successful but, without positive interactions, the option of doing business electronically becomes far more attractive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - Libraries and scholars face more frequent problems with and decisions about plagiarism than in the past. This article aims to look at complex cases where plagiarism may have occurred. Design/methodology/approach - The method is anthropological and looks at specific cases, in which the situations are real but the actors have been fictionalised to protect identities. Findings - Plagiarism tools, while invaluable for discovering potential problems, can also expose cases where judgments depend on complex circumstances. Originality/value - The goal is to show areas where ambiguity in plagiarism cases exists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose — This column aims to examine the influence of technology on copyright infringement and looks at the contemporary technology race between tools for rights enforcement and tools for copying and sharing. Design/methodology/approach — The method is fundamentally anthropological with strong consideration given to reports contemporary behaviors in law cases and news reports. Findings — The findings suggest that rights-holder organizations like the Recording Industry Association of America are learning how to apply technology more effectively to their policing efforts. This could significantly alter the risk of infringement. Originality/value — Technology has long been recognized as a key factor in enabling copyright infringement. Some new technologies attempt to restrict copying (e.g. Digital Rights Management software). Now internet software is being used systematically for discovery and policing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose — This editorial aims to discuss how technology has transformed the cultural map for libraries so that experiences in Taiwan, Iran, India, Greece, or New Zealand are relevant anywhere in the developed world. Design/methodology/approach — The methodology draws heavily on cultural anthropology in looking at the cultural context and its changes over time. Findings — Four sets of shared problems emerge in these articles: technology applications to solve specific library problems, user studies, cataloging issues, and electronic publishing. These are topics that librarians discuss around the world. Originality/value — It is a commonplace today that technology has tended to equalize widely separated parts of the world. This is obviously true in terms of consumer goods, but appears to be less well accepted in terms of scholarly endeavor. The international and intellectual breadth of this issue can be seen as something to celebrate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose--This paper uses an inductive approach to define "gray copyright." It is needed to describe those situations in which the practical degree of copyright protection can best be measured in shades of risk rather than in simple terms of black and white. Design/methodology/approach--Two methods are used. One is an inductive definition builds up the term's meaning example by example and layer by layer. The second is a behavioral experiment in the spirit of the prisoner's dilemma game. Findings--In the examples of gray copyrights the deciding factor in the grayness is not its legal status, but the economic value of enforcing the usage rights. In the experiment the students have an opportunity to acquire a personal sense of the risks and choices involved in copyright infringements. Originality/value--This analysis shifts the emphasis from the question of legal right and wrong to the economic issue of what risks are potential infringers and rights holders prepared to take. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- This editorial aims to look at damage control for the problems digital libraries will face in 100 years because of choices we make today. Design/methodology/approach -- The approach looks at the market choices for archiving systems and considers what factors could cause contemporary choices to go wrong. Findings -- The editorial finds that interoperability is the preferred choice for helping to ensure that the wrong choice of an archiving system will have minimal consequences for the documents in that system. Originality/value -- Libraries choosing archiving systems must make choices based on limited information and on expectations about that system's long-term viability that could well be wrong. This editorial highlights that libraries should prepare for some archiving systems to fail and should plan for interoperability so that documents can move readily from one system to another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The questions we were asked to discuss for this 6th International Conference on Conceptions of Library and Information Science were whether there should be a unique iSchool curriculum and, if so, what would it look like? We have used a methodology in writing this paper that draws heavily on anthropological traditions of observation and analysis. If a unique iSchool curriculum ought to exist, then an iSchool ought to be more than a library school with a name that implies modern times. Some of the differences between iSchools and the more traditional library schools are apparent in their course descriptions. Our proposed curriculum is an abstract designed around a set of ideas, not around what is implementable in the classroom. At present our interactions with computers tend to be highly verbal. Nonetheless the real communication takes place with words. For those who like this ideal curriculum and want to try it should at a minimum retain three key principles: 1) all information services now revolve around human-computer interaction; 2) teach students to think like anthropologists and look at the problems and issues from multiple viewpoints, multiple cultures, and multiple ecologies; and 3) students need to remember that language both enables and limits our ability to communicate with contemporary information systems - without a strong awareness of linguistic issues, we cannot provide information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This column aims to look at the different economic and intellectual approaches to copyright as separate cultures whose assumptions and approaches make it difficult for them to share a single copyright law. Design/methodology/approach - The methodology relies heavily on anthropological analysis to distinguish the expectations and language of subgroups and microcultures within the larger national and international copyright communities. Findings - At least three different copyright cultures exist: for authors who require long-term protection for financial gain from their works; for authors who require short-term protection for financial gain from their works; and for authors whose value depends on access instead of protection. Important subsets of the author cultures are also copyright consumers whose interests require access as well as protection. Originality/value - This analysis helps to show why existing copyright laws serve the interests of some groups better than others. It also explains why open access makes sense as an established legal alternative to automatic long-term copyright enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on open access publishing and specifically examines copyright culture in European and Anglo-American legal traditions. In particular, the author discusses the Creative Commons license, which can allow authors to make their work available for open access electronic publishing. Various social considerations with regard to copyrights and publishing are discussed.

Purpose - This column seeks to look at the case of a long-standing project to arrange document delivery between US and German libraries. This case represents the broader problem of international document delivery. Design/methodology/approach - The primary methodology is anthropological. The column considers cultural and economic differences and assumptions, as well as differences between the law codes that enable document delivery. Findings - Document delivery is at least temporarily impossible from Germany to the USA owing to lawsuits and agreements within Germany. The introduction of Digital Rights Management (DRM) software into new agreements may lead to programs with seriously abbreviated rights for users. Originality/value - The case of US-German document delivery has particular importance because of the amount of research contact between the two countries and because of the substantial differences in their legal systems and their copyright laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This editorial seeks to examine the definition of a ‘digital library’ to see whether one can be constructed that usefully distinguishes a digital library from other types of electronic resources. Design/methodology/approach - The primary methodology compares definitions from multiple settings, including formal institutional settings, working definitions from articles, and a synthesis created in a seminar at Humboldt University in Berlin. Findings - At this point, digital libraries are evolving too fast for any lasting definition. Definitions that users readily understand are too broad and imprecise, and definitions with more technical precision quickly grow too obscure for common use. Originality/value - A functional definition of a digital library would add clarity to a burgeoning field, especially when trying to evaluate a resource. The student perspective provides a fresh look at the problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – To discuss the mission statement for the Institute of Library and Information Sciences at Humboldt University in Berlin. Design/methodology/approach – The article examines other i-school mission statements to find the key common elements. Findings – Connections between people, technology, and information represent common themes of i-school missions. Originality/value – The Institute's mission statement is still being discussed. This analysis offers one viewpoint for the final conception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this column is to look at how US copyright law deals with facts and what can reasonably be considered as a fact. Design/methodology/approach - The US statutes and case law are examined, as well as standard practices within academic settings for the use and analysis of facts. Findings - Using facts may require a risk assessment under certain circumstances. Although facts cannot be protected under US law, compilations of facts can have protection under the European Database Directive, and certain apparent facts, such as normal human body temperature, represent judgments based on extensive research and analysis. It is not always clear when a research result achieves the status of a fact and is therefore exempt from copyright protection. Originality/value - The use of facts is an essential part of scholarly work and factual compilations are important tools for many scholarly communities. Understanding how far facts may be used and manipulated helps researchers and teachers who have grown anxious about copyright infringement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital archiving inherited a vocabulary from the archiving of physical objects, but the social organization needed for effective digital archiving does not mirror the trusted-institution model used for physical archiving. A social model along the lines of the open source software community makes more sense for works whose authenticity and integrity can best be ensured through bit-level comparisons of multiple originals residing with multiple trusted collaborators. Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe (LOCKSS) is building a community base and has over seven years of experience with archiving electronic journals. LOCKSS works and has been tested. Few other digital archiving systems can claim equivalent practical experience. Serials Review 2006; 32:73-77. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This column looks at questions from teaching faculty about the use of copyright protected materials in an online course. Design/methodology/approach - Copyright guidelines are considered. The US TEACH Act and Fair Use statutes are examined, as well as how to make a risk assessment for the institution. Findings - US universities have a reasonable freedom to use protected materials in the virtual equivalent of face-to-face teaching, as long as it costs the rights holders no loss of expected income and as long as it takes into account the litigiousness of certain firms and associations. Originality/value - Each copyright use assessment has unique circumstances, but a discussion of the reasoning behind an actual case helps to build a community of good practice that strengthens similar assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this column is to look at how copyright enforcement is handled. Design/methodology/approach - Legal issues in enforcement are examined, as well as the initiatives of organizations like the Recording Industry Association of America (RTAA). Findings - Some rights owner organizations are taking a vigilante approach to enforcement. Originality/value - Copyright decisions are often a matter of risk assessment, and understanding enforcement procedures is a part of that assessment process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advances in formulating spoken document retrieval for a new National Gallery of the Spoken Word (NGSW) are addressed. NGSW is the first large-scale repository of its kind, consisting of speeches, news broadcasts, and recordings from the 20th century. After presenting an overview of the audio stream content of the NGSW, with sample audio files from U.S. Presidents from 1893 to the present, an overall system diagram is proposed with a discussion of critical tasks associated with effective audio information retrieval. These include advanced audio segmentation, speech recognition model adaptation for acoustic background noise and speaker variability, and information retrieval using natural language processing for text query requests that include document and query expansion. For segmentation, a new evaluation criterion entitled fused error score (FES) is proposed, followed by application of the CompSeg segmentation scheme on DARPA Hub4 Broadcast News (30.5% relative improvement in FES) and NGSW data. Transcript generation is demonstrated for a six-decade portion of the NGSW corpus. Novel model adaptation using structure maximum likelihood eigenspace mapping shows a relative 21.7% improvement. Issues regarding copyright assessment and metadata construction are also addressed for the purposes of a sustainable audio collection of this magnitude. Advanced parameter-embedded watermarking is proposed with evaluations showing robustness to correlated noise attacks. Our experimental online system entitled "SpeechFind" is presented, which allows for audio retrieval from a portion of the NGSW corpus. Finally, a number of research challenges such as language modeling and lexicon for changing time periods, speaker trait and identification tracking, as well as new directions, are discussed in order to address the overall task of robust phrase searching in unrestricted audio corpora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This column aims to look at the results of the US Copyright Office's request for comments about orphan copyrights. Design/methodology/approach - It uses a form of Game Theory called the Prisoner's Dilemma Game to analyze the comments that are available on the Copyright Office web site. Findings - Some change seems likely, if only because the opponents of change may discover that they can gain more for themselves when they stop defending the interests of those who have abandoned their copyrights already. Practical implications - If some form of cooperation between intellectual property consumers and rights holders could be worked out for orphan copyrights, it might lead to further "tit-for-tat" reactions that help to address other copyright issues. Originality/value - Provides useful information on orphan copyrights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This column looks at which rights matter, how to retain them, and which journal publishers already cooperate. Design/methodology/approach - It uses the requirements of the Berlin Declaration on Open Access, and examines the Creative Commons licences, the SPARC addendum, the project ROMEO list publishers' copyright policies, and the Emerald Journal Article Record form. Findings - If retaining rights to works in order to provide open access is a key part of the solution to the crisis in scholarly publishing, then significant progress has taken place. Practical implications - It remains to be seen whether having authors retain the right to provide open access will, over time, bring down journal costs. Enough publishers have cooperated that an opportunity now exists for repositories to begin to show what they can (or cannot) accomplish. Originality/value - It remains to be seen whether having authors retain the right to provide open access will, over time, bring down journal costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early copyright laws said little about the rights of consumers. In general, the law in each country gave an exclusive, short-term right to make copies of the work as a whole. The periods were so short, and the copying technology so slow that non-commercial copying mattered little. In the nineteenth century case law in the USA and elsewhere began to develop consumer rights. The best known of these were codified as "fair use" in the 1976 US law as section 107. In recent years, new technologies have made copyright holders fearful that consumer rights would encourage theft and undermine the economic value of their work. This paper looks at the technological basis of that fear and some of the proposed solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interlibrary lending and document delivery have become an integral part of the services that contemporary libraries offer. The copyright laws in most countries authorized this copying within reasonable limits, but tensions with publishers may be growing. For interlibrary services to remain effective, libraries must continue to lobby politicians to defend their legal basis. Libraries must also continue to work with publishers to address legitimate economic concerns. This paper looks at the legal basis for interlibrary services, particularly document delivery, in the US, Canadian, and German law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The statutes themselves are not the only basis for deciding whether an intellectual property rights infringement has occurred. Ethical judgments can also influence judicial rulings. This column looks at three issues of intellectual property ethics: the nature of the property, written guidelines for behavior, and enforcement mechanisms. For most active infringers digital property seems unreal, the rules ambiguous, and the enforcement statistically unlikely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]