Google Wins Fair Use Argument in Book Search Lawsuit

On Thursday, November 14, 2013, eight years after the Authors Guild sued that Google Book Search violated the rights of authors, Judge Denny Chin finally handed down his decision (PDF) on the lawsuit. The Internet giant’s project to scan millions of books held by academic libraries was found to “[advance] the progress of the arts and sciences, while maintaining respectful consideration for the rights of authors and other creative individuals, and without adversely impacting the rights of copyright holders.” Advocates of fair use are applauding Judge Chin’s decision. Brandon Butler, formerly Director of Public Policy Initiatives at the Association of Research Libraries (and a co-facilitator in the development of the ARL’s Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries), calls the decision “a powerful affirmation of the value of research libraries.” The Library Copyright Alliance, which last year issued an amicus brief in the case, quoted leaders of library organizations in a press release issued yesterday:
“ALA applauds the decision to dismiss the long running Google Books case. This ruling furthers the purpose of copyright by recognizing that Google’s Book search is a transformative fair use that advances research and learning.” – Barbara Stripling, president of the American Library Association
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“This decision, along with the decision by Judge Baer in Authors Guild v. HathiTrust, makes clear that fair use permits mass digitization of books for purposes that advance the arts and sciences, such as search, preservation, and access for the print-disabled.” – Carol Pitts Diedrichs, president of the Association of Research Libraries
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“I echo the comments of my colleagues that this ruling, that strongly supports fair use principles, enables the discovery of a wealth of resources by researchers and scholars. Google Book search also makes searchable literally millions of books by students and others with visual disabilities. This is a tremendous opportunity for all our communities.” – Trevor A. Dawes, president of the Association of College & Research Libraries
Inevitably, the Authors Guild has already announced its plan to appeal the decision. And some critics, while perhaps not siding with the Authors Guild, have questioned Google’s motives in embarking on the project – readers’ privacy is uncertain, for example. Google has also been criticized for providing low-quality or sometimes just incorrect metadata for the books it has scanned. But having access to such an enormous textual corpus, despite its flaws, is a boon for researchers working in the field of natural language processing — Brandon Butler lauds the decision as “a victory…for transformative, non-consumptive search” — as well as for the visually disabled.

3D Printing Week @ Snell Library

3D Printing Week @ Snell Library Join Snell Library to celebrate the opening of the 3D Printing Studio! Learn about the 3D technologies available and see exciting cross-disciplinary 3D projects. November 4 – 8, 2013 Digtal Media Commons, Snell Library’s Second Floor

EVENTS

3Spark @ 3D Printing Studio Open House Digital Media Commons, Snell Library Level 2 Monday, 3 – 5pm Meet the creators of 3Spark, a finalist in the MassChallenge 2013 startup competition, and recipient of the Northeastern Center for Research Innovation Catalyst Grant 2012-2013; learn about other 3D projects on campus, and see the 3D printing studio in action.   3D Studio Drop-in Hours 3D Printing Studio, DMC Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday 2 – 4pm Stop by and learn about how you can scan, print, and develop your own 3D projects! Students can meet with the library’s 3D printing specialist and see demonstrations of 3D projects; faculty can learn about integrating 3D technology into their courses.   ANA @ 3D Printing Studio Open House 3D Printing Studio, DMC Thursday, 5:30 – 6:30pm Learn about “ANA: Alpha Numeric Avatars,” a project that brings together 3D encoded text, encryption, and physical information storage. Meet the creators of this project, see demonstrations of this and other student work, and find out how 3D technologies are making their way into Northeastern University classrooms.

IRis, Northeastern’s Digital Archive, Reaches Milestone: 1 Million Downloads!

When the Northeastern University Libraries launched IRis in 2006, the idea of an “institutional repository” was still fairly new. Universities were starting repositories to share their intellectual and administrative output – faculty-authored articles, dissertations and theses, student-run publications, university-created reports, and other documents. Seven years later, many more colleges and universities around the world have digital repositories of open access materials created by their faculty, students, and staff. These repositories often also host open-access journals and other publications – at Northeastern, IRis has hosted the Annals of Environmental Science since 2007, and also provides access to faculty-authored and -edited books. IRis began with only a few collections in 2006, but has grown exponentially since then. Today, IRis contains over 6,000 items, and as of Tuesday, October 15, 2013, these items have been downloaded one million times! Although it’s not possible to determine which one item received the lucky one-millionth download, we know that on that day, 649 items were downloaded 1147 times. Here’s a breakdown of the types of materials downloaded that day: Here are top downloads in each category, for October 15, 2013: As you can see, slightly more than half of the items downloaded were dissertations or master’s theses. An important contributor to the growth of IRis has been the university’s transition to an Electronic Thesis and Dissertation (ETD) program in the 2007-2008 academic year – instead of depositing print copies of dissertations and master’s theses in the library’s archives, graduate students now submit their ETDs to ProQuest and an open-access copy is made available through IRis. Both undergraduate and graduate research output is very popular in IRis – in fact, almost every month our most highly accessed collection is the Honors Junior/Senior Projects! In the coming months, we will be expanding on the success of IRis with DRS – Northeastern University’s Digital Repository Service. The DRS will offer even more functionality for users and depositors, such as more flexible sharing options, the ability to manage permissions, and options for curated and noncurated collections.

Northeastern Celebrates Open Access Week: October 21-27, 2013

The seventh annual International Open Access Week is upon us! What is Open Access?
“Open Access to information – the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as you need – has the power to transform the way research and scientific inquiry are conducted. It has direct and widespread implications for academia, medicine, science, industry, and for society as a whole. Open Access (OA) has the potential to maximize research investments, increase the exposure and use of published research, facilitate the ability to conduct research across available literature, and enhance the overall advancement of scholarship. Research funding agencies, academic institutions, researchers and scientists, teachers, students, and members of the general public are supporting a move towards Open Access in increasing numbers every year.” — SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition
Snell Library has several events planned to celebrate: Monday, October 21 3:00-4:30 DMC Circle 2 (blue) SPARC/World Bank Webcast Panelists representing a diverse set of stakeholders – scientific researchers, publishers, technologists and policy makers – will examine the potential positive impacts that can result when research results are shared freely in the digital environment. The panel, moderated by SPARC Executive Director Heather Joseph, will feature:
  • Stefano Bertuzzi, Executive Director of the American Society for Cell Biology
  • Brett Bobley, Chief Information Ocer for the National Endowment for the Humanities
  • Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Director of Scholarly Communication of the Modern Language Association
  • Michael Stebbins, Assistant Director for Biotechnology in the Science Division of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy
  • Cameron Neylon, Advocacy Director for Public Library of Science
Tuesday, October 22 3:00-4:00 421 SL Panel Discussion: Open Access in the Digital Humanities Faculty members Ryan Cordell, Ben Schmidt, and Julia Flanders will lead a discussion on the impact of open access on humanities research and publishing, leading off with some examples from their own work in digital humanities:
Ryan Cordell will talk about “Building With/Building On” and his use of open-access data from the Newberry Library’s Atlas of Historical County Boundaries, William G. Thomas’s “Railroads and the Making of Modern America,” and David Rumsey’s celebrated map collection. Ben Schmidt will talk about the process of working in public through open-access research methods and publications like the Journal of Digital Humanities, and will also offer perspectives on open-source and open-access approaches to code and software development that might provide models for the humanities. Julia Flanders will talk about the tools and methods that underlie Digital Humanities Quarterly, an open-access digital journal now housed at Northeastern University.
Wednesday, October 23 12:00-5:00 90 SL Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon Join us to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of under-represented groups in local Boston history. This hack-a-thon style drop-in session will focus on editing and updating Wikipedia pages in a group setting. Bring a laptop and a power supply, and go on a tour of Northeastern’s archives and special collections. More information available here.
And on Friday, October 25, Snell Library will be playing host to several of the DPLAfest’s open workshops – see the full schedule here. All Open Access Week events are open to the public (photo ID required to enter Snell Library) and refreshments will be served.

How the Government Shutdown Is Affecting Research Websites

Today’s government shutdown is affecting access to information at Northeastern and all libraries, whether directly or indirectly. We’ll do our best to post alerts about web sites that are unavailable on our database A-Z list. There are different effects depending on the government agency.  For example, web sites that support essential services, such as the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, which supports federal law enforcement, are up and running. Other sites are running but are not being updated, such as PubMed and MedlinePlus. Some sites are completely down, such as the Department of Education’s ERIC database, but the library purchases ERIC information through private third party vendors and so fortunately we can make ERIC available to the NU community.   Census.gov is also down, although some of the information there may be available in SimplyMap. We’ve also noticed effects on our behind-the-scenes work.  We are unable to order PDF articles from the National Library of Medicine, and we’re unable to do some database maintenance that relies on information from the Library of Congress.  That won’t affect you in the short term, but we hope the situation is temporary so it doesn’t have long term effects! Learn more about how the shutdown is affecting libraries here. We’re really sorry for any inconvenience, and our reference librarians are here to help you find alternative research sources. You can reach us by phone, email, text, or in person at Snell Library at http://library.northeastern.edu/ask.