RE: electronic journals CCC

["T. Scott Plutchak" <TSCOTT@lister2.lhl.uab.edu>]

Tom is correct about Pat Schroeder's general position (alhough he gets
some of the details wrong -- she was a U.S. Representative from Colorado,
not a Senator, and she is the AAP's Executive Director, not their
lobbyist.  The article Tom refers to is in the Washington Post, February
7, 2001).

In her response to criticism from the library community engendered by that
article (posted on liblicense-l on Feb. 14) she says, "While publishers
and librarians agree and work together on any number of issues, including
literacy and freedom of expression, we have traditionally disagreed over
the boundaries of "fair use.""  She has been cautious in other statements
to say that she (and her association) are not against Fair Use in
principle, only that they disagree with librarians on how Fair Use should
be applied in the area of electronic content.

I think a fairer statement might be something along the lines that many
commercial publishers believe that fair use as it has been practiced in
the print world needs to be revisited in the electronic realm and that the
same rules should not necessarily apply.

Those interested in the varying interpretations of fair use issues may be
interested in my editorial in the April issue of the Bulletin of the
Medical Library Association.  (Not yet available electronically, alas.  
The BMLA will be available through PubMed Central later this spring -- all
content available as soon as published).

T. Scott Plutchak
Editor, Bulletin of the Medical Library Association

Director, Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences
University of Alabama at Birmingham

tscott@uab.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Williams [mailto:twilliam@bbl.usouthal.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2001 8:51 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: electronic journals CCC 

This is in response to Anthony's comment.

No, I don't have AAP bugged but I have learned to read licenses and when
one publisher after another tries to write contracts for online full text
that eliminate all or portions of "Fair Use" rights that libraries
currently have, I get a sneaking suspicion.  Also, when Pat Schroeder, the
current AAP lobbyist and mouthpiece, makes a statement such as "in the
past, nobody has been willing to take on libraries, that's what we're here
for(referring to the AAP)."  This may not be the exact wording but close
and it was from the Washington Times or Washington Post a few months ago.  
What else does the AAP have to "take on" with libraries but fair use??

By the way, for those of you in the UK and elsewhere, Pat Schroeder is a
former U.S. Senator, I don't remember from which state, who was hired by
the AAP as a lobbyist/spokesperson etc., who has (or so it would seem by
her statements) thrown down the gauntlet to libraries and, I believe,
"Fair Use."

Tom

-- 
Thomas L. Williams, AHIP
Director, Biomedical Libraries and
 Media Production Services
University of South Alabama
College of Medicine
Mobile, Al 36688-0002
tel. (334)460-6885
fax. (334)460-7638
twilliam@bbl.usouthal.edu