submitted by Carol Goodson

The Journal of Library Services for Distance Education (http://www.westga.edu/library/jlsde/), a peer-reviewed e-journal, requests submissions of manuscripts for its next issue (anticipated publication date November 1998).

International in scope, this scholarly e-journal publishes refereed articles focusing on the issues and challenges of providing research/information services to students enrolled in formal post-secondary distance education. It particularly strives to meet the continuing education needs of practitioners by providing a forum for the discussion of extended learning policies and practices, and trends in information technology as they impact the delivery of library services for distance learners and faculty.

Articles may be philosophical and/or quantitative analyses of off-campus library issues, and may take the form of case studies, research studies, or general interest reports. Sample topics: role/history of library services to distance education, standards for such services, organization/planning of new services, library instruction for remote users, document delivery, inter-library cooperation, providing/creating access to bibliographic and other library resources, costs of such services, research on remote users' information-seeking behaviors, etc. Book reviews, conference reports, literature reviews, news items, URLs for homepages of off-campus library services worldwide, announcements of conferences and publications, and letters to the editor are also invited.

Original manuscripts will be accepted by email or on IBM-compatible 3.5 HD diskette (WordPerfect preferred), and must not have already been published or submitted elsewhere. Receipt of all manuscripts will be acknowledged. You may contact the editor at the address below if you wish to discuss the suitability of your proposed writing project prior to actual submission. Articles will be evaluated using a blind-reviewing process. Authors are
responsible for obtaining permission from the copyright owner to use any material from another source. Authors will retain copyright. Citations in bibliographies must be formatted according to the most recent edition of the Chicago Manual of Style.

submitted by Linda Milgrom

Those of you who teach PubMed to end users will be pleased to know that NLM has updated the workbook. The new manual, intended to be used as a reference for a 2-4 hour class, includes Loansome Doc, the MeSH Browser and several other features added to the search system since the last edition. The workbook is available in PDF, PostScript and Word Perfect formats at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/web_based.html.

submitted by NNLM PNR <nnlm@u.washington.edu> (originally posted on MedLib-L)

NLM ANNOUNCES: ART EXHIBITION at National Museum of Health & Medicine
Now Booking Other Venues

A unique exhibition that explores links between art, health care and healing will become available for bookings in medical libraries, museums and art galleries, beginning in 1999.

"All the Symptoms of an Artist: Working from Medicine" is currently at the National Museum of Health & Medicine in Washington DC, where it runs through January 3, 1999. The seven featured artists are all current or former health care practitioners. The curator, Cynthia Roznoy, shares this dual background: an art historian and manager of the Whitney Museum of Art's museum in Stamford, Connecticut, she is a former nurse.

"Symptoms" first opened in Philadelphia this summer, at the Esther Klein Gallery of the University City Science Center. A critic for the Philadelphia "Inquirer" lauded the show's fine premise and especially Elizabeth Hill's "striking figurative sculptures" and Frederick Franck's "softly meditative" zen-like paintings. The "Weekly"'s art critic described June Ahren's sculptures as "elegant and hauntingly spare," Cynthia Stone's "unnervingly attractive color field paintings, [which move in a] delightfully dangerous way." And Libbie Soffer's textile works as "surreal winners." The artists in the show all exhibit regularly in galleries and museums throughout the United States and overseas. June Ahrens was recently awarded the best artist/Advocacy by the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. A former public health and emergency nurse, she is currently an artist-in-residence at a homeless shelter. One of her works, "Used and Worn" is a carefully assembled installation of 500 used bars of soap, each assigned its own empty sardine can and then adhered in a tight grid to a wall. The 5-by-6-foot work shows soaps that Ahrens has collected from people of all walks of life. It is at once a send-up of minimalism and an evocation of the evanescence of life.

The exhibition at the National Museum of Health & Medicine is free to the public, open seven days a week, and located at the Walter Reed Medical Army Base. Several gallery talks with the curator or artists are scheduled for September and October.

The show can be reconfigured for various size spaces, varying from approximately 1000-2500 square feet, and including upwards of 20 works. It rents for $6500-10,000 per venues (for 10-12 week periods), depending on the nature of the institution. Johnson & Johnson sponsored the initial tour. Openings for 1999, 2000 and 2001 are now being offered.

For further information, call Betsy Self, OATH (Organization for Artists Trained in Health Care), at 215 849 5790. Or fax 215 849 5791, or email: muxe@erols.com

submitted by Nancy Press (originally posted to HLIB-NW, 10-2-98)

*Cheryl Goodwin* and *Mary Ellen Lemon* are highlighted by NLM for National Medical Librarians Month!

Note the web site at NLM: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/lo/profiles98/medlibmonth98.html

ALAWON Volume 7, Number 125
ISSN 1069-7799 October 13, 1998

American Library Association Washington Office Newsline

In this issue: (217 lines)

[1] WIPO COPYRIGHT TREATY AND TERM EXTENSION BILLS CLEAR
CONGRESS; DANGEROUS DATABASE BILL DERAILED BUT BOUND TO RETURN IN 1999
[2] DIGITAL MILLENNIUM COPYRIGHT ACT GUIDE
[3] COPYRIGHT TERM EXTENSION ACT GUIDE
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[1] WIPO COPYRIGHT TREATY AND TERM EXTENSION BILLS CLEAR CONGRESS; DANGEROUS DATABASE BILL DERAILED BUT BOUND TO RETURN IN 1999

By separate voice votes taken on October 12 and 7 respectively, both chambers of Congress have approved the conference report (105-796) on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (H.R. 2281) and on identical versions of the Copyright Term Extension Act (S. 505). President Clinton has indicated that he will sign the bills.

Those actions bring to a close more than three years of intensive work by ALA, library supporters and other groups to shape the national and international debate over how best to update the nation's copyright laws for the digital age. Significantly, the H.R. 2281 conference committee deliberately elected not to include in its report the Collections of Information Antipiracy Act (S. 2291/H.R. 2652), a proposal to provide sweeping new legal protection for collections of information, including those not presently protected by copyright.

While the legislative debate about how to implement the new WIPO copyright treaties and whether to add 20 years to the term of copyright protection may be over, both bills as finally adopted present ongoing opportunities and pitfalls for libraries, archives and educational institutions. Moreover, fierce legislative debate over database protection is expected to resume in earnest shortly after the new 106th Congress convenes in late January 1999.

Here is a brief guide to what Congress has done in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Copyright Term Extension Act ... and left libraries to do in the future:
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[2] DIGITAL MILLENNIUM COPYRIGHT ACT GUIDE

PURPOSE: Update the current Copyright Act for the digital environment and conform U.S. law to the requirements of new World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties negotiated in Geneva in December 1996.

FUTURE LIBRARY ROLE: As detailed below, assuring that all kinds of copyrighted works remain available for fair use (and other lawful uses). The adoption of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act could depend in large part upon the success of librarians and library supporters in collecting and organizing evidence of the law's adverse or potentially adverse effects. In addition, librarians will have the opportunity to assist the Register of Copyrights in making recommendations to Congress early in 1999 as to whether (and, if so, how) the Copyright Act should be updated to better facilitate distance education.

KEY PROVISIONS: ALA, together with other major national library associations and its partners in the Digital Future Coalition, has struggled to maintain the traditional balance in copyright law between protecting information and affording access to it by: 1) helping Congress to craft entirely new law with this balance in mind; and 2) updating information users' existing rights and privileges to take changed technologies and practices into account. These efforts necessarily implicated many parts of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act identified with separate headings below:

TITLE I: NEW PROHIBITIONS ON CIRCUMVENTION OF PROTECTION TECHNOLOGIES

* Prohibits the "circumvention" of any effective "technological protection measure" (e.g., a password or form of encryption) used by a copyright holder to restrict access to its material;
* Prohibits the manufacture of any device, or the offering of any service, primarily designed to defeat an effective "technological protection measure;"
* Defers the effective date of these prohibitions for two years and 18 months, respectively;
* During those two years, and then every three years thereafter, requires the Librarian of Congress (through the office of the Register of Copyrights), to conduct a formal "on the record" rulemaking proceeding to determine whether the "anti-circumvention" prohibition will "adversely affect" information users' (both individuals and institutions) "ability to make noninfringing uses" of "a particular class of copyrighted works" (NOTE: the term "class" was deliberately left undefined, but is intended to be fairly narrow, e.g., history texts, digital map personal finance software);
* Requires that the Librarian issue a three-year waiver from the anti-circumvention prohibition with respect to any class of work to which the new law has adversely affected (or is likely to affect) access for fair use and other noninfringing uses;
* Exempts nonprofit libraries, archives and educational institutions from criminal penalties and allows for nullification of any civil fine when such an institution can demonstrate that it had no reason to be aware that its actions violated the new law;
* Expressly states that many valuable activities based on the Fair Use Doctrine (including reverse engineering, security testing, privacy protection and encryption research) will not constitute illegal "anticircumvention;"
* Makes no change to the Fair Use Doctrine, or to other information user privileges and rights;

 

 

TITLE II: LIMITATIONS ON ONLINE SERVICE PROVIDER LIABILITY

* Exempts any "online service provider" or carrier of digital information (including libraries) from copyright liability based solely on the content of a transmission made by a user of the provider's or carrier's system (e.g., the user of a library computer system);
* Establishes a mechanism for avoiding copyright infringement liability based upon the storage of infringing information on an online service provider's own computer system, or upon the use of "information location tools" and hyperlinks, if the provider acts "expeditiously to remove or disable access to" infringing material identified in a formal notice by the copyright holder.

 

 

TITLE IV: INCLUDES DIGITAL PRESERVATION AND DISTANCE EDUCATION

  DIGITAL PRESERVATION

   * Updates the current preservation provision of the Copyright Act (Sec.108) to:

-- expressly permit authorized institutions to make up to three, digital preservation copies of an eligible copyrighted work;
-- electronically "loan" those copies to other qualifying institutions;
-- permit preservation, including by digital means, when the existing format in which the work has been stored becomes obsolete.

 

  DISTANCE EDUCATION

* Charges the Register of Copyrights with reporting to Congress within six months of the bill's effective date on "how to promote distance education through digital technologies";
* Encourages the Register to formulate such recommendations as statutory proposals
* Specifies eight factors to be considered by the Register, including: "the extent to which the availability of licenses for the use of copyrighted works in distance education through interactive digital networks should be considered in assessing eligibility for any distance education exemption...."
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[3] COPYRIGHT TERM EXTENSION ACT GUIDE

PURPOSE: To extend by 20 years the length of protection afforded to works created by both individuals and corporate copyright holders.

FUTURE LIBRARY ROLE: By taking full advantage of the limited but important exemption described below, libraries, archives and nonprofit educational institutions can minimize the practical impact of this unfortunate legislation.

KEY PROVISIONS:

* Extends the term of copyright from "life +50 years" to "life +70 years" for individual authors and to 95 years from 75 years for corporate "creators";
* Applies both prospectively and to all works still under copyright on the bill's effective date;
* Includes an exception permitting libraries, archives and nonprofit educational institutions to treat a copyrighted work in its last (new) 20 years of protection as if it were in the public domain for noncommercial purposes, provided that:

1) a good faith investigation has determined that the work is "not subject to normal commercial exploitation," and
2) such use of the work stops if the copyright owner provides notice to the contrary (even if the work had never before been exploited).
_________________________________________________________________

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