Catechism, and diaspora: from Wikipedia, the Digital Encyclopedia

catechism (pronounced /ˈkætəkɪzəm/; Ancient Greek: κατηχισμός) is a summary or exposition of doctrine, traditionally used in Christian religious teaching …^[1] Catechisms are doctrinal manuals often in the form of questions followed by answers to be memorized.

diaspora (in Ancient Greek, διασπορά – “a scattering or sowing of seeds“) refers to any people or ethnic population forced or induced to leave their traditional homelands, the dispersal of such people, and the ensuing developments in their culture.

I’m wrestlying with what to do about VHS and DVD copy issues that keep raising their ugly heads at my school. More and more, it seems to me, the current state of copyright understanding is built on catechistic principles becoming increasingly untenable and the reality of copyright compliance is being further diluted by the rationalization of the new diaspora of “Digital Natives”.  I characterize these as a diaspora in the purest sense of the word, meaning no disrespect or criticism; the term simply recognizes their wandering from the traditional roots of information access, manipulation and delivery and the emerging strategies for the sharing of ideas that no longer lend themselves to a realia-based copyright model.

Wordplay aside, Web2.0 has rendered “Fair Use” assessments questionable at best and unworkable in practice (although they have always been almost so). A few of the new questions that arise in trying to apply traditional Fair Use guidelines to a digital piece might be;

• Character of Use - In an open-source environment, how might we assess the character of use? Once a work is posted to the web, for example, it can be viewed widely, printed, excerpted, edited and referred in many ways by different users.
• Nature of the copyrighted work - a typical digital document includes a variety of embedded file-types making it difficult to assign a simplistic “nature” to the work.
• Amount and substantiality of the portion used - how can we accurately determine what part of an attributive posting is covered by Creative Commons licence and what is considered proprietary material? How should we assess the percentage of a source being used? Should we measure the percentage of storage used (considering the disparate data-requirements of text vs. sound vs. image or video), the percentage total elapsed straigh play-time coopted or the estimated total interactive user engagement?
• When material is being freely shared over the open web, how can we intuit harm to the Market Value of a piece? Does this suggest that there is no harm, or are their other indicators of “market value” that should be evaluated? (user reviews? blog citations and comments? Hit counts?)

In my library, which is still heavy to “web1.0″ media offerings (non-interactive information delivery packages) several scenarios dominate, being;

1) The teacher who wants us to archive a favorite VHS (no longer available) onto DVD so he/she can continue to use it with his/her laptop and Smartboard.
2) The teacher who wants to create an edited version of a DVD for brevity or censorial purposes (adult content, language, etc)
3) The student who wants to use an extended video clip in a powerpoint, or a commercial music piece to back up a personal video.
4) The administrator who plans to use library videos for rain-day entertainment in the cafeteria.
5) The parent who wants to borrow library videos for what appears to be primarily entertainment purposes.

The first four situations are, in my mind, clear violations of traditional copyright (as I understand it, from an “informed layperson’s” perspective), and I’m constantly finding myself trying to explain or justify our position. But I’m beginning to wonder how much time I should be expending trying to convince people that their requests are illegal, immoral or simply inappropriate due to their questionable nature. Maybe it’s time simply throw in the digital towel and say, “Go for it.”

 If that’s not a viable option, what are some alternative suggestions? I’ve tried posting copyright guidelines, running articles in school publications on Fair Use, offering copyright update sessions on ProD days, and presenting at conferences. Of course I’ll continue to to trot out my current box of trick. But I need some new tools, some new props, perhaps a whole new approach. I’m open to suggestions. 

The situation gets even muddier as we enter the arena of new media formats and delivery systems. this post has rambled on for far too long, but Doug Johnson’s Blue Skunk Blog posting  If I can’t get it legally is it OK to steal it? raises many of the questions regarding media like game soundtracks, theme music and cellphone ringtones. 

Doug doesn’t answer most of the questions either, but perhaps if more rational people continue to talk about these issues, once they get to whatever legislative systems are invoked to deal with them the new agreements will have become part of the lexicon of shared understanding that will help to move things forward. Meanwhile, it’s the wild west revisited when using new media in the emerging virtual (and physical) realities we’re increasingly living in.

What are you doing about Library1.0 lending issues in a Web2.0 world?

Are you still trying to observe the spirit of the DMCA and/or the TEACH Act? Or have you set your sights on Web (and Library) 2.0 and are you spending less time obsessing over “Fair Use” and concentrating on “appropriate” (i.e. educational) use? What’s a morally conscientous but future-oriented teacher-librarian to do?

We’re currently in the throes of discarding our thoughtfully selected (over almost 20 years), meticulously cataloged and carefully managed collection of VHS titles that were, five years ago, one of the highlights of our library. Every visiting group (local universities and schools wanting a taste of what “western” school libraries look like) was ushered into our “Special Collections” area (4500 VHS tapes, 1500 music CD’s, 1000 in-house archival videos, a growing collection of DVDs…) 

There’s a story in itself, in view of Ross Todd’s exhortations that we stop obsessing over collections of “stuff”, but that’s not the issue here. The question is whether we should limit, or even deny use of our replacement collection of DVDs to our school community.

Why would we deny access to our collections? To provide full access to our collections - for our primary users (students and teachers).  But if we do so, are we denying full Library2.0 access to ideas (and opportunities to create new ideas from these)?

On the other hand, is the the whole issue academic? Are DVD’s passe in a Web2.0 world anyway? Is it time to simply abandon “realia” media collections  altogether? Should we just open the gates wide and deal with access issues IF they arise?

As an international school where our students have minimal access to the public libraries,  Borders-quality bookstores and commercial video outlets that populate most neighborhoods in the developed world, we’ve always felt a responsibility to offer our collections for “community” use.  This manifests itself in regular (often daily) use of our facilities by a small cadre of unemployed parental “spouses” who live in the gated community in which our school resides, regular circulation of adult-interest print (e.g. travel and geography titles, along with adult-interest fiction) materials - and, of course, what I’ve called the “Saturday morning Video Club”. These are the parents, who stock up on video titles every Friday. the sheer number of titles they borrow and the timing of these loans suggests that they are not used in an instructional setting, but rather, as an “educational” alternative to the limited cable-tv offerings in Bangkok.

So why is this a problem? A couple of years ago, I published the following in our PTA publication, “the Touchstone”.

Recently, a number of Main Library video titles have not been available on request by teachers during the school day. Following a review of our policies, I have decided that the policies are fine but enforcement has “relaxed” over the years, so have asked Main Library staff to strictly enforce the “Overnight Loan” policy for all video material loaned to anyone other than a classroom teacher.  The policy has been in place for several years, but regular users may sometimes keep titles for several days and may have asked to borrow  items during the school day rather than at the end of the day, once the chance of a classroom request has passed.

From March 1 onward, I have asked staff to provide videos on strict overnight loan to non-teachers for parental review or student extra work on the following basis;

1. Titles may be borrowed following the regular school day between 2:05 and 3:00 (following which we have only one staff member on duty and close down the Special Collections area (including videos)
2. All titles provided on Overnight Loan should be returned between 7:00 and 7:20 the NEXT school day.
3. As we have only a single staff member on duty on Saturdays, we cannot offer video service on Saturday 

We would also like to remind patrons that while ISB’s Main Library holds an impressive video collection, each title in the collection was purchased “with instructional intent”, meaning that it is not our primary purpose to provide weekend entertainment for our students. There are many video outlets available in Bangkok providing this service.

We value the wonderful collections that ISB has built to help every one of our students achieve to his or her potential. Please help us to ensure that these materials are available at all times for their intended use.

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The American Library Association provides the following guidelines for non-instructional use of school-purchased videos.

1. Loan/Rental of Videotapes
Libraries may loan/rent videos to patrons for their personal use. This is true even if the video is labeled “For Home Use Only.” According to (ALA) “a library or school that resells, rents, or lends a copy of a copyrighted videotape, which it owns, is not infringing on the copyright owner’s rights.” Some guidelines to follow when loaning/renting a video to a patron:

·         Libraries should not obscure (i.e., cover or deface) the copyright notice as it appears on the producer’s label.

·         Libraries should not knowingly loan a video for use in public performances. If a patron inquires about a planned performance of a videotape, he or she should be informed that only private uses of it are lawful.

·         Libraries can charge a nominal fee for use of videos…”The fact that a fee is charged is irrelevant; the right to distribute a copy includes the right to rent it — for a fee or deposit or otherwise.”

Check out the ALA “Fact-Sheet” site containing this at;

http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=Library_Fact_Sheets&Template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=24635

The question at hand - Should we continue this policy, or are we justified, given the new access to commercial media, internet sources and social networking options, in locking up our DVD collection and making it available exclusively for teacher preview, instructional use and student review (in-house).