Silicon Valley Chapter | SLA

Solo Librarians Will Discuss IL2009 at November Meeting

The Solo Librarians of the San Andreas Chapter of SLA invite you to join them at their next meeting at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, November 4. Anyone with an interest in libraries is welcome including students and recent grads of the MLIS programs.

Eric Kristofferson will be hosting the meeting at St. Jude Medical at 701 East Evelyn Avenue in Sunnyvale.

We will have a panel of librarians on hand who attended the Internet Librarian conference and will discuss their impressions and experiences. The Internet Librarian conference is taking place in Monterey from October 26 – 28.

You are welcome to bring a snack or dinner to the meeting. Those who are planning to attend need to contact Sonia Dorfman by November 2 at (650) 237-2784 or sdorfmanATneuropaceDOTcom.

St. Jude Medical is at 701 E. Evelyn Avenue, Sunnyvale, 94086-6527 -- between Wolfe & Fair Oaks. Park near the first building and go into the lobby. A map showing the location can be found here:  http://tinyurl.com/ahgt97

-- Sonia Dorfman & Eric Kristofferson
San Andreas Solo Librarians

Corporate Anthropologists Spoke Up at SLA Program October 7

People scientists, not software or hardware scientists, are in the forefront of research for today's high tech products and services. Corporate anthropologists, Melissa Cefkin, IBM Almaden Research Center, and Alexandra Zafiroglu, Intel Corporation, provided an overview of corporate ethnography and shared some recent projects with attendees at the San Andreas Chapter dinner program on October 7.

IBM is in the Services Business...

Melissa studies workplaces in the corporate world for her IBM internal and external clients. As a scientist who studies “services” in a research division of IBM, she observes corporate culture using anthropology field work techniques such as observation and interviews. Anthropologists in the business world focus on the collective group and the mundane to look for connections. After observation and analysis, they build an explanatory model to use in finding opportunities for new services or process design.

Melissa described a project at IBM that studied and analyzed a mobility group in the Philippines. This group manages corporate relocation services for IBM employees moving to or from an Asian country. She used the model that was developed to explain the role of an individual in relation to the social aspects of the work group. One of her challenges has been to educate academic anthropologists about anthropology in the corporate setting. She has edited a book, Ethnography and the Corporate Encounter: Reflections on Research in and of Corporations. One of the attendees won a copy of this book in a drawing at the end of the meeting.

Adoption of Technical Products Involves Social Norms...

Alexandra is an ethnographic researcher and member of the User Experience Team of the Intel Digital Home Group. She focuses on “why” people do what they do, not just “what” they do. Similar to Melissa, she learns from experience, using techniques such as home interviews and participatory design, to make sense of it all. Alexandra described projects that she has worked on that touch on libraries: managing collections, collecting and curating content behavior, and private vs. public spaces in libraries. Her examples included an Indian cell phone and video game vendor, a Japanese curator of print and digital content for personal use, comic book borrowing by Chinese and Korean children, and users feeling “at-home” in the Reed College Library (Portland, OR).

Librarians as Social Scientists...

So, attendees heard two very different examples of anthropologists working in corporations -- a fascinating evening. Librarians also study the communities with whom they work, and think endlessly about how people use and access information -- the context, the cultural biases, the social norms, and also the possibilities. We are somewhat embedded with our subjects, but have some distance to observe and interview and draw conclusions about how to help. Amateur anthropologists? What do you think? Food for thought.

Thanks to our host Lisa Sammon for making the local arrangements and moderating the session. She is with the Intel Library Research Group, who underwrote this program. San Andreas Chapter appreciates Intel's support!

-- Donna Kleiner & Jean Bedord

EBOOKS: A Lively Conversation Between Librarians and Ebook Vendors at the CHM

Additional buying models, different publishing models and the value that tools and special features add to content were some of the topics on August 27, when the San Andreas Chapter convened a panel of ebook publishers and aggregators.

"The Book is Digital" attracted over 50 people for a buffet meal and evening program. The "no Powerpoint" panel discussion was led by Jean Bedord, incoming Program Director for the San Andreas Chapter of SLA. She noted that her San Jose State University library school students still prefer the print form of books, even though they are enrolled in a distance education program with primarily digital materials.

The Library...

The discussion began with our own Helen Josephine, Head Librarian at the Engineering Library of the Terman Engineering Center at Stanford, talking about implementation of a "bookless" engineering library. The initiative is driven by the university president's mandate to increase access to information 24 x 7, while reducing physical items consuming scarce campus space. University funding and availability of ebooks in the science and engineering disciplines are key to her success, as well as Stanford's very successful migration to ejournals. Helen shared survey results which showed that while 49% of students and faculty preferred print books, 81% of students using the online course management system preferred electronic access, and 75% preferred reading articles and books online, rather than printing them out. This is the future for students, faculty and employees.

Helen noted that buying ebooks requires the involvement of lawyers, unlike traditional book buying. Each agreement has different terms and conditions, some based on the vendor's business model and other terms dictated by traditional print publishers whose content is being aggregated into the ebook service. Ebooks also require changes in workflow for acquisitions and cataloging. Findability is a major issue, so ebooks must be included in the main catalog, yet function using links to a vendor's external site.

The Ebook Vendors...

Managing multiple ebook vendors is one of Helen's ongoing challenges, with different content and interfaces for each vendor. Users may prefer one interface over another, so the library may duplicate content across platforms. Stanford's vendors included all of the speakers on the panel, in addition to other . . .

COPYRIGHT? COPYMAYBE: Professional Development Program Held September 22

"The Congress shall have power ... to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." -- Article I, Section 8, Constitution of the United States.

According to a recent Outsell survey of the corporate world, employees spend over five hours per week using content covered by copyright, and over 80% of workers share copyrighted content with their colleagues at least once a week. But are they confident that their usage is compliant with U.S. copyright law? Well, no.

On Tuesday, September 22, Lee Pharis hosted a half-day professional development program, Copyright or Copywrong? at Exponent in Menlo Park. Pharis, Chair of the San Andreas Chapter PD Committee, organized the event, which featured a speaker from the Copyright Clearance Center. The 20 attendees gathered at 8 a.m. for a continental breakfast, and after thanking Information Express for its sponsorship, the session began. Ample study materials were provided, including a copy of the Constitution of the United States of America!

Dru Zuretti, Education Manager at the CCC, began with a quick overview of the types of "respective writings and discoveries" -- trademarks, patents, trade secrets and copyright. Intellectual Property protected by copyright includes: written works, music, drama, pantomine/dance, images, films, sound recordings, architecture (including the building and blueprints), software, and sculpture. The legal terminology -- author, work, copyright owner, orphan works, etc. -- is key to understanding copyright, so Zuretti carefully defined each. Then she dug right to the heart of copyright as it pertains to the corporate environment. She talked about "fair use," and made the point that it is more a defense to a claim of copyright infringement than an exception to copyright compliance.

Zuretti described the bundle of exclusive rights of the copyright owner -- rights that can be retained or transferred together or separately, complicating the situation with any work. She talked about the limitations placed on these rights, in favor of certain categories of libraries and archives, in Section 108 of the Copyright Act.

Questions from potential attendees were compiled and sent to the speaker earlier in September. In the latter part of this session, Zuretti covered remaining questions from those compiled. There was time for additional questions from the audience, as well.

If you missed this professional development session, but would like to know more about copyright, you may go to the CCC's website, http://www.copyright.com/. Under the "Copyright Central" menu, look for the "Basics" page, and you will find lots of very useful content, including links to international agreements as well as the U. S. Copyright Act.

Are you confident that you have sufficient knowledge of copyright? You still might want to give yourself a quick review by watching the CCC's brief "Copyright Basics" video. at: http://216.183.190.29/ .

If you'd like to give us feedback about this program, please fill out our brief SurveyMonkey form. If you'd like to give us suggestions for future Chapter professional development programs -- specific topics or your preferred format -- please take this survey!

Patricia Parsons & Lee Pharis