Very well-done summary of the issues, Chuck. One of the things that has puzzled me as I've watched these controversies bubble up over e-books is that they mirror so closely the issues that we wrestled with a decade and more ago when we started licensing electronic versions of journals. You could just about re-write Chuck's article substituting e-journals and relevant examples & change the date to sometime in the late 90s.
I found the section on the permanence of the scholarly record to be particularly of interest, since it was the eruption of that issue over the controversy surrounding the removal of an article from the journal Human Immunology in late 2001 that led to my own involvement with the topic and brought me to my first Charleston Conference. Now, thanks to the work of many (including Anthony Watkinson in his work with IFLA and STM & Michael Mabe when he was still with Elsevier) there are relatively standard policies and guidelines in place (including in the ICMJE Guidelines) governing retractions and removal of articles. I'm not satisfied with where we are, but certainly the situation is vastly improved over that of a decade ago.
The same story could be told about many of the issues that Chuck raises. Do we really have to go through all of this again?
Scott
T. Scott Plutchak
Director, Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences
University of Alabama at Birmingham
On Dec 7, 2011, at 11:28 PM, "LIBLICENSE" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> From: "Hamaker, Charles" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2011 03:51:00 +0000
>
>
> Since Ebooks are creatures of licenses, some of you might be
> interested in this article just published in Searcher Magazine:
> http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/dec11/Hamaker.shtml
>
> Ebooks on Fire:Controversies Surrounding Ebooks in Libraries
>
> Perhaps the greatest impediment for the transition from the tradition
> of the printed book to the ebook comes from the malleability of the
> etext. While it might not matter to the occasional or recreational
> reader, the ebook presents a host of challenges for the role of the
> book as transmitter, carrier, and shaper of our written word cultural
> heritage.
> Ubiquitous web and print ads tell individuals and libraries to “buy”
> ebooks. But long-term preservation and retention rights to stable
> content are not the norm, because many resellers and vendors don’t
> possess those rights from the publisher or author. Instead of true
> ownership, most ebook “purchases” are more like leases, and leases
> with few residual rights at that. The only way to assure continuing
> access and storage for an ebook is a permanent download to a device
> with rights not governed by strict DRM (Digital Rights Management)
> systems. With content delivered from a hosted service on the web (aka
> the cloud), the “purchaser” has no control over the content. Even
> Google Books bears the disclaimer:
>
> [I]f Google or the applicable copyright holder loses the rights to
> provide you any Digital Content, Google will cease serving such
> Digital Content to you and you may lose the ability to use such
> Digital Content
>
> I'd be interested in seeing any reactions or comments anyone might
> have to this article and the points it raises.
>
> Chuck Hamaker
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