In through the outfield

Information Law with Charles Oppenheim

Picture from OneIS

A late night last Thursday due to attending an excellent talk by Professor Charles Oppenheim on information law. The event was the second in a series of talks organised by the wonderfully entrepreneurial information professional Jennifer Smith and sponsored by her OneIS company. Charles generously agreed to make his slides available on the One IS website

For his talk Charles cantered through a range of important and controversial topics, which was described as a chocolate box taster approach rather than an in depth analysis due to time constraints.

Having known Charles for many years I was already aware of his amazing ability – not only to bring what could be quite dry topics to life with amusing examples, but to explain really quite difficult subjects with clarity and brevity.

The topics covered were data protection, personal data, cloud computing, protecting your reputation online, disability discrimination, contracts and last, but by no means least, copyright.

Data protection

This is a notoriously difficult and worrying topic for information professionals, and in fact anyone whole collects data about people in the United Kingdom. It all stems from the Data Protection Act of 1998, and covers information about individuals ranging from the innocuous to highly sensitive. One curious exception to its provenance is financial information, and we spent some time during the lengthy questions and answers session at the end pondering why this might be the case. My theory is that the UK banks recognised the law would have a disruptive impact on their activities, and used their considerable influence to ring-fence this area.

The Data Protection Act is based on the following eight principles, all of which have legal status (either civil or criminal), and is regulated by an Information Commissioner:

1. Personal data must be obtained fairly, and for a bona fide purpose.
2. It can only be used for one or more purpose, which must be clearly specified.
3. The data obtained must be adequate, relevant and not excessive. Charles gave a wonderful example of a town council who included a question on chest size on their form for all new employees. The reason they asked the question was to help them keep their stocks of overalls correct for those staff who did ‘dirty jobs’, such as dustmen and women. However, when a secretary complained about the question the council (and the vast majority elsewhere in the country) were forced to change their policy.
4. The data must be accurate and up to date (where relevant).
5. It should not be kept for longer than necessary. (This led to a discussion of the recent news story about the UK police being forced to delete their DNA records of innocent civilians after six years, instead of keeping them forever).
6. The data should be processed in accordance of the rights of individuals, who retain the right to sue for inaccurate information.
7. It must be protected from loss, damage or destruction.
8. It must not be transferred outside the European Economic Area. (This led to a discussion of Google and Amazon data servers which are based in the United States).

Charles then went on to give brief overviews of five more information law topics:

1. Cloud Computing – In particular the risks of exporting or storing data outside of the European Economic Area. Many organisations are not aware that by using Google or Amazon S3 servers their data is being stored in the United States, and so in breach of UK law.

2. Protecting your reputation online:

-       This topic was about slander (temporary) and libel (published) where the reputation of an individual is harmed by false statements, to more than one ‘third’ party.

-       It only applies if there is a reputation to be harmed. So saying Jeffrey Archer is a crook would not be libellous.

-       An email to an individual is not libellous, but if it leaks out to others, then it becomes so.

-       This is a particularly thorny topic due to the big differences in libel law between countries, in particular between the United States and the UK. We currently have the strictest libel laws in the world.

-       Charles recommended regularly ‘Googling’ yourself to see what has been written about you online.

3. Disability discrimination – How you must make reasonable adjustments to cater for those with disabilities.

4. Contract law – This consists of five key elements. Offer and acceptance, consideration, intention to create legal relations, legal capacity and formalities. Charles reviewed the three levels of formality. 1. A verbal or email agreement (unlikely to accepted in court). 2. An email with a digital signature (generally accepted as binding). 3. An email with a signature and full encryption (full legal strength).

5. Copyright – Charles ended on this most complicated and controversial topic which led on to a lengthy question and answer session. He wanted to ensure we were all aware of the fact that just because content was freely available on the Internet, this did not mean it was not covered by copyright law. He recommended using sites such as Flickr which are covered under Creative Commons licences.

Free vs Fee – the Future of News – SLA Europe meeting 3 November

Another successful SLA Europe event this evening, this time at the swanky venue of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, five minutes away from Blackfriars station.

The hot topic was Free vs Fee – the Future of News. And stemmed from the fact that most newspapers have offered their content via the Internet for free with the expectation that display advertising would create enough revenue to cover the cost of creating and distributing their content. However, with the continuing decline in physical newspaper sales and the softening of the display advertising market, news organisations are exploring new ways to charge for their digital content.

On the panel were Jeremy  Lawson  VP Sales, EMEA, Dow Jones & Company, Andrew Hughes – Commercial Director for the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA), Laurence C. Rafsky Ph.D. – CEO of Acquire Media and Laurence Kaye – Principal at Laurence Kay Solicitors. The panel was excellently moderated by Donald Roll – Managing Director, Europe for Alacra.

Here are my notes from the evening:

Don Roll introduced the evening by talking about the steep decline in newspaper circulation, the recent arrival of the first free quality newspaper in the form of the London Evening Standard, and how the NLA wants to ensure newspaper publishers receive payment for web content.

Andrew Hughes – NLA initiatives

NLA are moving towards creating a set of licences for commercial use of newspaper websites.

UK newspapers spend £1b a year in creating this content, which is quite different from paper published information. For example 31% of newspaper websites has never appeared in print.

The plan is that for those who charge for access to newspaper content will be charged by the NLA, who will also charge end user clients for access to content.

Existing licences will be extended and new ones created where necessary

e-Clips Web – Working to improve access to content by using newspaper CMS systems.

Laurence Kay – The legal view – 10 key points

1. Professional journalism, ‘trusted content’ and UGC (user generated content)

2. Change takes time! Business models and culture takes time to change.

3. Global Media / local copyright?

4. If content is going to be free, why does copyright matter? Provides the framework for access and usage rights.

5. B2B versus consumer copyrights

6. ‘Effects-based’ approach to copyright. Helps to work out how to apply rules to the real world. Look at the commercial impact of activities.

7. ‘Legal’ versus ‘Illegal’ content. When to take action or technical measures over infringements.

8. Who are the ‘intermediaries’ in the value chain? E.g. Where does Google fit in? Searched for or ‘scraped’ conent?

9. ‘Fair Use’. Big variations across Europe. United States has a broad definition. If the use is commercial is that no longer fair use?

10. We are still lacking 21^st century infrastructure to cope with licensing and payments for use.

Laurence C. Rafsky – What do we mean by free?

Once freedom has been tasted there is no going back.

Value chain –

1. professionally produced but given away selectively – e.g. advertiser supported
2. Non-professional content
3. Gifted professional content. E.g. Stephen King novel
4. Free to some but not others
5. Content that should not be free.

Two enemy camps

1. Information wants to be free – the hippies
2. Corporate suits who want to charge for everything

The solution will need to be  a compromise.

A question for the NLA to consider:

Do you use copyrighted material for commercial gain without payment to content owners?

Do you use copyrighted material for commercial gain without permission from the content owners as we understand it?

The crux of the debate is between these two viewpoints.

Can we separate business use from personal use? Google don’t distinguish between the two.

Jeremy  Lawson – Supporting publishers and their right to monetise their content.

Questions from the audience:

Did the newspaper industry start digging its own grave by giving away content?

New York Times started with some free and mainly fee access. They ended it because when compared pay per click ads versus pay for access would give ten times the revenue. But as ad revenues fall they may go back to first model.

Should be driven by economics.

Do you think news aggregators are a serious threat to publishers?

Links are fine, but extracts complicate the issue as readers may not link through to content. But as web content grows and newspaper content becomes a smaller fraction, increasing hits to newspaper sites lose their economic value to the publishers.

85% of newspaper traffic comes via Google. So should Google pay the majority share?

Is the Kindle from Amazon a potential future model for subscription access to newspaper content?

Disagreement – ability to break news up into selected streams for readers counts against Kindle model.

When will paper newspapers die?

Laurence C. Rafsky predicted that by 2030 newspapers would cease to exist in paper form as a  mainstream product.

He compares their future to candles today – they will become a decorative only production.

As he pointed out, if you had a choice, why would you use paper for something that only has a value for a few hours, and then you need to scan it to create a digital version which can be archived.

B2B vs B2C

Issues about consumers within a business environment – now that the genie is out of the bottle, how do you get individuals in a corporate environment to accept paying for information.

The event was kindly sponsored by Dow Jones.

The Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals

I had a feeling my last post (Would a librarian by any other name smell just as sweet) might not be my final word on the subject.

What I hadn’t anticipated was just how much heat the name change vote would generate. It is quite rare to see information professionals in ‘passionate mode’, but this issue has brought plenty out of the woodwork on discussion lists, blogs, facebook and twitter. Here are links to a selection; Am I a Strategic Knowledge Professional, ‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy

As I mentioned before, the membership of SLA contains 2,000 different job titles, what I wasn’t aware of was the fact that only 25% of members use the title librarian. So already the term is a minority within the organisation.

Amongst the passionate comments attacking the new name have been a few calmer rational ones which I include below:

• If we were not called the Special Libraries Association I believe many more people who are in the information profession would find a professional home with us.  The new name is meant to be broadening and inclusive.
• But I want to be fair: it’s easy to criticise and far harder to take a leadership role and come up with alternative ideas which pedantic old cynics like me might take a shine to and approve!
• SLA leadership has been between a rock and a hard place on this issue for some time and it’s to their credit that they have been trying to do something, even if I don’t hugely like the result.
• I think the old name is life-expired and something new is indeed needed.
  
• Imagine trying to find one name to cover everyone who works in the medical profession. Doctors, consultants, surgeons, nurses, secretaries, hospital managers. All quite different jobs all supporting patients either directly or indirectly.

Hopefully the excitement will calm down as we move towards the name change vote in November, and we can start planning for the next 100 years of the association confident in the knowledge that knowledge (sorry couldn’t resist) will still have resonance and meaning in 2109.

Would a librarian by any other name smell just as sweet

Many apologies for taking extreme liberties with Bard again (To Blog or not to Blog? That is the question). This is all part of my attempt to come up with magnetic headlines to bring in readers.

Anyway on to the meat of this topic. The SLA (formerly The Special Library Association) has just (10 minutes ago) proposed a name change for the one hundred year old association.

I should immediately declare my hand and say that I was involved in (perhaps scarred by would be a more appropriate description) a previous re-branding task force which ultimately led to a name change vote at the Annual Conference in New York in 2003. Needless to say the name did not get changed on that day, although it was a close run thing, falling short of the two-thirds majority required by just a few votes.

Since then the information world has become even more fragmented with all kinds of information roles that don’t have the ‘L’ word in their title. Knowledge Manager, Intranet Manager, Competitive Intelligence Manager, Information Resources Manager are just some examples of the 2,000 different job titles held by SLA members. This new breed of information professionals need to feel that the SLA is a suitable home for them as well, of course, librarians working in specialised organisations.

Even more import are the research findings of a two year project lead by Fleishman Hillard (a leader in international marketing and communications). They tested a range of information profession related concepts and words and showed conclusively that anything with the ‘L’ word such as librarian or library were not perceived as valuable by senior managers. To quote Janice Lachance from her recent Sticks and Stones article in the latest issue of Information Outlook ;
Like detergent, the word ‘librarian’ is an accurate description of function, but not a value proposition. It says what you do for living, but it does not say what you can do for your organisation. Moreover, the research shows that ‘librarian’ is perceived as being dusty and antiquated-two words that should not be connected with either a profession or a professional association that prides itself on being ahead of the curve.

Working as I do at the British Library, which under the leadership of Lynne Brindley has established itself not only as a forward looking organisation engaging with cutting edge technology such as the award winning Turning the Pages, but has also proved itself to be of significant cultural and economic importance for Britain. To which the Business & IP Centre by supporting new businesses has contributed in its own small way.

However, from my previous sixteen years managing a specialist information service in a corporate environment, I recognise the problem of using the ‘L’ word in a commercial and business context. In my experience senior managers and directors are far more impressed with colleagues who are providing insights and identify trends, creating competitive advantage, anticipating industry changes, facilitating good decision making, providing value-added intelligence, sharing knowledge and using innovative technologies. Needless to say these were all terms which tested positively in the Fleishman Hillard research. And although in many many cases this is exactly what specialised librarians are actually doing, unfortunately their senior colleagues are likely to be judging them on their job title instead.

Below is the full text of the email anouncing the proposed name change:

Dear Neil:

John Cotton Dana, who founded SLA a century ago, wrote, “The name Special Libraries was chosen with some hesitation, or rather in default of a better…”  We, as special librarians and information professionals you have elected to SLA’s Board of Directors, believe that validated research has identified a better name, one that will help all of us communicate our value in the workplace.

We are excited to propose that SLA change its name to the Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals, or ASKPro.  We encourage all SLA members to voice their opinion on this proposal by casting an electronic vote in a special referendum that will begin on 16 November and end 9 December. The result will be announced on 10 December.

The choice of this proposed name began when the board concluded in June that the alignment research conducted over the past three years revealed a clear challenge posed by SLA’s name:  executives who make hiring decisions and allocate budget dollars do not understand what it means.  Furthermore, they do not recognize or appreciate the contributions that special librarians and information professionals are making now or the potential they hold for building more successful organizations in the future.  This disconnect endangers the jobs of our members, and we are determined to act.

The proposed name is the result of the same rigorous process used in the Alignment Project research .  We began by compiling words, terms and critical concepts that both information professionals and executives agree best articulate the value and potential of the information profession and the association.  We also received and considered input from members around the globe via Twitter, blogs, e-mail, FaceBook and listservs after the annual conference.  The result was a long list of potential names. We then began eliminating names if they caused confusion, were too close to names already in use, posed legal difficulties, or could have different meanings in various countries. We also eliminated names that did not have good acronyms or shortened versions associated with them.

We feel that the name that emerged, the Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals, strongly ties special librarians and information professionals to the strategic goals of their organizations, increases the perceived value of their services, and stresses their professionalism.  We also want to emphasize that by changing our organization’s name, we will not change the name of our profession.  It is important to note, that in fact, SLA members have more than 2,000 different job titles.

Before settling on our proposed name, we subjected it to a survey of U.S. and U.K. information professionals and executives in  human resources, marketing, information technology and strategic planning in the corporate, academic, healthcare and government sectors.  The results prove that the proposed name will help us accomplish some important objectives:

• It was well liked, fit well with a description of the association, and was judged relevant and credible.
  
• Executives felt it promotes our members as invaluable assets to their organizations; information professionals said it made them more likely to join the association.
  
• The abbreviated form, ASKPro, was very well received and also fulfilled the desire frequently stated in member discussions for a name with a meaningful acronym or shortened form.

The topic of changing SLA’s name has been much discussed in recent months in a variety of SLA chapter and division listservs and other forums, and board members have heard individually from many members.  We have compiled a list of some of the most frequently stated questions and opinions and responses to them.  In some cases, we have borrowed heavily from the words of members, and we thank all of you for your input.  We hope you will take the time to read this document before continuing the conversation.

You will receive notification on 16 November that the e-vote system is open and have until 9 December to cast your vote.  Please note especially that when and if the new name is approved, it will be a matter of months before the association can put it into use because of various legal requirements, the need for a new “look,” and other technicalities.

As your representatives, we are dedicated to your success, and we firmly believe that adopting a new name for SLA will further that goal.  Ultimately, however, it is up to you to vote on a new name for SLA– the Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals (ASKPro)–and launch us into our second century.

Sincerely,

Gloria Zamora, President, and the SLA Board of Directors

SLA Europe event – The Google-isation of [Re]search

I’m just back from one of the most popular events I can remember in my many years membership of SLA Europe. I’m not sure if it was the catchy title, the interesting speakers or the recent sad closure of the City Information Group that resulted in nearly 100 information professionals gathering in the Balls Brothers rooms at Minster Court this evening.

Kathy Jacobs the Library and Information Manager at Pinsent Masons,  Professor David Nicholas Director of the Department of Information Studies at University College London and Professor Roger James Director of Information Services at University of Westminster talked about how Google is influencing our research behaviours, the challenges this brings to information professionals, as well as the opportunities new search technologies offer.

I should point out that as a rather hastily appointed Chair for the event, my view of the evening might be somewhat skewed. For a more balanced view from the audience I recommend you check out the Organising Chaos blog review. Melanie Goody has also written a short review on the TFPL blog. Sara at Uncooked Data has a more in depth review which I recommend reading.

Dave Nicholas was as controversial as I remember from way back when he was my lecturer at North London Poly (as it was then). He concentrated on the ‘D’ words of dis-intermediation and de-coupling caused by the Internet in general and Google in particular. He pointed out how we as information professionals can’t see what is going on in the digital space. Which has led him to monitor how researchers behave in cyber-space. His evidence shows that consumers want to dive in and out quickly, snatching bits of information. They want everything short and bite sized, preferring abstracts to full content. They scan web pages vertically, zooming past headings and sub-headings, instead of reading horizontally taking in the full text of every paragraph.

One of his most memorable points (which I have only just remembered four days later) was the views of consumers of a health information screen located in a Tesco branch. People seemed to assume that the information came from Tesco and were happy with that trusted brand as a source. However, when informed the content was actually coming from the National Health Service their confidence plummeted. As David put it, Tesco don’t make mistakes, wherease the NHS regularly lets its customers die.

Kathy Jacob reported on her real life experience of going from a meeting with a new manager who wanted to know why they needed a research library when ‘everything could be found with a Google search’, to building a federated search tool for her current firm. The lessons learnt were that the new system must have an equivalent usability, design and speed to Google in order for staff to even try it out. Kathy had the advantage of working in the legal sector, which enabled her to scare researchers with horror stories of cases which had collapsed due to relying on Google searches. In some cases the cost to the law firms involved and subsequent negative impact on the careers of the lawyers concerned were high.

Roger James began his session by asking the audience some provocative questions such as ‘who does the work for Google’? And ‘what is the next big search technology coming down the line’. The answer in both cases is ‘we are’. Every time we click on a link in Google we help them refine their search capability. He wanted to know how many members of the audience were applying this approach in their workplace. Or were they still relying on the old fashioned concepts of surveying their customers? His view was that unless we all join the Google ‘arms race’ we are doomed.

The speakers were followed up with a lively question and answer session from the audience. Which was followed by some intensive networking aided by tasty food and wine sponsored by EBSCO Information Services.

Saving Britain’s business future

The September issue of Real Business magazine has two mentions of the Business & IP Centre which are so flattering I can’t resist sharing them here.

In an article titled Saving Britain’s future, Charles Orton-Jones produces a 10-point manifesto to rescue Britain’s economy. At number three on the list is Open Business & IP Centres in six cities. To quote the initial text,
‘In 2006, the British Library opened the Business & IP Centre. The centre fuses the British Library’s vast repository of databases and commercial documents with a plethora of services for entrepreneurs – a sort of Pimp my Business Link.’

A few pages later on, in the article 27 champions of entrepreneurial Britain, Catherine Woods puts the British Library in at number 15 – behind Peter Jones, but ahead of Alan Sugar and Richard Branson.

Business Librarians’ Association conference

As I mentioned a while back (To Blog or not to Blog? That is the question), I was invited to speak on a panel at the  Business Librarians’ Association (formally BBSLG) annual conference in Dublin. The chair of the session David Meehan has just posted a short review of the session with some kind remarks relating to my contribution.

My fellow panellists were Dr. John Breslin (Electronic Engineering, NUIG; Researcher at DERI) speaking about the social semantic web, and Ian Manzie (Business Manager Ireland, Thomson Reuters) on their new web-based ‘Academy’ approach to training users.

Librarians – No more excuses – says Stephen Abram

Stephen Abram is always a thought provoking speaker and his talk entitled No More Excuses, at last months SLA annual conference in Washington was no exception.

I am grateful to Woodsie Girl for reminding me of some of his salient points to add to my notes.

Stephen pointed out how the recent SLA funded alignment research had shown how our customers and managers often think more highly of us than we do. He wanted to know why librarians and information professionals are so shy about telling the world about how great we and our services are.

It makes him angry that we appear to be a profession of introverted complainers. This is not the way to survive and prosper during the current economic and future technological challenges we face.

How do we get to the next level?

Alignment research has shown others think more highly of us than we do.

Why are librarians and info-pro’s so shy about telling the world about how great we are?

Stephen quoted from You matter from Seth Godin’s blog:
• When you love the work you do and the people you do it with, you matter.
• When you are so gracious and generous and aware that you think of other people before
yourself, you matter.
• When you leave the world a better place than you found it, you matter.
• When you continue to raise the bar on what you do and how you do it, you matter.
• When you teach and forgive and teach more before you rush to judge and demean, you
matter.
• When you touch the people in your life through your actions (and your words), you
matter.
• When kids grow up wanting to be you, you matter.
• When you see the world as it is, but insist on making it more like it could be, you matter.
• When you inspire a Nobel Prize winner or a slum dweller, you matter.
• When the room brightens when you walk in, you matter.
• And when the legacy you leave behind lasts for hours, days or a lifetime, you matter.

Stephen said we had no excuses—only reasons, and that if you have two lists of innovation limiters and encouragers, which list is longer?
Think…what’s the difference between an excuse and a reason?
Here are our TOP TEN reasons why [we can’t do things].
10. Innovation sparks dissonance and discomfort.
9. Innovation increases the amount of seeming failures.
8. Results only show up long term.
7. More meetings.
6. CEOs conserve resources. Innovation requires more resources.
5. Innovation flies in the face of analysis.
4. The perceived absence of time.
3. Over-reliance on cost-cutting and incremental improvement.
2. Inability to enroll a committed team of champions.
1. Insufficient conviction that innovation will make a difference.

So, I leave you with this—DREAM BIG. There’s no excuse. Your impact is so great and
powerful that it would be immoral not to make your dreams come true. SLA is there for you on
an international basis to help you with those dreams and making a difference in the world. Live
and learn. Network and enjoy. Say “yes” every chance you get. Put yourself in the way of being
asked to volunteer. Say “yes” to SLA and more. Be part of the change you want to see. Choose
to have an impact, an important impact.

CiG – RIP

Irony is a tricky topic as Alanis Morriset discovered a few years ago.

And perhaps ‘tragic’ is a more appropriate term for hearing the news halfway through Wednesday night’s SLA Europe Summer Soiree to celebrate 100 years of the Association, that the City Information Group was no more.

As a member of the group for nearly 20 years, I was saddened to hear of its demise. As Tim Buckley Owen points out in detail, they had a distinguished past. I certainly found their educational sessions to be of great interest and relevance to my career development. And of course their summer and winter parties were legendary.

Melanie Goody (one of the founding committee members) also recalls its glory days when it boasted over 1,000 members, on the TFPL blog.

On her View from the Hill blog Sue Hill says it is ‘A time to weep for the departed and to celebrate the survivors.’

It will be interesting to see if the existing GiG membership decide to join one of the remaining information bodies and associations.

Initial thoughts about SLA 2009 conference

Although I have yet to make it back home as planned, thanks to missing my Thursday evening flight, I have been mulling over the SLA 2009 Conference in Washington DC.

Here are some initial thoughts:

It was fascinating to hear Colin Powell talk about some of his experiences in his long and mainly distinguished career  (many of the American librarians I talked to have not yet forgiven him for failing to dissuade President Bush from invading Iraq). Although his support for the Barack Obama in October 08 has somewhat softening their criticism of him. He has become a big fan of Web 2.0 technologies, and tries hard to keep up with his grand children. He expressed concern that America may have over-reacted to the 9/11 atrocity by making it too hard for tourists and foreign students to get visa permits. He felt this was damaging the economy of the United States as well as limiting the opportunity to promote the benefits of democracy and freedom.

I think the highlight of the trip was a night-time visit to the Library of Congress on Capitol Hill. The round reading room was a thing of beauty. I was lucky enough to be allowed behind the counter and down (a tiny flight of stairs) into the space below.

The round reading room

Underneath the round reading room

Underneath the round reading room

For the initial views of a first timer to the event I suggest you look at woodsiegirl’s blog post.