Libraries and

the Digital Now

English Scholars Beyond

Boarders 3rd

Annual

Conference. Providence

University, Taichung, Taiwan.

May 20, 2016

Dubhgan HincheyJapan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

The library of tomorrow

should be better than the

library of today.

- Cory Doctorow from, "An elegy for a book'.

Hardin (1968) introduced the concept of the “tragedy of the commons”.

Private property rights are the solution to the destruction of an unregulated ‘commons’.

Example: Goats are grazing in communal areas that are unregulated, hence destroying the communal space of the mountain slope via erosion from overgrazing and damaging young trees.

Heller (1998) proposed the tragedy of the anticommons, over privatization of resources with multiple right holders, prevents utilization of a resource.

Example: The PiercefieldHouse as a current Tragedy of the Anticommons. Efforts to repair or restore the house were unsuccessful. Currently, "the main house has been separated from the land and parceled off into an off-shore company".

Tragedy of the Commons • Unregulated, communal spaces will be over used and destroyed since no one

individual has a vested interest in preserving the communal space.

Solution = Private property

Tragedy of the Anticommons• Over privatization of resources with multiple right holders, prevents utilization of

a resource.

Solution = Incentivizing right holders to negotiate, reform legal barriers.

Tragically,

In a digital environment, both tragedies are solved.

Boyle (2003), states property law defines tangible property (physical stuff) as having two characteristics

•Rivalrous in use (I can't eat the apple that you are eating.)

•Susceptible to overuse (Overfishing in a lake.)

BUT,

Digital resources can never be rivalrous in use because infinite, perfect copies of a resource can be made at almost no cost.

• This then solves the problem of overuse and underuse. Everyone who wants a digital resource can have it, with no determent to other potential users.

BECAUSE,

Yup, particularly extended copyright resulting in less print books and eBooks.

• Extension of copyright "limited term“. The Sony Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, copyright term retroactively extended to 95 years maximum.

• Limited economic value. Only famous books continue to produce profits over time with most books becoming out of print.

• Fewer copyrighted print & eBooks. 4 times more editions of public domain books v. copyrighted books. More books under extended copyright (post 1923) are out-of-print or not available as an eBook.

• Orphaned works are not utilized. Copyright law makes institutions risk adverse, i.e. institutions with orphaned works do not make them available, derivative works are also not created.

Umm, Copyright?

We have a legal structure in the form of extended copyright trying to impose restrictions on digital resources that by nature are unrestrictable.

• You don't own the eBooks that you purchase that are locked with Digital Rights Management software or systems.

• The eBooks that you have subscribed to (not purchased) are tied to single user accounts or a few devices.

• Print books are covered under the First Sales Doctrine, but eBooks are not. Therefore libraries own less books, but pay more to companies like OverDrive or 3M to provided eBooks access to patrons.

In summary,

What is an Open Educational Resource if not a some form of a derivative work?

• No commons to use to create derivative works extremely limits creation of new, digital educational resources.

• EFL teacher has to create (time consuming) materials for online use or subscribe/purchase (expensive) to online sites that host the materials.

• Libraries spend more for fewer books, with no option to own eBooks. • DRM makes devices and systems more susceptible to hacking because reporting software

bugs is illegal.• Current legal systems surrounding eBooks is the opposite of the open access movement

and the mashup/maker movement.

So what?

Public domain eBooks via Project Gutenberg and Public domain audio books via Librivox.

• Both Projects have cleared books as open domain as defined by U.S. copyright law. • Works of both projects share the creative commons license which encourages the

creation of dirivative works (class materials) with the citation of source. • All books are online and accessible in different formats (.txt, .epub, .mobi, .html, & mp3).• Books are somewhat searchable via outdated bookshelves, author, title, and sometimes

genre.

What is missing is the lexical metadata that EFL students would need in order to find a level appropriate eBook and audio book.

But wait,

Magic of Pearl scripts and open sourced software

• Collected text => Cleaned text => Counted total tokens => Ran tests and compared with Common Core. (Common Core frequency list , most common words from COCA and BNC)

• Readability tests: Flesch Ease, Kincaid, and Fog. • Overlap with each ban of the Common Core. 4 bands plus off list tokens.

• Collected gutenberg_ids for each eBook via 4 Project Gutenberg bookshelves.

• Cross references with Librivox for an audio book version of the same eBook and checked for illustrations.

60

65

70

75

80

85

90

95

100

level 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 6

Core Library: 535 eBooks

Flesch Score Core1&2

Level 1: 60 eBooks

Level 2: 129 eBooks Level 3:

133 eBooks

Level 4: 133 eBooks

Level 5: 61 eBooks

Level 6: 21 eBooks

40

50

60

70

80

90

100To

tal 4 8

12

16

20

24

28

32

36

40

44

48

52

56

60

64

68

72

76

80

84

88

92

96

10

0

10

4

10

8

11

2

11

6

12

0

12

4

12

8

13

2

13

6

14

0

14

4

14

8

15

2

15

6

16

0

16

4

16

8

17

2

17

6

Peripheral Library: 181 eBooks

Flesch Score Core 1&2

0

20000

40000

60000

80000

100000

120000

140000

160000

11111111111122222222222222222222222222333333333333333333333333333444444444444444444444444445555555555556666

Levels & Length of 535 eBooks

Total Tokens

A

B

C

A

B

D

E

F

G

G

A

B

C

D

www.dubhgan.com/moodle

References

Note: The Lessig (2000) paper is not freely accessible on the Internet, but behind a paywall at HeinOnline.

Akerlof, G. A., Arrow, K. J., Bresnahan, T. F., Buchanan, J. M., Coase, R. H., Cohen, L. R., Friedman, M., Green, J. R., Hahn, R., Hazlett, T. W., Hemphill, S. C., Litan, R. E., Noll, R. G., Schmalensee, R., Shavell, S., Varian, H. R. & Zeckhauser, R. J. (2002). The copyright term extension act of 1998: An economic analysis. Washington DC: AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies. Retrieved October 27, 2015 from http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2002/05/copyright-litan

Boyle, J. (2003). The second enclosure movement and the construction of the public domain. Law and contemporary problems, 33-74.http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1273&context=lcp

Brauneis, R. (2015). A Brief Illustrated Chronicle of Retroactive Copyright Term Extension. Social Science Research Network. Retrieved October 30, 2015 from http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2611311

Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Science, 162(3859), 1243-1248. https://www.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243.full

Heald, P. J. (2008). Property rights and the efficient exploitation of copyrighted works: an empirical analysis of public domain and copyrighted fiction best sellers. Minnesota Law Review, 92, 1031.http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=955954

Heald, P. J. (2014). How Copyright Keeps Works Disappeared. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 11(4), 829-866. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2290181

Heller, M. A. (1998). The tragedy of the anticommons: property in the transition from Marx to markets. Harvard law review, 621-688. http://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1608&context=articles

Korn, N. (2009). In from the Cold: An assessment of the scope of ‘Orphan Works’ and its impact on the delivery of services to the public. JISC and the Collections Trust. Retrieved November 5, 2015 from http://sca.jiscinvolve.org/wp/ipr-publications/files/2009/06/sca_colltrust_orphan_works_v1-final.pdf

Lessig, L. (2000). Copyright's First Amendment. UCLA L. Rev., 48, 1057.

Rappaport, E. B. (1998). Copyright term extension: Estimating the economic values. Congressional Research Service Report for Congress. Library of Congress. Retrieved October 30, 2015 from http://ipmall.info/hosted_resources/crs/98-144.pdf

References continued

Smith, M. D., Telang, R., & Zhang, Y. (2012). Analysis of the potential market for out-of-print eBooks. Retrieved October 30, 2015 from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2141422

U.S. Copyright Office. (2015). Orphan Works and Mass Digitization: A Report of the Register of Copyrights. Retrieved November 5, 2015 from http://copyright.gov/orphan/reports/orphan-works2015.pdf

Piercefield House. (2016, May 6). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 01:09, May 10, 2016, fromhttps://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Piercefield_House&oldid=718927431