Rights Expression for Scholarly and Educational Information: the Electronic Resource Management Initiative

David SeamanExecutive Director, Digital Library Federation

NISO workshop on rights expression for scholarly and educational information

Sheraton Four Points Hotel Denver, May 18 2005, 8:10-8:45 am

What is the Digital Library Federation?

33 members – major academic and national libraries, including the British Library; 5 allies (CNI; RLG; OCLC; LANL; JISC)

Created in May 1995 by directors of US research libraries (who are active in the work and governance of the organization)

Fills needs not simply met by larger library organizations

Focuses exclusively on digital library needs and strategies for large libraries; nimble, agile, collaborative; practical and strategic,

Clusters of working groups and initiatives

DLF Work -- background

USER SERVICES Dimensions and use of the scholarly information

environment http://www.diglib.org/pubs/scholinfo/ IMS – repository/courseware integration Aquifer: distributed collection of our holdings Google Print partnerships

METADATA STANDARDS AND USE OAI-PMH (The Open Archives Initiative) METS (Metadata Transmission Standard)

DLF Work -- background

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT XML format for license content (ERMI) Registry of Digital Masters (with OCLC)

PRODUCTION Production benchmarks and good practices

PRESERVATION NDIIPP (US Govt. investment in preservation

infrastructure) Global Digital Format Registry

Rights and Licenses: a complex and imperfectly understood landscape

No stakeholder (publisher / purchaser / enforcer / systems vendor) necessarily knows the local realities of the others, or routinely discusses issues across the chain (library well-placed in the middle?)

Relative novelty of the licensed product – rental scholarship rather than owned collections (under-examined phenomena?)

Shift from copyright law constraints and protections to contract law – the license, which can spell out terms and conditions irrespective of what copyright says.

Worrying -- and exciting -- opportunity for machine enforcement -- and enablement -- of license terms

ERM: A high-priority area where standards could facilitate interoperability among stakeholders in a supply chain – DLF ERMI (October 2002-).

As libraries have worked to manage electronic resources, most have found that: their existing Integrated Library Systems lack

important functionality in this area. A number of libraries begun developing local

systems to overcome these shortcomings. The DLF’s ERMI aids the rapid development of

such systems by defining needs and establishing data standards.

Electronic Resource Management (ERM)http://www.diglib.org/standards/dlf-erm02.htm

The challenge simply put

Libraries (and data aggregators) spend huge amounts of time managing licenses

The licenses come in every shape and form; they are often re-keyed into local systems; no re-use of effort; lots of local solutions

Expensive and awkward to convey to users what rights they have

Difficult to answer simple questions across licenses (“can I print this out for the classroom?”)

ERMI Use Case Elements: complex but well understood set of needs

Fair Use Clause Indicator Citation Requirement Details Display Digitally Copy Print Copy Scholarly Sharing Distance Education ILL Print or Fax ILL Secure Electronic Transmission ILL Electronic Course Reserve Print

Electronic Link Permission Course Pack Print Course Pack Electronic Remote Access Walk-in Users Authorized User Groups Authorized Locations

Growing focus on this need from elsewhere in the library community

In a February 2004 ARL survey, the three most cited challenges were:

workload (ensuring sufficient staffing levels to cope with increasing numbers of electronic resources),

the need for an electronic resources management module to assist in managing and tracking electronic resources,

the accessing and cataloging of electronic resources

[Managing Electronic Resources (August 2004), ARL Spec Kit #282, pp.13-14].

DLF ERMI Work

Developing distinction between rights management and license management

XRML and ODRL – informs work but does not replace it

Describe architectures needed to manage large collections of licensed e-resources

Promote best practices and standards for data interchange

Report released August 2004: http://www.diglib.org/pubs/dlfermi0408/

Rights Expression Languages (see ERMI Report)

Formidable learning curves (big hammer/small nut?)

REL inability to distinguish prohibitions from silence means unnecessary loss of necessary information.

“silence=denial” means extra work to identify and explicitly state all assumed permissions: this is the mirror image of our current license management, which assumes that what is not explicitly prohibited is allowed (i.e., “fair use”).

License Expression Characteristics

<perpetualaccessright> Undetermined</perpetualaccessright>

The value “Undetermined" in this element represents

the idea that we don't always interpret everything in a license when it is signed. “We don't know“ is a likely response: DRM is much more yes/no.

Prose licenses creatively ambiguous (a feature beloved of publishers and libraries alike) – how/whether to maintain this in an XML fielded structure in a machine-actionable expression of a license.

DRM and RELs

Can existing Digital Rights Management (DRM) and Rights Expression Languages (RELs) be used for license term expression?

Karen Coyle: "where copyright law is an expression of 'everything that is not forbidden is permitted,' DRM takes the approach of 'everything that is not permitted is forbidden.'" As a consequence, DRM and "fair use" as practiced in libraries may be incompatible. http://www.kcoyle.net/drm_basics1.html

ERMI: Rapid Uptake by System Vendors

Good outreach pays off – Vendor reactor panels and invitational meetings

Innovative Interfaces: “ERM” module released Spring 2004; over 60 sold to III customers, with a handful of stand alone (non-III) customers, including Cornell, NYU, SUNY Buffalo, Library of Congress, Utah State, and Stanford: “In creating this product, Innovative has taken care

to comply with the DLF’s emerging standard for describing electronic resources”

Vendor Initiatives continued

ExLibris: “Verde” product announced; release planned by end of 2004

“From the outset, Verde was planned to address the requirements of the Digital Library Federation electronic resource management initiative. The Verde system extends these requirements, particularly in its approach to library consortia and its provision of cost-analysis tools.”

Vendor Initiatives continued

VTLS “Verify”

Product and rapid development plan announced; FRBR implementation

Linking product marketing to NISO "Views" (Vendor Initiative for Enabling Web Services) DYNIX, Endeavor, Fretwell-Downing, Index Data, MuseGlobal, NISO, OCLC, VTLS, Talis (http://www.niso.org/committees/VIEWS/ )

Vendor Initiatives continued

Endeavor: “Meridian” product announced at ALA Annual 2004, expected in 2005 (http://www.endinfosys.com/meridian):

“The system’s functionality is guided by the requirements outlined by the Digital Library Federation’s Electronic Resource Management Initiative and interacts with integrated library systems, like Endeavor’s Voyager, for MARC and acquisitions data.”

Vendor Initiatives continued

Dynix: ERM White Paper available on the Dynix Web site, product expected 4th quarter 2005

“Dynix is a member of the DLF ERMI Vendor Reactor Panel and believes that participation in the DLF ERMI will not only help accelerate the introduction of ERM solutions, but will also promote industry interoperability.”

Also ongoing development by SIRSI and Serials Solutions

Ellen Finnie Duranceau, “Electronic Resource Management Systems From ILS Vendors,” Against the Grain, September 2004, pp. 91-94.

The Publishing Community

Good interest from publishers in expressing licenses in an electronic format desirable to libraries

Onix: interest in using ERMI as the basis for a license expression component in Onix

Onix and Editeur (Brian Green): “EDItEUR is the international group coordinating development of the standards infrastructure for electronic commerce in the book and serials industries.” http://www.editeur.org/

DOI Foundation (Norman Paskin): http://www.doi.org/ RightsCom (IP consultants):

http://www.rightscom.com/

The SUNCAT test case

http://www.suncat.ac.uk/ The SUNCAT Project received funding from the JISC

and the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP) to develop a Serials UNion CATalogue for the UK. SUNCAT will be both the key tool for locating serials held in UK libraries and a central source of high-quality records that can be used by university and college libraries to upgrade their local catalogues. The project commenced in February 2003.

A pilot service containing records from 22 leading research libraries was launched on 10 January 2005, and is testing ERMI license terms.

Next Steps for ERMI

Phase One has achieved its goals with real success and the ERMI Team are re-grouping now to see where best to put their energies:

Deeper discussions with vendors, publishers, and standards bodies

“Learn by doing” case studies More sophisticated XML schema; XSLT stylesheets

for display, etc Identify what is missing, especially from perspectives

not ours

Many ERM Issues Outstanding, including…

Consortia Support and Functionality The focus of work of the Initiative has been on the

needs of individual libraries, rather than those of the library consortia to which so many libraries now belong.

Usage Data Project Counter XML DTD is likely to be the basis for

usage statistics exchange Typed data dictionary

NISO is a likely forum for the development of a DLF ERMI-based data dictionary of licensing elements

Conclusion

ERM challenge clearly identified and articulated Solid start on the solution – gives us a much better

understanding of library needs in this rights and license expression space

Desire now to test this solution, discover what’s missing from various perspectives

Stewardship of cherished rights uppermost in our minds

Opportunity to move from protocols to standards Promise of an xml record moving through the system

from publisher to library system, and from library to library, with richer license expression to users

With thanks to the DLF ERMI team (to whom all difficult questions can be addressed)

Ivy Anderson (Harvard) Adam Chandler (Cornell) Sharon Farb (UCLA) Tim Jewell (Chair, Univ. Washington) Kimberly Parker (Yale) Angela Riggio (UCLA) Nathan Robertson (Johns Hopkins)

http://www.library.cornell.edu/cts/elicensestudy/home.html

David Seamandseaman@clir.org