Pat Schroeder was nice enough to quickly answer my
request for an interview. She had just a few minutes to
answer a few
questions before she had to leave for an important
event. I am hoping to catch her again in a few weeks to
answer a few more questions.
You may be suprised on some of her answers.
If you don\’t know who she is, Read This before you read
her answers.
The questions and answers follow….
Pat Schroeder was nice enough to quickly answer my
request for an interview. She had just a few minutes to
answer a few
questions before she had to leave for an important
event. I am hoping to catch her again in a few weeks to
answer a few more questions.
You may be suprised on some of her answers.
If you don\’t know who she is, Read This before you read
her answers.
The questions and answers follow….And Remember She had just a few minutes to
answer! I hope to get a full interview at some point in the future.
First The Questions:
You are quoted as saying:
\”They\’re terrified,\” (they in this case are publishers of
scientific and
academic journals), and they are terrified of librarians.
This seems like a very strange thing to say about the
people that buy almost
all of the journals published.
Could you elaborated on this?
\”We,\” says Schroeder, \”have a very serious issue with
librarians.\”
This is the one that has come up again and again in
librarian discussions. I
thought it was odd you said, librarians, not libraries.
Perhaps you could elaborate on this one?
\”Technology people never gave their stuff away,\”
Schroeder says.
It seems many people disagree with this statement.
There is \”The Open
Source\” movement, where it\’s all about giving stuff
away, and now there are
open source journals because of the high prices of
journals. As a matter of
fact, they (When I say \”They\” here I mean the open
source people) say
\”Information wants to be free by its very nature\”,
something I would assume
you disagree with?
Comments?
With journals that cost $14,000 a year how much can
libraries afford to
spend on content now? Do you know what percentage
of a research libraries
budget is spent on journals and how this compares to
years gone by?
Speaking of filtering, what are your thoughts on filtering,
especially
filtering mandated by the government, in libraries?
Copyright law tries to strike a balance between the
rights of the author
and the public\’s ability to build on his/her ideas. What is
your idea of a
fair balance, in the online/e-book sphere, between the
content owner
(publisher) and content provider (libraries)?
And Now Her Answers:
Journal publishers are terrified of the technology, not
librarians.
Obviously \”fair use\” was place based. It makes sense
you and I can loan
anything we have to others. If technology allows us to
\”Loan\” it to the
world and they can copy it, then you will only sell one
copy of your
journal. This is what the Napster case is about. You
can loan your
recording to a person, but 44 million is beyond the
scope. Librarians are
our customers and obviously, we want good relations
with them.
Re-Librarians, vs. Libraries. I said librarians because
they make the
policies, not the buildings.
Re-information being free:
I believe the creator of the information can give it away
free if he or she
wants but they can also sell it if they want. You have the
right to buy it
or not. You cannot say, it is too expensive therefore I
will take it.
Creators can spend years of their lives working on an
article or book and
one click can take it away as an income stream. How
do they make a living?
I resent the comments that my new job has changed
my views. I was always on
the intellectual property committee and this was always
my view.
Intellectual property is the largest export the U S has
and the largest part
of our economy. Most of our young people will be in IP
jobs not jobs where
you make things with your hands (Greenspan & Rubin
say this). If the US
does not protect IP, we will cripple our economy.
I have always been for Library funding, literacy, free
speech and many other
issues so that may be what they remember and AAP is
100% behind those issues
also.
Re-journal prices
They may be high, I don\’t know. Why don\’t university
presses do them?
Their professors are the jurors for the journals and their
libraries are the
customers.
I hope new business models can be developed that
solve some of these
problems. We should be working together on them.
RE-filtering:
The AAP and I both fight filtering, especially by the
government. We also
are very concerned about privacy of users.
Re-author\’s rights
I don\’t understand \”build on\” I don\’t think it means you
can lift out parts
and add your own. The courts have been clear you
cannot do that. Authors
have the rights to their works until they are in the public
domain.
Positive notes:
We agree on almost everything except the devastating
impact technology would
have on intellectual property and our economy if used
the way many
librarians advocate.
The Napster decision reconfirmed
everything I said about \”fair Use\”
-Pat Schroeder
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