The end of Mae Ngai’s piece on the historical creation of the legal and social category of illegal immigrants, “The Strange Career of the Illegal Alien: Immigration Restriction and Deportation Policy in the U.S., 1921-165,” caught my eye in relation to the issue of archival research and the potential for state-created archives to be used, in a sense, against the entity that created them:

She gratefully acknowledges the Central Office of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in Washington, D.C., for allowing her access to its records and INS Historian Marian Smith for her generous assistance.

Ngai, evidently, used (at least in part) the archives and historian of the INS (now defunct, with its functions now split within three agencies of the Department of Homeland Security) to investigate and reveal the workings of state power, including revealing potential flaws of the organization itself.

This ties in nicely with Ann Stoler’s piece, “Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance,” in the sense that the archives of those in power (or their organizations and institutions) can be used for more than the mere maintenance and continuation of that power. Administrations may have maintained archives for their own purposes, in order to foster institutional memories to better exploit their colonies or more efficiently prosecute their missions, but these archives can be effectively exploited by historians to go beyond these original purposes, to cut against power and state intention.

Although I might argue that democracies may often prove best at creating and maintaining “unbiased” archives (in the sense that most everything is kept, or at least in the sense that what is kept is left to professional archivists and not to the vagaries of state or organization intention), non-democratic colonial administrations and totalitarian regimes also create and maintain archives of use to historians. Since even “unbiased” archives enshrine, at the very least, unconscious judgments as to importance and organization (for even the most intently objective archivist cannot keep everything nor organize what is kept without imposing some sense of outside structure and judgment), perhaps regimes with more obvious purposes actually create some of the most useful archives. If the purpose is obvious, then can it not more easily be seen through, after all?

In Richard Harvey Brown and Beth Davis-Brown’s terms, “relations of power and domination are often masked by or reduced to technically instrumental relations of efficiency; that is, moral and political questions are displaced to nonmoral and nonpolitical technical or professional discourse” (“The Making of Memory: The Politics of Archives, Libraries, and Museums in the Construction of National Consciousness,” 30). In this sense, archives maintained for ostensibly objective purposes may be more subtly misleading because what they hide is better masked, and what they reveal is more easily taken to be the complete truth, untainted by attempts to manipulate the narrative. As Brown suggests, though, the solution is not to dismiss such archives, but rather to be aware of this as we focus to “build a reflexive, democratic society” (31).

Related articles

• ArchivesNext ” What are archives good for? (archivesnext.com)
• Archives & Access (publicarchives.org)

Image via Wikipedia

Copyright for Librarians is a useful resource for anyone — not just librarians — to learn about the current state of copyright law.

It’s a joint project of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Electronic Information for Libraries (eIFL), a consortium of libraries from 50 countries in Africa, Asia and Europe.

The training course is aimed at librarians in developing countries, but most of the information is based on U.S. copyright law for the time being. According to the “objectives” on the site, it seeks to provide training on:

• copyright law in general
• the aspects of copyright law that most affect libraries
• how librarians in the future could most effectively participate in the processes by which copyright law is interpreted and shaped.

Even though the training materials are intended for librarians, the site provides a useful background for anyone interested in copyright law. Recommended.

Lateef Mtima, of Howard University School of Law, suggested that the settlement would help the disenfranchised get access to books  —  and that copyright as a whole “should be an engine, not a brake on social development.” The lone librarian, from the University of Michigan, expressed a similar sentiment, arguing that “Broad social progress depends on being able to find, use, and re-use the scholarly record.”

I find this perspective compelling, as it connects with my own view that copyright’s purpose is not to permanently protect the property of rights-holders, but rather to foster innovation and creativity. Put another way, copyright serves a social purpose beyond rewarding individuals; the creativity and innovation it encourages is supposed to benefit society as a whole.

The concern expressed by the CDT representative, and others, is that there are potential privacy concerns with Google recording electronic access to books in a way that existing access methods (libraries, bookstores) do not is a potential problem, although in many ways it is an inevitable potential issue with any move to electronic texts. Still, I do share the concern that a single company (Google) stands to be the major gateway provider going forward  —  especially after recent missteps with regards to privacy on Google’s part.

I found other arguments less interesting, including arguments that this “turns copyright on its head” (I don’t see it) or that this doesn’t effectively represent the class because some rights-holders haven’t participated (this is a criticism applicable to most any class action).

My biggest worry is that the barrier of entry for other to scan books as Google has is simply too great, and that Google will become the de facto for-profit curator of what should belong to the public as a whole. But is that concern enough to scuttle the settlement? I’m not sure.

The judge indicated he will be taking his time ruling on this, due to the complexity involved. I would to, if I were him!

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The Legal Information Services to the Public (LISP) Special Interest Section of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) just completed its latest version of How to Research a Legal Problem: A Guide for Non-Lawyers. It’s available in PDF and Word formats from the LISP website.

via How to Research A Legal Problem: A Guide for Non-Lawyers « Cocky Law Blawg.

The mission of LIPS is to improve access to legal education and to promote legal information services to the public. In addition to the Guide for Non-Lawyers, they also provide a toolkit for public librarians.

Now that access to case law is even easier for the general public to access (via Google Scholar), this kind of Guide is critical to avoid misunderstandings of the unique complexities and challenges of legal research.

I’m excited to announce that starting today, Google Books will offer free downloads of these and more than one million more public domain books in an additional format, EPUB. By adding support for EPUB downloads, we’re hoping to make these books more accessible by helping people around the world to find and read them in more places. More people are turning to new reading devices to access digital books, and many such phones, netbooks, and e-ink readers have smaller screens that don’t readily render image-based PDF versions of the books we’ve scanned. EPUB is a lightweight text-based digital book format that allows the text to automatically conform (or “reflow”) to these smaller screens. And because EPUB is a free, open standard supported by a growing ecosystem of digital reading devices, works you download from Google Books as EPUBs won’t be tied to or locked into a particular device.

via Inside Google Books: Download Over a Million Public Domain Books from Google Books in the Open EPUB Format.

This kind of access shows some of the potential of the public domain to allow for innovation and reuse. Thank Google  —  and Google advertisers, of course  —  for making it free. (They could legally sell public-domain works  —  there is no legal requirement that such access be free and open.)

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The cloud consists of data and services that live on someone else’s servers. Although the term itself is new(ish), the basic idea is embodied by traditional legal research services like LexisNexis and Westlaw  —  data lives on someone else’s servers, not your own. Thus, someone else controls the data, not you. And someone else can delete or modify the data, and you’d never know…

It’s one thing to have to contend with Supreme Courts, like California, that have the power to “depublish” an opinion that helps your case and making it worthless as far as precedent is concerned. But to my knowledge, those cases are still on the books, and binding on the parties to the litigation that created the opinion. It’s an entirely different problem when a court can ask a publisher to take down an opinion previously published, and the publisher does it. In fact, the publisher has apparently been doing it for years. Maybe you knew about it, but I didn’t.

via Dear Publisher, Please Stop Deleting Case Law | Jason Wilson | Law Publishers.

This is the sort of thing that has always given librarians heart attacks  —  to the extent that one librarian I knew years ago attempted to print out every Web site she ever accessed and stored them in file cabinets. A bit extreme? Yes, but the point was that she could control it once it was in print: the data couldn’t disappear, change, etc.

I don’t have the solution to this conundrum  —  cloud services make too much sense to fight  —  but the downsides are expensive, too. What to do, what to do?

You are able to redownload your books an unlimited number of times to any specific device.

Any one time the books can be on a finite number of devices. In most cases that means you can have the same book on six different devices.

Unfortunately the publishers decide how many licenses, that is devices, a book can be on at any one time. While most of the time that will be five or six different devices there will be times when it’s only one device.

At the present time there is no way to know how many devices can be licensed prior to buying the book.

According to the customer rep, there is a project to try to get that information available to the customer but it’s not yet available.

Finally, when you have reached a limit of six devices and you swap one older device for a new one, it does not automatically reset the number of licenses so you can add the new one. Amazon can release all of the licenses which will remove any given book from all of the devices and then allow you to re-download it that same number of times.

via KindleGate: Confusion Abounds Regarding Kindle Download Policy.

It sounds like Amazon’s trying to get the right balance for you – but this points out a general problem with DRM in the marketplace: it’s very confusing. This undercuts a general argument out there that “the marketplace has spoken” in terms of acceptance of DRM. If consumers have limited access to information, the market is inefficient, and cannot accurately measure consumer desires.

This kind of issue always makes me leery to purchase DRM protected media, and when I do, it encourages me to see if there is a way to remove the protection (so that I can freely use what I’ve purchased, not so I can share it with the world) – even if I never do so, it’s nice to know I can if the company fails or changes the rules on me.

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Looking for alternatives to expensive legal research through Westlaw and LexisNexis? Here’s a non-exhaustive list of ten alternative sources for legal research (aimed primarily at lawyers and law students) that are useful – and much cheaper:

1. Quimbee – a case brief database.

2. PreCYdent – an “open law source” and legal opinion search.

3. SSRN – an ideal source for cutting-edge legal scholarship (and a repository of older articles too).

4. AltLaw – free access to federal case law, but not as up-to-date as other sources.

5. FindLaw – free access to case law, provided by Westlaw‘s owner.

6. LexisONE – Lexis’ answer to West’s FindLaw: the last ten years of state and federal court opinions, and U.S. Supreme Court opinions from 1781 to present, all free.

7. VersusLaw – inexpensive subscription alternative to LexisNexis and Westlaw (federal and state appellate case law).

8. Fastcase – subscription-based online case law research service, providing access to law, court cases, statutes, and regulations, at reason.

9. CALI – The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction provides free online training in most law school subjects.

10. Your local law library – paper and electronic resources, plus librarians who can help:

• Find a law library in California
• Counties often have public law libraries
• Many law schools have law libraries open to the public

For help with conducting legal research, ask a law librarian or consult the Gallagher Law Library’s legal research guide. If you are not a lawyer but still need to do legal research, you might also find it useful to read How to Research a Legal Problem: A Guide for Non-Lawyers.

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Marketplace: Publicly funded research for a price:

Publicly funded research doesn’t seem so public when the public has to pay to read the results in a journal. A proposed law would help publishing companies preserve their business models, but it would limit public access to the research.

Publishers continue to resist the open-access movement, it seems. This Marketplace (as heard on public radio) report does a decent job of laying out some of the issues. The comments are worth reading as well.

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For libraries, and the people who use libraries, it is the exceptions and limitations to the legal protections granted to rightsholders that provide the basic mechanism for access to copyrighted content. “The role of librarians is to protect and promote access to knowledge and learning materials”, said Rilwanu Abdulsalami, Deputy University Librarian at Kaduna State University in Nigeria. “One of the key ways to achieve this is through well designed exceptions and limitations. Where the law is inadequate and needs to be changed, we will advocate for that change.”

I recommend you read the whole post.