Technical Services Special Interest Section

As the newly appointed AALL representative to SISAC, I attended the annual meeting at ALA in Chicago on July 9, 2000. SISAC is now a committee of BASIC, Book and Serial Industry Communications and this was the first meeting of the newly combined committee. It consisted of three presentations on the topic of "Intellectual Property and E-Standards" intended to demonstrate that the adoption of standards in the "e" world has been slow although the technology is in place.

The first speaker was John Cox, of John Cox Associates, speaking about the standard licenses for electronic resources that are now available for downloading at http://www.licensingmodels.com. Their development was sponsored by a group of subscription agents. Licenses are necessary, according to Mr. Cox, because the rules of intellectual property law are incomplete and uncertain. Licenses need to be clear and specific, identifying types of use, categories of users, periods of time, archiving, and inter-library loan. In the case of corporate libraries, performance is most important. Warranties and indemnities need to be specified. The standard license models include language that librarians can adopt for their own use, such as the following indemnification clause:

Licensee indemnifies the publisher against loss by the Licensee's breach. This does not apply to misuse by users, unless the licensee has been made aware, and has done nothing about it.

The second speaker was Lynn Connaway, Vice-President of Research and Library Systems at netLibrary. She repeated a large portion of her ALA presentation on "E-Standards and E-Books." She defined an e-book as a digital version of a published book. NetLibrary allows patron-driven acquisitions; when the patron "opens" a book the library is charged. Stressing the need for standards, she posed the question of how the books will be accessed when the technology changes.

Last on the program was Julia Blixrud, of the Association of Research Libraries, giving an update on the SICI and BICI. SICI, the Serial Item and Contribution Identifier (ANSI/NISO Z39.56-1996 (version2)), is up for review in the fall of this year. Ms. Blixrud is chair of a subcommittee of NISO (National Information Standards Organization) that drafted the BICI, or Book Item and Component Identifier, for subunits of books. The draft standard is currently in use and will be voted on at the end of the trial period in early 2002. NISO would like to receive comments from users of both of these standards. More information can be found at http://www.niso.org.

More information on BASIC can be found on the Book Industry Study Group web site at http://www.bisg.org.

Submitted by

Marla J. Schwartz
American University Law Library
mschwar@wcl.american.edu
August 4, 2000