Re: Library Link discussion (fwd)


Subject: Re: Library Link discussion (fwd)
Guedon Jean-Claude (guedon@ERE.UMontreal.CA)
Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 16:01:50 -0500 (EST)


Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 16:01:50 -0500 (EST)
From: Guedon Jean-Claude <guedon@ERE.UMontreal.CA>
Subject: Re: Library Link discussion (fwd)
To: arl-ejournal@arl.org
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.4.05.9902050940420.5514-100000@sun.cc.westga.edu>
Message-Id: <Pine.3.89.9902051506.F16100-0100000@esi25.ESI.UMontreal.CA>

On Fri, 5 Feb 1999, Carol Goodson <cgoodson@westga.edu> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 5 Feb 1999, Tony Barry <tonyb@dynamite.com.au> wrote:
> >
> > Even better - do NOT submit you papers to ...
> > _any_ journal that restricts your right to republish your own writing.
>
> I believe that if you continue to hold all rights to your work, it
> limits the journal publisher from making deals with commercial indexers
> to include the journal content in published indexes and/or full-text
> databases... although I'm as eager to profit as the next person, I
> think I ultimately prefer what I write to be retrievable by others,
> and thus possibly useful.

Two answers to Ms Goodson's objections:

1. Why would there be problems to indexing articles whose rights are held
by the author and not the publisher? Indexing is not copying and I can
hardly imagine an author refusing to be indexed. And I am not even sure
he could legally refuse if there is nothing malevolent in the act. At the
same time, I do not see present copyright laws having anything to do with
indexing. Librarians, so far as I know, never asked anyone if they wanted
to catalog books and articles; the Colorado consortium never asked
journals whether they had the right to index their tables of contents;
they dealt with journal only when they decided to offer a fax or
electronic delivery of articles.

2. If commercial indexers do not want to do it, libraries could do it. It
could become a new cataloguing task of libraries and if they divide the
task intelligently among themselves, the work could be fairly light and
routine. Another good example of the implementation of a distributed
intelligence society.

Best,

Jean-Claude Guedon

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      Jean-Claude Guedon Tel. 514-343-6208
      Departement de litterature comparee Fax. 514-343-2211
      Universite de Montreal
      CP 6128, Succursale "Centre-ville" Surfaces
      Montreal, Qc H3C 3J7
      Canada http://www.pum.umontreal.ca/revues/surfaces/

See you at INET'99, San Jose, June 22-25, 1999
http://www.isoc.org/inet99
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