I've just had an early morning read of this, which I found fascinating and
thought provoking. Here are some random thoughts just as they strike me.
I think the idea of being able to freely copy and share information is an
excellent one. Surely that's what libraries have been waiting for. We have
never wanted to encourage our users to plagiarise work or deny the rights of
the authors - just to be able to make free use of information. After all -
the point of publishing an article, rather than leaving it inside the
author's head, or a notebook in her/his desk, is to disseminate and share
the information therein. Copyright can prevent that. I think this is
fascinating, and a good move, but I do have reservations.
Dilution of quality - if you can rewrite this article and publish it
elsewhere, ( and I know it says you need to state the source so readers can
go back to the original) how do you keep up the quality of the original?
Yes, it's lovely that anyone can contribute to an encyclopedia, but how
useful or valid is the information if authors are self-selected on grounds
of interest?? Yes - freedom of access to information is good, but not at the
cost of reducing the quality of that information. I think the internet has
already shown how useless a lot of poor quality information can be - how
misleading and even dangerous.
We ourselves often use provenance as an indicator of quality. What happens
when the 50th Joe Bloggs has reworked the piece - half of them have
forgotten to mention the source, or their reworking - and *his* piece lands
on your desk and you are under the impression that the piece is by someone
else entirely.
So, I think I'm saying - yes - please - let us copy and disseminate freely -
but, no thanks, I don't think allowing people to rewrite a piece is useful.
Open discussion of a piece generating more pieces that can be freely copied
and disseminated is what we want and need - random rewriting of a source
piece by all and sundry may be fine and dandy for Cola or software, but I
don't think its works for other things.
Sara Stock
Library Services Manager
Colchester General Hospital
Turner Road
Colchester
CO4 5HJ
Tel: (01206) 742146
Fax: (01206) 742107
alternative email: [log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: Library SEACROFT [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 31 January 2002 15:52
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [LIS-MEDICAL] Copyright - or copyleft?
I have had this pointed out to me by someone who thought librarians might be
interested:
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/copyleft/
Any comments?
Christine Reid
Medical Library, Seacroft Hospital
York Road, Leeds LS14 6UH
Phone (0113) 2063675
Fax (0113) 2063325
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Please visit our website at www.leedsteachinghospitals.com
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