It's Academic

The ethics of digital piracy

January 27, 2023

As librarians, we often encounter patrons engaging in behaviors that can be frustrating or disruptive, from ignoring due dates to vaping in study rooms. Is digital piracy a problem you’ve considered? Are you aware of the extent to which students and faculty on your campus rely on pirate sites (also known as shadow libraries) to download copies of textbooks and others resources that your library may not provide?

I began to pay attention to the digital piracy problem after the U.S. Justice Department seized and shut down the website of the popular shadow library, Z-Library, in November 2022. Soon after that, I was helping a student request a book through interlibrary loan. The student expressed their disappointment at the loss of the pirate site, which they had relied on to access books for their classes. This event made me question the extent to which students resort to ebook piracy as both a cost-saving measure and a tool of convenience. Despite our efforts to reduce textbook expenses for students through our textbook reserve program and the promotion of open educational resources, it is clear that students are using other methods to get assigned materials.

The ethical dilemma posed by digital piracy is real. While we want to ensure access to information for our students, especially those with limited funds, authors do have a right to control how their work is distributed and to make a living from their writing. Curious about this crucial issue, Haley Dittbrenner (a Susquehanna University sophomore) and I applied for and then received Susquehanna’s March Fellowship for Ethical Leadership. To better understand the prevalence and impact of digital piracy in academic libraries, we will survey faculty and students about their own experiences with shadow libraries. We hope to spark a dialogue about the ethical implications of digital piracy at Susquehanna University, raise awareness among those who use pirated materials of the risks and consequences, and identify measures students and faculty can take to reduce digital piracy.

We are currently reviewing the literature and designing the survey, but we plan to share our results with Pennsylvania Library Association members at the annual conference or through another medium. Are you also curious about ebook piracy on your campus? Interested in collaborating? Get in touch with us here!

Note: This post includes text originally written for our March Fellowship application. The final text was edited with the help of the artificial intelligence chatbot, ChatGPT.

Librarian-Student Connections

January 25, 2023

by Kayla Van Osten

It can be uncomfortable when pausing for questions during an information literacy session and all you hear are crickets. Every time I hear the silence, I worry that I’m not doing my job well, that the students aren’t learning anything new, and I’m not helping.

But maybe I’m looking in the wrong place for confirmation. Maybe it’s not the questions asked or silence that indicates that they are “getting it.” Maybe it’s more than an outward confirmation and maybe it’s sometimes intangible.

Recently as part of our library’s Information Literacy Committee, we read the article “The Power of Presence: One-Shots, Relational Teaching, and Instruction Librarianship” written by Veronica Arellano Douglas and Joanna Gadsby. In this article, they suggest that it’s not the length of time spent together in a teaching session, but rather “openness to relationship and connection.” As I’ve continued to teach information literacy classes, I’ve thought if they forget everything I’ve told them today, at least they’ll remember that I’m here to help in a variety of ways.

Instruction librarians know how hard it is to cram everything we want to cover in one class. It can be daunting and leave you feeling drained. The authors state that “the quality of our presence in the classroom becomes greater than the duration of the encounter.” This also suggests that it may not always be the tangible question and answer format that indicates students are connecting with the content, but rather students knowing that you can support them; That you’ve showed up and will continue to show up. Not every student interaction will be one of connection, but if we’re open to connection, we can demonstrate our willingness to help, support, and engage with our students.

I enjoyed reading this article and thinking more of genuine connection with students when possible as a success. Even if I can’t find the book or article they are looking for, which in the past has made me feel like it was a failed interaction, I can now reframe it as a success because I demonstrated interest, willingness to help, and effort, all of which can positively impact the student. It’s still a meaningful, positive connection that will “make the students more willing to seek out help in the future and increase their sense of agency.” After reading this article, I realized this was always my goal when helping students. I want them to know and remember I’m in their corner ready and willing to help.

References

Arellano Douglas, V., & Gadsby, J. (2022). The power of presence: One-shots, relational teaching, and instruction librarianship. College & Research Libraries, 83(5), 807-818. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.83.5.807

Call for Presenters – Share Your Ideas, Knowledge & Experience at the Pennsylvania Library Association 2023 Conference!

January 23, 2023

by Alex K.

The 2023 Pennsylvania Library Association Conference, Rising to the Challenge! is scheduled to take place October 1 – 4, 2023 at Kalahari Resort in the Poconos.

The 2023 Program Committee is currently accepting proposals for sessions to take place during the conference, which will include more than sixty educational sessions on topics of interest for the library community. Some suggested topics.

If you are, or know, an expert on a topic that you feel will be of interest to this group, we invite you to submit a session proposal!

The deadline for submissions is Sunday, March 5, 2023

JSTOR and Open Access

January 19, 2023

tags: open access

by Darren G. Poley

Researchers are typically very familiar with the JSTOR database. It has been an invaluable way for many years to get journal articles if your institution provides access. Staying true to its preservation commitment, JSTOR now includes a great deal of library-contributed Open Access material in their Open Community Collections.

JSTOR Community Collections include some that are very large, such as the Catholic News Archive from the Catholic Research Resources Alliance, and the South Asia Open Archives (SAOA).

Photographic collections include the nearly 20,000 photographs by one of Hip Hop’s most prolific and prominent photographers in the Ernie Paniccioli Photo Archive, and the early twentieth-century photographic survey of child labor in the Lewis Hine Collection.

It also has some highly specialized collections, like The Muhlenberg Family Papers, the Sports Research Center Collection from the Cleveland Public Library, and Civil Rights in a Northern City, which has digitized archival resources detailing the history of the modern civil rights movement in Philadelphia.

JSTOR’s commitment to openness extends to Independent Voices, a collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines, and journals published by Reveal Digital now openly available on JSTOR. A good example from this collection is American Prison Newspapers, 1800-2020: Voices from the Inside.

Thousands of Open Access ebooks from top scholarly publishers are available in JSTOR, as well as some in Spanish via a collaboration with El Colegio de México and a partnership with the Latin American Council of Social Sciences.

Articles in the public domain are accessible in JSTOR’s Early Journal Content collection.

More articles from nearly 2,000 journals also become available to you on a limited basis when you register for a personal account with JSTOR.

Chat with a Librarian

January 9, 2023

by Alex K.

During the pandemic my library experimented with online reference chat. While it was nice to offer this for students, with our limited staff we ran into issues keeping regular chat hours, which in turn led to low usage. Because of all this we ended up discontinuing our chat service as classes returned to campus and we returned to the library. We had given up on the idea of a chat service when we were approached about joining the Power Library service Chat with a Librarian. Chat with a Librarian is maintained by Power Library and HSLC, it brings librarians from different institutions together to collectively staff their chat service 24 hours a day. Each library must commit to providing a set number of hours each week that their staff will answer questions on chat. This lets you provide significant hours of chat coverage to your students without have to be on chat constantly. As part of this you may have to help patrons at other institutions and librarians at other institutions may help your students. This is made possible by each library filling out detailed documentation about their library that other librarians can reference to enable them to help patrons. Chat with a Librarian integrates into your website using a simple popup icon similar to most chat software. My library is rolling this service out to our students this Spring and I’m hopeful the increased coverage will lead to great usage by students. If you are interested in Chat with a Librarian you can get more details here.