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#blogjune Day 19

Off the leash

I have always enjoyed the daily Off the Leash cartoon on Facebook, and when the cartoonist Rupert Fawcett announced his first book, I purchased it and I thoroughly enjoyed the compilation even I’ve seen most of them before. It must be a success because his second book is available for pre-order.

This is yet another success story of artists who share their work online and on social media “for free”. In the past couple of years I’ve had many conversations with authors and artists who refused to even allow the metadata of their works to be made available online, most of the reasons are along the line of plagiarism, loss of potential profits, your work will be regarded as lower value/quality if it’s just “out there” and “free”, and publishers will not accept works that have been published elsewhere.

While some of these reasons are valid in many cases, I don’t understand the concerns around copyright and plagiarism. In the case of Off the Leash, the page has 646,000 likes, how is it possible for someone to steal their work or idea without someone realising it’s the work of Rupert Fawcett? Does publishing in print only format reduce the risk of being copied or plagiarised? Unless you’re very famous, you probably don’t have 646,000 pair of eyes around the world to watch out for any copycats? What about a timestamp of your work actually published online before your copycats?

I used to run an online shop and I put a lot of effort in to photographing my products and they’re easily recognisable. I was too busy to watch out for others who stole my photos but my customers never failed to email me about what they saw on the Internet. I was furious at first but very soon learned that when you’re successful, it’s inevitable there will be copycats, and how long are they going to last, anyway?

Radiohead released its album In Rainbows in 2007 and all songs were available for download from their official website, buyers can pay whatever they wanted, even if you chose to pay nothing. The result is “In terms of digital income, we’ve made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together, forever…“. Isn’t that a game changer?

I will continue to share my work and ideas online because the benefits of doing that far outweigh the risks.

Liblishers and pubrarians

I stumbled upon The Lib Pub, a group blog on scholarly publishing in libraries. It begins early this year by a group of librarians (are they still librarians?) in the US. I particularly like how one of the contributors, Charles Watkinson, refer to librarians who play a role in scholarly publishing as liblishers and pubrarians. 

I’m part of a newly established Research Services team at my place of work, I think I fall under the umbrella of pubrarians. While we’re doing a pretty impressive job in library publishing, there are lots of value-adding features to be implemented. Some days I feel I’m swimming in murky water, which is OK. Actually, I think that’s why I’m enjoying my new role so much, I’m being part of something new, I’m learning something every day, it’s challenging and rewarding. I enjoyed reading the introductory posts by contributors, I learned about their roles (or previously roles), responsibilities, what they’re working on, their visions etc. Overall, it gives me a clearer idea of what established library research services or publishing services are like.

Thank you, the contributors of The Lib Pub, for sharing your knowledge. What more can I say? Librarians rock!

p.s. If you’re also a new pubrarian, you may be interested in this report too.

Mullins, J. L., Murray-Rust, C., Ogburn, J. L., Crow, R., Ivins, O., Mower, A., Nesdill, D., Newton, M. P., Speer, J., & Watkinson, C. (2012). Library Publishing Services: Strategies for Success: Final Research Report. Washington, DC: SPARC.