One of the main features immediately visible to library users is the ability to view parts of their own individual circulation record. When fully implemented, the following information will be available to patrons:
Blocks. Records of any overdues, fines owed, etc. by the patron.
Items Out. A listing of all items currently checked out in the
borrower's name.
Requests. Titles of all unfilled requests the borrower has on
file.
One of the major new enhancements offered by the new release is an expanded set of fine and fee options. This will greatly augment the library's ability to deal with its many financial transactions. The library staff will be able to track a borrower's fines, fees and payment transactions directly on the library system. Before the new upgrade, it has been necessary to maintain a dual system for such financial tracking. For example, when a borrower has an outstanding fine, the system will track the status of that fine based on payment codes set up by the library. It applies payments or waivers to the borrower's record, and identifies the staff members who conduct the transactions for audit trail purposes. Fee invoices can be printed on-demand or in batch and borrower notifications can be printed and mailed (or E-mailed) according to library defined criteria. The notice customization feature lets the library create notices that directly apply to specific borrowers. E-mail messages can be similarly customized and automatically generated for borrowers who want to receive their notices by that method. A flag in the borrower's record specifies which borrowers receive E-mail. With the purchase of the proper printers, the library will also be able to print receipts of payments transactions for the patron.
The system has also added enhanced security and password features for staff which enables the system to track which individual performed a specific task. For example, when a staff member performs financial, acquisition, or circulation transactions, the systems enters the person's user ID in a corresponding log. This will allow Horizon to provide for a complete audit trail for any financial changes made by library staff members. This fund audit trail feature tracks: who made changes, what changes were made, which fund was changed and what amount the changes were made.
This latest version should provide the library patrons and staff with many new features as well as improved functionality to make the system even more useful and efficient.
- W. Morton
A 10 year legal battle was brought to a close with the announcement last May of a settlement by Texaco in the case of American Geophysical Union vs. Texaco Corporation. At issue was the doctrine of "fair use" which allows reproduction of copyrighted materials for research and non-commercial purposes.
Texaco was sued in 1985 by a coalition of publishers claiming that individual scientists at Texaco had photocopied articles from scientific journals and not paid royalties to the publishers for copying. Texaco maintained that the copies were made in pursuit of research, not for commercial gain, and that constituted "fair use."
The case was decided by a Federal District Court in favor of the publishers in 1992 and upheld by the U. S. Court of Appeals in 1994. A petition to appear before the U. S. Supreme Court had been filed by Texaco when the decision to settle was announced. In it, Texaco agreed to pay over $1 million to the publishers in the suit and to enter into a standard licensing agreement with the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), a nonprofit agency set up to collect royalties for publishers which register their publications.
Settlement means that many "fair use" issues raised by the case will not be resolved. Users of copyrighted materials are left with the U. S. Court of Appeals ruling which held that companies in the for-profit sector that make copies of copyrighted scientific and technical journal articles violate "fair use" under the Copyright Act of 1976.
In its analysis of the case, the court established that:
1. The for-profit motive of the company is a relevant consideration in the analysis of the purpose of the use. The fact that the researcher copied the articles and placed them in his files for future reference duplicated the archival function of the library and therefore was not "fair use" as established by copyright laws.
2. Copying the article as a unit, rather than considering the article as a portion of a volume of the journal, violated "fair use" in the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole.
3. While the publishers of the journal had not lost subscriptions, they had lost the right to license the work for reproduction. Texaco could have acquired a license through the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), therefore, the market was affected.
The question of whether or not making a single copy of a scientific journal article for personal use and archiving it is considered "fair use" was not before the Court. The decision only concerned the copies of the eight articles specified in the case. As a result, many issues were left unresolved:
1. The court failed to differentiate between a direct commercial use and an indirect relation to a commercial activity.
2. The court failed to specify whether it saw any difference between researchers funded on grants from government agencies and those funded by grants from commercial companies.
3. The court failed to discern a difference between government research laboratories (nonprofit) which are encouraged to develop public/private partnerships and scientists in the for-profit sector.
4. The court failed to provide guidance on copying to the general public by state supported institutions when that copying might be used to enhance profit for an individual or a business.
5. The court failed to recognize a difference between copying in health sciences libraries or medical schools which serve a combination of doctors in the commercial sector and residents in the education sector.
The American Geophysical Union vs. Texaco case does not apply to copying done in nonprofit educational institutions for educational purposes or copying done by libraries and archives under Section 108 of the Copyright Act of 1976. The ruling on it, however, strongly favors the publishers and has set a precedent for future decisions on institutional liability in cases of copyright violations. Researchers in both the public and private sectors are in a position now which mandates a careful re-evaluation of existing personal and institutional photocopying practices to insure against possible infringements of "fair use" of copyrighted works in the future.
- V. A. Patterson
Dr. Sansing captivated the audience with a montage of rare photographs depicting the school's early development. Fortunately, copies of Dr. Sansing's lecture replete with all historical photographs will be available in the near future.
The long term goal of providing an Archives and History facility featuring the Dean Billy S. Guyton History of Medicine Room has now been accomplished. This area can be considered the "crown jewel" of the library. All who attended the dedication and open house found this new dimension to the library's multifaceted mission to be both a positive asset for patrons as well as architecturally pleasing. The Medical Center is truly fortunate to have such a resource on campus.
The library is currently striving to obtain historical treasures from numerous sources for this area and welcomes any noteworthy titles that might be donated for this wonderful facility or treasures that could be loaned display. Please contact Ada Seltzer, Library Director, to make arrangements. To those who missed the grand opening, please visit the library and view this truly exceptional addition.
Robert E. Lewis, Ph.D
Professor of Pathology
President, Friends
The Friends gratefully acknowledge these new members:
INDIVIDUAL
Dr. Sarah E. Allison
Ms. Virginia W. Keith
Dr. Mark Olson
Dr. Edward K. Phillips
DONOR
Dr. George W. Moll, Jr.
PACESETTER
Mike Rogers
First look at the RML Web page is scheduled on Tuesday, April 16. It will be featured throughout the week. Demonstrations of the recently released CD-Roms Clinical Pharmacology, an electronic reference and teaching guide to common and classic drugs in current use, and the Atlas of Human Anatomy, an interactive CD-Rom of the Netter illustrations, will be showcased in the reference department. In addition, library users will be able to "Logon" to fulltext sources, new book catalogs, and table of contents files via the Internet, offered through the RML systems.
The Third Dean Billy S. Guyton History of Medicine Lecture will be held on Wednesday, April 17, 12:00 noon - 1:00 p.m. Dr. Philip Teigen, Historian and Deputy Chief, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, will discuss NLM's new history of medicine image database, soon to be released on the Internet. A Friends sponsored reception will follow the lecture, from 2:30 to 4:00 p.m. in the Learning Resources Center foyer.
Balloons, bookmarks, displays, and other festive items will decorate the library to help faculty, staff, Friends, and other supporters join in celebrating how "Libraries Change Lives." "Visit" daily and register for popular door prizes such as pocket medical dictionaries, copycards, faxes, brass bookmarks, key chains, and library T-shirts. Users with overdue fines will again be allowed to have these fines erased by donating a new adult or children's book to benefit the UMC hospital patient library and the Children's Hospital. One donated book will erase one overdue fine. This offer is available during National Library W
In the foyer outside the library, the Friends of Rowland Medical Library will be on hand actively recruiting members and selling T-shirts and popcorn to continue their fundraising efforts.
Many exciting and funfilled activities have been
planned. "Call! Visit! Logon!" to Rowland Medical Library during National
Library Week, April 14-20.
- C. Machado
Health care reform is currently the hot topic and managed care is the direction in which the U.S. health industry is headed. As more HMOs (Health Maintenance Organizations), PPOs (Preferred Provider Organizations), and other managed care plans are formed and reformed, it becomes harder for providers and managers to keep up with the increasing amount of available information.
BNA (The Bureau of National Affairs) has begun this publication to gather information on managed care. Each week, this newsletter contains an article on a major development in the managed care field. One section contains brief articles on current events and developments in the federal, state and private sectors. Topics could include anything from accreditation regulations, or antitrust activities, to universal health proposals, or workers' compensation.
Another section contains significant court decisions at all judicial levels, and includes a well-written interpretation of the decision. Other sections feature articles on complex and controversial issues, provide a list of relevant conferences, seminars, and symposia, and a list of books, reports and other official documents. Indexes are issued at two month intervals, cumulating semiannually.
This newsletter will be kept in notebooks located on Reference Index Shelf number 5, next to BNA's Health Law Reporter. The library also has purchased BNA's Health Care Facilities Guide: environment, safety, and health compliance. This title is located in the Reference Collection (WX 32 .AAl B62)
-J. Lucas
Amendments to extend copyright regulations to include electronic data were detailed recently in a 250-page White Paper released by the National Information Infrastructure (NII) Task Force. Drafted by the NII's Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights, the intent of the revisions is to protect copyright holders from having their work distributed without permission and to provide for royalty payments where applicable.
Chair of the Working Group is Bruce A. Lehman, Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks. Secretary of Commerce Ronald H. Brown is chair of the NII Task Force. It is their hope that by updating the copyright laws to meet the technological advances in the electronic transmission of data, publishers and information providers will be more prone to mount protected data on computer networks. According to Brown and Lehman, there will be exemptions for libraries.
Members of the library community, however, do not see it this way. They feel that business is the primary motivation behind the proposed changes in the law and equal consideration has not been given to the public interest. There is considerable concern about licensing and the potential high costs for libraries to access electronic data. For the Medical Center, passage of this bill could mean that use of the Internet would become very costly not only for the library, but also for clinicians, researchers, and students.
The bill is titled the "NII Copyright Protection Act of 1995." It has been introduced in both the Senate (Senate Bill #1284) and House of Representatives (House Bill #2441) and has been referred to subcommittees. Lobbying efforts on the national level are being planned by various national library associations to address these concerns.
- V. A. Patterson
All of the journal article databases are located in the Literature Databases group. Patrons can choose any of the five databases which include (the full National Library of Medicine MEDLINE data base back to 1966), CINAHL (nursing and allied health), Health (Hospital Literature Index), ERIC (education), and PsycLIT.
The library user is not restricted to information available on campus. The public catalogs of other Mississippi academic institutions can be searched also via the Internet from the Other Library Catalogs group. The public catalogs now available are the University of Southern Mississippi, the University of Mississippi campus in Oxford, and Mississippi State University. Other available sources over the Internet are Faxon Finder and Majors New Books. These two current awareness services for journals and books can be searched from the Reference Databases group. This group includes access to the OCLC Online Journal of Current Clinical Trials from which articles can be searched, printed or ordered as well as AMA Freida which provides information on available internships and residencies.
- W. Morton
The library offers a service to UMC personnel for the verification of bibliographic references. The list of references should be submitted to the reference department and a staff member will search each item online to verify and correct the information or supply missing information. Those citations that cannot be verified online will be searched manually in indexes and abstracts. The citation should be as complete as possible; any reference too incomplete to process will be returned unverified.
Citations that can be verified include journal articles, books, book chapters, and some meeting abstracts. Unpublished works cannot be verified. For further information about this service contact the reference department at extension 1231. Charges are as follows:
| Number of References | Charges |
|---|---|
| 1 - 4 | $1.50 + online cost |
| 5 - 14 | $2.50 + online cost |
| 15 - 24 | $3.50 + online cost |
| 25 - 49 | $5.00 + online cost |
| 50 - 100 | $6.50 + online cost |
| Over 100 | Negotiable + online cost |
-A. Haaland