REPLY FROM PAT SCHROEDER
I sent a copy of the column, "Beached Whales and Publishers" (http://marylaine.com/exlibris/xlib89.html) to Pat Schroeder, head of the American Publishers Association, along with a brief message asking her who did she think was conscientiously paying royalties to the Copyright Clearance Center if not librarians. This is her reply:
Dear Marylaine,
You are absolutely right there are always different sides AND that librarians know more about intellectual property than almost anyone. As we try and deal with this new world, I hope we don't buy into the political demonization that seems to have captured Washington. No one is sure what the future will look like and we need to all work together to help craft something we can all live with as librarians and publishers did when fair use legislation was written in the '70's.
Thanks
Pat Schroeder
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MORE OF YOUR FAVORITE SITES
Jennifer Peters () writes:
I am a research librarian working for a manufacturer of dietary supplements. I do not manage a library or information center, but work within the department of Scientific Affairs assisting technical writers, chemists, and research scientists, and also prepare competitive intelligence reports for senior management. Here are some of my essential sites.
FDA Docket Management (http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/default.htm) -- "serving as the official repository for the administrative proceedings and rule-making documents for the Food and Drug Administration." I use this site to monitor announcements and rules relating to the dietary supplement and pharmaceutical industry to be published in the Federal Register. The complete daily Federal Register can be accessed at: http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/index.html.
I also check the FDA, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition site for dietary supplements at http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/supplmnt.html. For press releases and company announcements I like News Alert http://www.newsalert.com/. One of my favorite sites for botanical information is the Plants for a Future Database at http://www.ibiblio.org/pfaf/D_search.html. And for good, basic, consumer-friendly scientific information on dietary supplements I like the Natural Pharmacist, at http://www.tnp.com/
And Caryn Wesner-Early, of the US Patent and Trademark Office, says:
Actually, I did write an article about patent resources for FreePint, at http://www.freepint.co.uk/issues/051000.htm#tips, called Influence of the Internet on the Patent Process. There's a long list of URLs attached to it, but if you want one good site for aspiring inventors, it's our own US Patent Office site, at http://www.uspto.gov/. There's a button right near the top to send inventors to a page of advice. Another good site for inventors is The Patent Crib Sheet at http://www.patentcribsheet.com/.
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EX LIBRIS IS TWO YEARS OLD! Pop a balloon or uncork a bottle or something. I had no idea when I started this that it would last this long.
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COOL QUOTE
The United States will never have a true national curriculum (besides Jeopardy!)... But it probably makes sense to designate a dozen or so things that every American should know. I'm hardly an expert, but my short list would include: the difference between Theodore and Franklin, and between Joe and Eugene; the significance of Booth, Guiteau, Czolgosz, and Oswald; the meaning of the term "tax event"; the price of gasoline in other industrialized countries; the infield-fly rule; how to tell time on a nondigital watch; the custom that people be allowed off an elevator before others get on; the convention that when walking you keep to the right; the fact that a dozen specimens of a single species don't count as one item for Express Lane purposes; and the fact that the now universal linguistic trope "No problem" is not synonymous with "You're welcome."
Cullen Murphy. "Common Stock." Atlantic, Feb 2001
Note: I got tired of trying to figure out in which issue I'd used a particular quote, so I've put together a page of the collected "Cool Quotes" at http://marylaine.com/exlibris/cool.html
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You are welcome to copy and distribute or e-mail any of my own articles for noncommercial purposes (but not those by my guest writers) as long as you retain this copyright statement:
Ex Libris: an E-Zine for Librarians and Other Information Junkies.
http://marylaine.com/exlibris/
Copyright, Marylaine Block, 2000.
Publishers may license the content for a reasonable fee.
