"Prizing" books as an unintended consequence of censorship

  Kidd, K. (2009). “Not censorship but selection”: Censorship and/as prizing. Children’s Literature in Education, 40(3), 197–216. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-008-9078-4

Kidd’s theoretical and critical essay offers a brief history of censorship, book banning practices, and anticensorship in the USA. Most censorship efforts are tied to obscenity, be it pornographic, racist, violent, etc., and bans on children’s books are mostly motivated by the idea of contaminating the youth. Kidd examines the history of literary prizes in connection to book challenges. Kidd claims that book challenges can spark anticensorship efforts that lead to “prizing” of a book, whether the title merits the attention or not. He concludes that the worst thing that could happen to a book is non-attention which results in a book just fading away into the stacks. This article reveals the central role that libraries, librarians, and their selection policies have on anticensorship practices that have become especially important in the past 30 years. Another interesting point of the article is the analysis of censors and anticensors, which Kidd explains as two extremes always “othering” one another, both of which increase attention on a given title. I completely agree that a book disappearing into the stacks is the ultimate "death" of the book. It's interesting to think about how censorship efforts actually bring more attention to books, and I am curious if efforts by adults to censor books leads to the intended audience having more interest in reading the book in question.

Collection Development: Will They Find Themselves in the Library?

 Houde, L. (2018). Collection development: Will they find themselves in the library? In Serving LGBTQ

teens: A practical guide for librarians (pp. 35-52). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. https://csu-sjsu.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CALS_SJO/1nj5q0c/cdi_proquest_miscellaneous_2133110065 

Historically, LGBTQ+ collections, particularly for teens, in the library used to be “almost non-existent” because LGBTQ+ books were not really being published (Houde, 2018, p. 36). Although the number of teen LGBTQ+ books that have been published has increased exponentially since the 1980s, it must be noted that homophobic/anti-queer stereotypes are still present in some recent LGBTQ+ books (i.e. focusing on queer sex instead of queer love) (p. 37). There is no defensible reason to exclude LGBTQ+ materials from your library’s collection and restrict intellectual freedom. Survey your library’s teen collection to determine if it meets your community’s needs, compare your findings to other libraries in your state, then examine your library’s collection development policy to determine how to proceed in selecting materials and possible challenges. This chapter also covers step-by-step guidelines of how to make an inclusive collection development policy, and various resources to use to order inclusive texts.

Collection Management & Digitization of Art

Sun, C. (2022, August 19). Data Collection and management of digital process of painting and calligraphy based on internet of things. Mobile Information Systems. https://www.hindawi.com/journals/misy/2022/6060115/'

Data Collection and Management of Digital Process of Painting and Calligraphy Based on Internet of Things (hindawi.com)

The process of digitization in collections is a rapidly changing process and field of work. The goal is to make sure that these items are protected and digitized correctly so that they withstand the test of time and become far more accessible to different groups across the world. The article above focuses on the importance of digitizing cultural art such as Calligraphy correctly so that not only is the visual item accessible within the collection, but so is the heart and intent behind it.

AI and Machine Learning

 AI and Machine Learning

Introduction to AI in DAMs

Every year the Digital Asset Management community holds a DAM conference in Los Angeles, New York and London. The frequency of the conference keeps attendees up-to-date on the latest trends and innovations. In March of 2023, the Los Angeles DAM included many hot topics, such as building a DAM and working with AI. Many of the presentations were given by digital asset managers with decades of experience at their institutions, learning to navigate fairly new digital asset management systems. Shared concerns and challenges included choosing platforms, working with vendors, managing massive amounts of assets, migrating assets from one system to another, and learning to use AI to manage digital assets effectively. 

Among some DAM experiences, one digital asset manager shared his experience working with AI. He talked about a video of the Amazon covered in trees, that was consistently misidentified by an automated system. The auto-generated tags identified the top of the trees as “broccoli.” So every three seconds the word “broccoli” appears in the descriptive language. The AI recognized the trees as “broccoli” because of how it was programmed. The incorrect AI required a team member to go in and manually correct each “broccoli” reference, according to the speaker. Although this was a very funny story and a good example of how AI can go terribly wrong, it sounds a bit like an urban myth. Logically, if you have ever used the Word function to replace one word with another in a document, wouldn’t it make sense that you could do the same within the context of a specific video, pertaining to it’s auto-generated tags? Learning to work with AI will soon be as common as learning how to use Word or Excel at work, notes Tenovos. 

Development of AI

Michael Waldron, CMO of Tenovos ask how digital asset managers are currently using AI at work. He used a poll to survey the audience of DAM professionals from across the world on how they are using AI: Some said their DAM does not have AI capabilities, and some have the capabilities but they are not using them, while others use AI in limited capacities, such as to label content and deliver insights. Still, a few express concerns that AI presents some serious risks and potential dangers. According to this brief survey of the audience at this presentation, over 50 percent of the represented Digital Asset Management Systems do not yet have AI capabilities. Less than 10 percent expressed concerns over using AI, and potential negative ramifications of implementation. The presentation attempts to explain both what AI is and what AI is not. Artificial Intelligence can be misunderstood. Over the past decade, AI has meant that humans have programmed machines and systems to provide automated responses, when prompted to give an answer to a question. This lighter version of Artificial Intelligence depends on hard coding by programmers. In other words, the machines merely answer what they are programmed to respond. They are not making any great leaps and bounds in processing communications and providing human-like responses, other than the programmers who programmed them are humans and write code to simulate human interactions. These easier versions of artificial intelligence were dependent on the information provided by the programmer. The AI was not based on any reasoning or logical deduction made by the machine or system to come up with the correct response. The answers were not provided based on deductive reasoning, in a manner similar to how a human responds. 

Evolution of AI

In this recent presentation on the evolution of artificial intelligence, Tenovos defines true AI as “The simulation of human intelligence in machines that are programmed to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision making, and language translation,” (Tenovos, 2023, April 25.). In the last couple of years, true AI has evolved to include these four capabilities: decision making, language translation, speech recognition and visual perception. With these capabilities, AI helps reduce repetitive tasks that require a lot of time and manpower. AI can be used to automatically tag images and videos, to recognize backgrounds, faces, objects and voices, and to analyze user preferences and enhance content search ability and user adoption. These are features and functions that true AI should be capable of in order to help digital asset managers streamline workloads in their DAMS. 

Advances in AI and Machine Learning 

Part of artificial intelligence is machine learning, which eventually learns human-like behaviors beyond how its programmed.  As MIT Sloan professor Thomas Malone explains, “In just the last five or 10 years, machine learning has become a critical way, arguably the most important way, most parts of AI are done,” (Brown, 2021). Computer programmers agree that the ultimate goal of true AI is to be able to learn human-like decision making without needing a human to program those responses. These learned skills allow machines to respond to their physical environment as a human might. The three main functions of true AI include: Descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive behaviors. (Brown, 2021). 

Analysis of AI

According to Tenovos, key skills required to leverage AI include critical thinking and data analysis. As a digital asset manager, you must “consider the ethical implications of using AI in your DAM; evaluate and analyze AI-generated recommendations and insights; identify potential biases in data; and, make informed decisions on how to optimize workflow and performance based on AI insights,” (Tenovos, 2023, April 25.) Some of those biases include who is inputting the data and what natural biases impact the type of data being programmed into the machine or system. Biases can be built on the programmer’s background, including race, gender, sexual identity, culture and community. This is one reason why advancements in AI benefit from advancements in diversity, accessibility, inclusivity and equity in the Library and Information Sciences profession.  

Tenovos reminds users that AI is a human construct, so biases in the data input can impact the data output. The digital asset manager is responsible for analyzing that output from the AI, and verify that it does not violate any company policies, such as presenting racial biases, harmful language or inaccurate representations. Once programmed properly, AI can work to implement legal perimeters, check for use rights and red-flag any inappropriate or unacceptable content, in text, images and videos, throughout the DAM. AI can approve content based on brand guidelines or identify rights violations, notes Tenovos. AI can be used through out the workflow of an asset, assigning it to teams, authorizing access, auto-tagging metadata, updating metadata language, identifying faces, objects and voices, helping with accessibility issues, verifying rights and distributing assets to partners, for example.  

Training Your AI

Waldron encourages you to talk to your AI on a regular basis. Sign up for a CHAT GPT account. Manage your AI like you would manage someone on your team. How you extract the greatest value from this team member, depends on how well you monitor the results that you are getting from your AI. Tenovos recommends playing with your AI on a daily basis, outside of your DAM. Vendors in DAMS will not always be caught up on the latests technologies in AI. So it will be up to you to talk with your AI and learn  how to communicate with it, because you will need to know how it responds and what it is capable of in its responses. Recommended reading, AI, Machine Learning, DAMS, and the Future of Data.  

Brown, Sara (2021, April 21). Machine learning explained. MIT.

https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/machine-learning-explained

Tenovos (2023, April 25). The impact of AI on digital asset management: Key skills for dam managers to stay competitive

https://tenovos.com/resources/webinars/the-impact-of-ai-on-digital-asset-management-key-skills-for-dam-managers-to-stay-competitive/

Digital Asset Management Issues

DAM, AI and Copyright Basics

Each year HS Events hosts three Digital Asset Management conferences: The Henry Stewart DAM Conferences take place in Los Angeles in March, Europe in June and New York in September. This year the annual Henry Stewart DAM LA conference focused on ‘The Art & Practice of Managing Digital Media - all from the user’s perspective.’ Within the Welcome of the conference in Los Angeles, David H. Lipsey, Conference Chair, notes that “The importance of DAM grows with every year. Trends that will only accelerate with advances in AI, text to voice, voice to text, text to visual and visual to text.” In addition to the increased interest and use of AI, digital rights management issues continue to be critical for use and accessibility. Lipsey notes that “with every advance in technology there comes novel issues in the protection of intellectual property rights; management and corporate responsibilities; talent management; and, leadership roles and responsibilities. For many information sciences specialists and members of the professional DAM community, digital rights issues appear to be very complicated. But as a trained lawyer, I often argue that intellectual property rights are actually rather simple. 

In my Digital Asset Management course, taught by Professor John Horodyski at San Jose State University, School of Information, my classmate articulated that "The complicated entanglement of use, fair use, copyright, rights purchasing, licensing, etc. really makes my mind melt!" I wanted to explain that although these. legal issues can seem complicated, I think that they can be fairly simple to understand. In our discussion on the matter of intellectual property rights, I tried to simplify the understanding of basic copyright law. Basically, a copyright owner has the exclusive right to use, profit and control every bit of the creative work or digital asset that he owns. I like to think of intellectual property as if it’s real property, because the rights should be the same. If I am the legal owner of my home, I own all of my home and have a right to use 100 percent of my home, to lease (or license use of) my home, to allow someone to stay at my home for free, or even to allow to someone to shoot a film on my front porch or a video in my back yard. Under no condition, can some one use any part of my home without my permission. A neighbor cannot sit on my front porch steps for a few minutes, or park their car in my drive way for an hour, without my permission. So, in this analogy, my exclusive rights are not negotiable. We can say the same of intellectual property rights, such as copyrights, patents and trademarks. The owners have exclusive rights. From those exclusive rights come the exclusive right to use, profit from or license the copyrighted material, such as digital assets. Thus far, only the legal owner or an agent of the legal owner has any authority to use, license or profit from the intellectual property. Those rights issues are distinct from fair use. 

Fair use is a legal doctrine that allows for an exception to the exclusive use by the copyright owner. And, indeed, fair use is a complicated legal doctrine. But what is not complicated is who can determine what qualifies as fair use. Only a court of law can apply the legal analysis necessary to determine what qualifies as fair use, and is therefore an exception to the copyright owner's exclusive use and control of his intellectual property. So, this is why I say its simple: Copyright owners have exclusive right to determine use and control of all assets and only a court can apply the legal doctrine to determine what qualifies as fair use. Clearly, the main issue that complicates fair use and legal rights of intellectual property is individuals that want to claim fair use for their own personal benefit, and choose to define it in their own words, to meet their own personal needs. For instance, I know an operations coordinator that licenses music for film, television and commercials at Columbia Records, for Sony Music. Her team manages the rights of all the front-line music (music released within the last three years) for some of the top musicians in the world. She will often receive requests for free licenses, relatively inexpensive licenses ($200-$750), or more complicated licenses, where side artists might be involved, who are not at her label. If she cannot get the licenses cleared by time the use aires, the music use cannot be authorized. There has been more than one occasion, where music supervisors on projects have just blurted out the word fair use. "I think we can find an exception under fair use." But its pretty clear that fair use does not apply to commercial use of any copyrighted material. The best arguments for fair use are when intellectual property is used for an educational purpose to promote open dialogues about the work, such as in criticism of the work or reviews of the material. A film review would be a good example, where it would be valuable to show a portion of a film clip or a still frame, for analysis. 

With the title of the conference, DAM LA 2023 being ‘The Art & Practice of Managing Digital Media - all from the user’s perspective,’ the emphasis on the user’s perspective and experience is critical. And, digital rights management and intellectual property rights licensing and clearances directly impact the user’s access to digital assets. One interesting question posed to the panelists of subject matter experts pertained to copyrights over AI generated content. Again, this can appear to be a complicated issue, and it did stump each of the three panelists presented with question. But both the question and the answer are simple. Who owns the copyright to AI generated content? The entity or individual who paid for or “commissioned” the creation of the AI content owns it. Commissioned is placed in quotation marks referencing basic copyright law on ownership rights for commissioned work. 

Resources

Copyright Basics

https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ01.pdf

DAM Los Angeles 2023

https://www.henrystewartconferences.com/events/dam-la-2023

Art library collections at research universities: Challenges and opportunities for collaborative collection development

 Ricci, G., & Salmon, L. (2022). Art library collections at research universities: Challenges and opportunities for collaborative collection development. Art Libraries Journal, 47(3), 67–74. https://doi.org/10.1017/alj.2022.10

    
    There can be many different types of collections, with different restrictions and issues with each one. This article discusses how art libraries function. According to the author, they are still mainly confined to print. That can lead to difficulties when it comes to circulation. As an example, the two libraries mentioned primarily relied on in person visits and copying materials. This weakness was fully displayed during the pandemic, when they found they could not service their communities well anymore. The article focuses on how the two libraries handled their pandemic problems, as well as discuss the options they found available. The authors disagreed upon the presented options, but recognized the need to work with various other people and plan on measuring the effects of their joint efforts. 

    This article was an interesting one to read, as it discussed several things that can be somewhat taken for granted. First of all, not all institution have been willing or able to transfer their resources online. However, it also gave an interesting view of the collaboration between the two, with the two authors coming from different fields. It is a short article, and worth a read.

Putting the Science Back in Library Science: Collection Development, Diversity Audits, & Understanding Teens – Analyzing Data for Decision Making

 Aleen Houseman 

Citation:
            Jensen, K., & says, A. (2018, March 21). Putting the science back in library science: Collection development, diversity audits, & understanding teens – analyzing data for decision making. Teen Librarian Toolbox. https://teenlibrariantoolbox.com/2018/03/21/putting-the-science-back-in-library-science-collection-development-diversity-audits-understanding-teens-analyzing-data-for-decision-making/ 

Link: Click Here

Descriptions:
            Description: This rescore includes a first-hand perspective of collection developments and diversity audits. Librarian Karen Jensen of the Mount Vernon Public library walks the reader through her process of evaluating/ creating and auditing a collection at her library.