On 10/6/07, Debra Loguda-Summers <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>> We are not trying to keep researchers from viewing anything at
anytime, BUT we do need to have some sort of control of our collection
otherwise what good am I  in taking care of our collection.

I don't understand what kind of "control" you want. You "control" the
originals and presumably have backup copies of the OCR files. Are you
afraid people will steal your material and credit it as their own? Are
you afraid that people will hack your documents and change the text
online?

What you are asking is conflicting with the purpose of putting
materials online. On the one hand, you are saying that you want to
make your research more accessible to people by OCR and placing it on
the web. On the other hand, you are essentially saying you want to
control how people use it.

I see this attitude a lot with academics who want to place their work
online so that more people can access it but are paranoid about their
work being "stolen". The sad truth is that people are going to steal
work regardless, the Internet just makes it a bit easier. It is a
small price to pay for better information dissemination.

Pioneering universities like MIT have put their entire curricula
online, accessible to anyone who wants to read it and download it. You
won't get credit for reading a course online but you do have access to
the same information MIT students have so it's like being able to
audit classes for free. I'm sure other professors use their lesson
plans, problem sets, and reading lists. Honest professors will credit
their sources and it's free advertising for MIT. Dishonest professors
won't credit their sources and one hopes that karma is truly a
boomerang and they will eventually be caught.

Does letting the world have access to this information hurt MIT?
Certainly not. Last time I checked, MIT was still highly competitive
and MIT degrees were still widely respected. What it did do is give
more people access to information, which is at the core of what a
university should be in the first place.

If you are concerned about how your information is being used, I'd
suggest that you require people to register for your records site and
"check out" documents. You can't set an expiration date but you can
control who is viewing them and what they are downloading. Like anyone
else who comes to your physical location and xeroxes documents, you
can't control what they do with their research once they leave your
space. Online research shouldn't be any different.

Deb

=========================================================
Important Subscriber Information:

The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes).

If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).