Attribution and Fair Use – Copyright part 9

Attribution to sources goes back at least to the time of the Talmud, if not earlier. Frequently one rabbi will say something in the name of one of his teachers or quote a Biblical verse. While this is not the same as an academic citation, it does acknowledge that we are students of our teachers and we draw our ideas from reliable sources. In rabbinic law as well as contemporary jurisprudence decisions and rulings are based on the precedence of previous decisions. In academic writing, sources add support and credibility to what you say. Sometimes what is “new” is based on an interpretation of sources. We teach students to take from many sources and synthesize them into something new.

Attribution is not just a matter of derekh eretz (good manners) but also indicates intellectual honesty and respect for our teachers, who can be anyone we have encountered in person or from their writings. Attribution is a way to say we are “dwarfs on the shoulders of giants.” [fn 1]

Many times the insider is at a disadvantage for creating and expressing new ideas. The local insider is not considered to be an expert. The management or co-workers see this person every day and do not respect his/her opinion and advice as much as the expert from the outside. If the insider brings outside support in the form of attribution his voice is no longer alone.

Early copyright protection was afforded to rabbinic books by local rabbis and local municipal authorities before a national copyright law existed. Copyright protection has at least two aspects—protection of intellectual property and commercial protection so that creators, printers and publishers could make money from their labors. Early protection favored the printers and publishers rather than the creators. Without the limited monopoly of copyright, writers and publishers would have no incentive to create new works. People are entitled to compensation for creating artistic and literary works.

Intellectual property rights and commercial rights to created works are two aspects of the creative process. Sometimes the rights are intertwined and sometimes the rights are separate. The intellectual property right to own recorded ideas lasts with the creator forever. Commercial rights have a time or place limit. While you may copy freely something with an expired copyright, you can not claim that you wrote it. For the purpose of encouraging commerce copyright protection is a limited monopoly. The written law (i.e. statues) and common law (court cases and administrative rules) govern how we use the intellectual property of others and how we protect our intellectual property. Creators have the right to earn money, control how their work is used, control quotes from their works, and control the creation of derivative works such as paperback reprint, electronic versions, videos, and audio books.

Many aspects of copyright are unfair to scholars, students, teachers, libraries and librarians. That does not grant license to ignore or break the law. Even if I could get everyone in Congress to agree with me the problems would not be solved because the Europeans have a different way of looking at copyright protection.

Attribution of ideas is a way of showing the author is honest and trust worthy. Academic excellence is based on trust. Even outside the academy one needs to build a reputation of trust. In business one needs internal and external customers to believe what you say is correct and trustworthy. One can not steal the intellectual property of others and be taken seriously. I use the word “steal” in contrast to learning from the best practices of others. A discussion of how we learn from others is a topic discussed other articles. [fn 2]

Plagiarism is the act of taking someone else’s creative work and claiming it as your own. Presenting a work as your own that is not is a matter of profession or artistic ethics. Plagiarism is not always illegal but if caught you may lose your reputation, your grade in a class, or your job. Intellectual honesty is just as important and monetary honesty. In teaching this to children we say that stealing something from a store is just as dishonest as stealing the work of authors.

Fair Use

Copyright is tradeoff between the public who want to consume creative efforts and the creators who want to earn reward from their efforts and control use of the material. The statute gives guidelines for the use of copyrighted materials. The law says nothing about attribution. Attributing sources with a correct citation does not absolve one of following the laws concerning fair use. The law is a guide that leaves room for interpretation. Fair use is a way to allow the public use of copyrighted materials. Some cases have even gone to the courts in order to decide if fair use was followed. [fn 3]

Here are the full text of the Israeli and American laws, a summary of the U.K. laws concerning fair use and a license to deal with how one can use materials.

Israeli Copyright Act of 2007

19. Fair Use
(a) Fair use of a work is permitted for purposes such as: private study, research, criticism, review, journalistic reporting, quotation, or instruction and examination by an educational institution.
(b) In determining whether a use made of a work is fair within the meaning of this section the factors to be considered shall include, inter alia, all of the following:
(1) The purpose and character of the use;
(2) The character of the work used;
(3) The scope of the use, quantitatively and qualitatively, in relation to the work as a whole;
(4) The impact of the use on the value of the work and its potential market.

American Law Title 17 Chapter 1

§ 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include
(1) The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) The nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

U.K. Copyright

The text of the British copyright law called Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 is more extensive in what is permitted under fair use than the American and Israeli law. Chapter III [fn 4] deals with what is permitted to do with copyrighted works without infringements. To summarize the law had provisions for use of works under the following topics: 1) for research or private study; 2) criticism, review and news reporting; 3) incidental inclusion of copyright material; 3) educational use; 4) recording of a performance; 5) photocopying in schools, archives, and libraries; 5) public documents such as parliamentary and judicial proceedings and public records; 6) designs, models and other artwork; 7) electronic copies; 8) sound recordings; 9) computer programs; 10) radio and TV broadcasts;

To summarize what is permitted – Making copies for private study or research, instruction is allowed. Copying sections for review, criticism or news reporting is allowed with acknowledgment and limited to no more than necessary for the purpose. Incidental use such as news broadcast or video capturing a copyrighted work in the background is allowed.


Creative Common License

The Creative Common License (full text: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode) is a way of dealing with use of copyrighted materials. The creator gives anyone the right to use the work with certain limitations. One limitation is attribution. The user must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work.) The right to use, adapt or translate the work is world-wide, royalty free, non-exclusive and for the duration of the copyright.

2. Fair Dealing Rights

Under Creative Common here is the paragraph for fair use

Nothing in this License is intended to reduce, limit, or restrict any uses free from copyright or rights arising from limitations or exceptions that are provided for in connection with the copyright protection under copyright law or other applicable laws.

Discussion

The law concerning fair use is purposely vague leaving room for interpretation and adaptation to individual circumstances. Most people including teachers have not kept up with the latest changes in the copyright law. People who graduated before 1988 think that registration is required for copyright protection; it does not. They don’t understand that neither publication nor a copyright notice is required for protection. Any work in a tangible form is protected automatically under American law and all countries that are part of the Berne Convention. Tangible form means the work is written, recorded, or saved in a computer file. An email, web site, and blog, are as equally protected as a printed or recorded work. Ideas not put in tangible are not protected. I’ve explained this many times to faculty and students. Because they don’t understand the protection aspect, they don’t understand what they can or can not use in their papers.

The nature of law suits for copyright infringement is different than other damage suits. The court may award up to $150,000 damages for each separate act of knowing infringement. Unlike other cases the court can order the losing party to pay the legal fees of the wining party. If you don’t know that you were infringing, this will only affect the amount of damages and not responsibility or liability. Since good faith compliance to fair use is a defense, it makes sense to understand how to comply. Institutions make policies to guide their people in compliance. Following the policy makes one less likely to be sued. Ignoring the policy makes one a good target for a law suit.

Writers frequently base their writings on the work of others. In the Renaissance playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlow borrowed material from history and literary works. [fn 5] Today lots of works are based on folklore or common themes. In 2012 and 2013 rival film companies, Disney, Universal, and Relativity, will be releasing new films based on Snow White. One will be a retelling of the Grimm Brothers fairy tale and the other two will be far removed from the original story. [fn 6] This is not plagiarism and not even part of a fair use question. One is allowed to use a well known theme. One is allowed to base a current work on common knowledge or a folk story. Since lists and government documents are not protected with copyright, if you wanted to make a video or Broadway musical based on the reading of document you would not need permission, but you would need attribution.

To facilitate following the laws concerning fair use many libraries have written policies and guides for users. Here is a sampling: From Stanford University Library: “Measuring Fair Use: The Four Factors” http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-b.html. The four factors are taken directly from the law as I quoted above. From the University of Texas Libraries: “Fair use of copyrighted materials” http://copyright.lib.utexas.edu/copypol2.html . I don’t intend to repeat what they have written.

Purpose. If the copy is for educational purposes rather than making a profit you have a stronger case for fair use that if you charge for copies. Remember the U.S. Constitution is the authority for all copyright law. The copyright clause is: “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. “ The clause permits Congress to make laws; it does not state the limit or nature of the promotion. One test is whether or not the purpose is for the promotion of “science” (i.e. educational purposes.)

Nature of the work. Quality of the work, merit, and artistic quality or any other measures of judgment have no bearing on the copyright or the fair use of a work. Whether the work is fictional, non-fiction, or a parody will have some merit on how you can use the work under fair use. I am freer to make up ideas for a work of imagination than a work of non-fiction. But even the line between fiction and non-fiction is gray. For example in my interviews with a college president, all the facts were from my imagination, but the philosophy and content of the ideas had an underlying truth. An essay, editorial, or op-ed may be the opinion and work of the author’s imagination, but that does not mean it is not true.

See my blog article of Monday, November 15, 2010, “What is Copyright? Part 2” for a longer discussion of what is protected.

Amount of copied materials. The law does not state the amount of material that may be copied from the original. Generally libraries say that a reader may copy an article or chapter for personal use. The copying of an entire book is not allowed. However, if someone copied one chapter today, a second chapter next week and a third chapter another time we don’t tell the person no. We say that the person copying is responsible for copyright compliance, not the librarians. If you copy a couple of paragraphs of a larger work into your article, there is generally no problem. If your article consists of copied paragraphs and very little analysis, you have a problem. Permitted copying is independent of the need to attribute your source. Copying one paragraph then making comments is allowed.

Systematic copying and distribution is not allowed without permission even if the work is out of print. This is a big problem. If the publisher is still in business they could control the reprint rights. If the publisher or owner of the work is impossible to find, it is hard to advise the potential reprinter what to do. Libraries are allowed to make archival copies. This kind of problem is faced by Google and other systematic digitization projects. Since the law is gray in this area, the copyright law should be amended to make the copying of orphan works easier.

Marketability. This is the protection of the commercial rights of the creators and publishers. If what you are copying interferes with the ability to sell copies, this is not a fair use. If what you do does not interfere, the creator would have only the argument of protecting intellectual property. That is control over how the work is used. For example when reviewing a book you copy the cover. This is a free advertisement for the publisher. They shouldn’t mind. If you copy a published picture from a book or magazine without permission, this is possible infringement. If those pictures are licensed from the owner, the right to copy must be secured from them. This is not an area we are careful about when teaching students. While it may help a student’s paper to have an illustration, it should not come at a cost of stealing.

Common misconceptions

1) The lack of a copyright notice means the work is not protected. Before 1976 this was the law. Many works passed into the public domain because the little © was missing. While I think it is important to notify your readers that you claim copyright, the law does not require it. With or without a copyright symbol or formal registration, your work has protection. Registration for works has some advantages such a proving a claim, but it is not required. Copyright deposit copies are one way national libraries obtain copies of every work produced. This is important for cultural history and documentation of a time or place. Research libraries depend on lists of copyright deposits to assemble systematic collections.

2) Publication is the key to protection. This was the old law again. The current law provides for protection from the moment the work is put into tangible form. A memo, a scribble or class paper has the same protection as a book printed with 10,000’s of copies.

3) If it’s on the Internet, it’s free to copy. Wrong, wrong, and wrong. Material on the Internet is in a tangible form and is published. It is protected by every law that applies to printed and recorded works. Easy of finding and copying material has no bearing on fair use or copyright. This is one area that creators and providers should be more careful about providing notification. If someone already believes that lack of notification of copyright notice means public domain, providers should make sure to make a claim of copyright in clear language. They should help educate the public to know that creators of content have the protection of copyright. Some creators give notice of Creative Common license. That means you can copy the work without fee, but still need to give proper attribution. The work is still protected with copyright.

4) One paragraph of less than 300 words is OK to copy. What is permitted depends on the nature of the work. If the paragraph is one from a long novel, 300 words is minimal and should be no problem. If the original work is only 350 words, then copying 300 words is a substantial part of the original and this is not fair use. If you copy a 4” x 6” section of a 500 square inch mural this is not the same as copying a 4” x 6” complete photograph.

5) A disclaimer can absolve you of fair use violations. No, copyright of a work is not set aside by a disclaimer on the part of the end user. A license agreement from the copyright owner may over ride some provisions of fair use. The license or contract will take precedence over the statutory rights.

Summary

We must help students, scholars, faculty, and other library users understand what is permitted and what is not under copyright so that they can be better users and creators of knowledge.


==============================
Notes

1. This aphorism is discussed at length in several articles including. Leiman, Shnayer Z, “Dwarfs on the Shoulders of Giants,” Tradition Spring 1993. Leiman claims that the earliest mention of this aphorism was recorded by the Italian halakhic writer, Isaiah di Trani ben Mali (the Elder) (c. 1180 – c. 1250). The aphorism could be based on a synthesis of several Biblical sentences – Psalms 119:46 “I will no be ashamed of your decrees, and not shamed in the presence of kings” and Kohelet 2:9 “I gained more wealth than anyone before me in Jerusalem.” Leiman lists in footnote #10 an exhaustive list of sources for who cite this aphorism. I leave a full discussion of the topic to Leiman. The aphorism also is used in Latin and English literature.

2. See my web pages: “Knowledge Management Terms “ http://home.earthlink.net/~ddstuhlman/defin1.htm and read the sections on knowledge and learning and the page, “Knowledge Management Experts” http://home.earthlink.net/~ddstuhlman/kmexpert.htm see the section of sharing knowledge.

3. Stanford University Libraries has a web page with a list of fair use court cases. http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-c.html These examples include the points of law that were deciding factors such as marketability and control of intellectual property. An author who paraphrased from unpublished letters of J.D. Salinger was denied under fair use because of control of the intellectual property rights of the material. The Nation magazine was denied use of unpublished letters from Gerald Ford because of marketability concerns.

American Library Association lists more cases on their web site: http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/copyright/court/index.cfm

4. Full text of Chapter III http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/part/I/chapter/III

5. The first copyright law was the Statue of Queen Anne (1710). Before then works were protected by common law or local stature not by a national law. In my blog of Tuesday, November 2, 2010, “What is Copyright? Part 1” I discuss some of the history of copyright and give sources for more information. In a comment to that posting, Barbara Braxton, a librarian in Australia, explains the difference between how Australian schools and teachers are able to use materials in classroom based on an agreement between the schools and publishers. This compares to the lack of such agreements in other countries.

6. See “'Snow White' Movies: Here's What We Know About Them” by Peter Hall http://blog.moviefone.com/2011/02/08/new-snow-white-movie/ for more information.

Copyright of Art Objects 2 – Copyright part 8

In a comment to my blog article of February 17, 2011 I mentioned a case before the British Supreme Court of George Lucas v. Andrew Ainsworth. The case was argued in

March 2011 and the judgment was given on July 27, 2011. Ainsworth was the designer of the Storm Trooper costumes in the 1977 movie, Star Wars. Ainsworth was selling (fn 1)replicas of the costumes made from the same molds (fn 2) and designs as the ones in the film. Lucas claimed that Luscafilms owned a copyright on the costumes. Ainsworth claimed the costumes were clothing and not protected by copyright. My February 17 article dealt with the copyright of clothing. Objects that have a utility purpose such as clothes, shoes, and furniture can not be protected with copyright. The article has references for more information.

On July 27 the British Supreme Court made their ruling public in a press summary (http://www.supremecourt.gov.uk/docs/UKSC_2010_0015_ps.pdf) . Both sides feel they have won something and the Court set some precedents for the enforcement of copyright and jurisdiction of the British courts. The case is discussed in the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jul/27/star-wars-helmet-court-case on July 27, 2011. The Supreme Court stated that the costumes are not art. If the costumes were protected as a design, the 25(fn3) year duration of design protection has long passed. The Court rules that Ainsworth may continue to sell his costumes everywhere but the United States.

The Court dealt with two legal issues that set precedent in the British legal system and may have implications in American law.

(1) The definition of “sculpture” and the correct approach to three-dimensional objects that have both an artistic purpose and a utilitarian function;

(2) Whether an English court may exercise jurisdiction for infringement of copyright committed outside the European Union in breach of the copyright law of that country?

If you create or purchase a three-dimensional object and place it in your home or business, there is no doubt it is a protected sculpture because it has no utilitarian function. The way you display the object would make it perfectly clear that the object is art and without any practical use. If you wear it, it can not be copyright protected.

Lucasfilm argued that the helmet was an important part of the character. The Court said the same argument could be used for a 20th century military helmet used in a film. They used the example of the film depicting a war of the past (paragraph 43) with soldiers wearing helmets made of plastic, but painted to look like authentic steel.

The Court also claimed jurisdiction over the infringement of a foreign copyrights. While this does not obligate U.S. courts to do the same, it does show a precedent that may be used in other jurisdictions. The case was first presented in California, but the U.S. judgment was unenforceable in England.

The Court’s decision was based on several other cases that defined a sculpture. For example a 1962 case in New Zealand concerning Wham-O’s Frisbees. The Court of Appeal of New Zealand ruled that flying disks were utilitarian and not sculpture for the purposes of the Copyright Act. The wooden models of the discs were sculpture and protected. (Full ruling: http://www.supremecourt.gov.uk/decided-cases/docs/UKSC_2010_0015_Judgment.pdf)

The questions of jurisdiction were based on cases in the U.S. and other counties. This opens the doors to suits in the country where the defendant is domiciled rather than the home country of the plaintiff. This may help protect copyright holders in foreign countries.

These legal points are interesting, but far removed from my primary interest of copyrights as they relate to print, intellectual property and libraries. Sculptured objects are rarely collected in any great quantity by libraries. Library users general will not need to copy three-dimensional objects. However, the conflict of the British and American intellectual property rights reminds me that at one time American and British authors had no protection in the other’s country. It took The International Copyright Act of 1891 (also called the Chase Act) to afford foreign writers and publishers copyright protection in the United States. In today’s global economy the flow of words transcends borders so quickly that we need to protect our intellectual property on a global basis.

My next article will be on fair use or “fair dealing” in British law.

============================
Notes

1. Andrew Ainsworth has a web site (http://www.sdsprops.com/) for selling the costumes from Star Wars. He has several helmets in addition to the Imperial Storm Troopers. It states that they products are not for sale in the United States.

2. Since he was British, he used “original moulds.”

3. The press summary has “15 years” which is a typo. According to the text of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 section 52 the duration is 25 years.

Mistaken Attribution part 2

In my previous post, “Mistaken Attribution,” I was trying to show that scholars and those who claim to be serious intellectuals need to properly cite and credit their sources. One can not just put words in someone's mouth. One needs to make proper citations for everything. Many writers claimed that Milton Himmelfarb made the aphorism, “Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans.” Since last week I’ve had an e-mail conversation with his daughter Miriam Himmelfarb, who did additional research.

In his July 15, 2011 column in the Jerusalem Post, "The "vote like Puerto Ricans" question " (http://blogs.jpost.com/content/vote-puerto-ricans-question) Shmuel Rosner, writes about my blog article. (1)  He does not mention my name or give a plain text citation for my blog article. I wrote in a comment that he as guilty of not citing sources as much as all those who pretend to quote Milton Himmelfarb. All of the comments to his article talked about voting. None understood my point concerning lack of citation.

Let me give examples of what students have tried to use for citations. 1) "Yahoo News" as an author; 2) a publisher as the author; 3) not able to figure out which name was the author's last name or first. One may quote a news story, but it does have an author. If no author is given, it should be entered under title. It seems that teachers don’t understand this concept. My training in cataloging means my basis for entering authorship or attribution uses Anglo-American Cataloging Rules.

Except when the author is a corporate body, the author and publisher are not the same. When the student wanted to list a book published by Alcoholics Anonymous in the bibliography, I guided her to the library catalog and showed her what the professional cataloger recorded for the entry. The author’s name is “Bill W.” The correct entry in the bibliography is: W., Bill.

The third case is a ringer. Even looking at the abstract and what ProQuest advised for the citation, we couldn't figure out which name was the author's last name. The author had a foreign name that was not familiar to us. We found his Facebook page. After seeing he was born in Bangladesh and living in England, we then could figure out the correct order to his name. We then knew the ProQuest citation suggestion was not correct.

Over the weekend I talked to some of my professor friends. They all say that getting correct citations is important. One told me about reviewing students' works and spending a lot of time telling them to write down their sources and correctly cite them.

I heard from David Pollack (Associate Executive Director, Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) in New York), via e-mail who knew Himmelfarb. David said that perhaps Himmefarb used the quote in his speeches after all it was similar to what he wrote in several places. If he did say something in a speech, those who wanted to use his quote could have cited the speech. The citation could be something like, "in a speech on July 17, 19xx Milton Himmelfarb is reported to have said, 'XYZ.'" No one referred to a speech.

I received an e-mail from Milton Himmelfarb's daughter Miriam Himmelfarb. She asked him directly in a January 2004 e-mail if the quote was his. He did not confirm that he said the exact quote.

I quote from her e-mail and his reply:

In January 2004 I wrote my father an e-mail to ask if he had actually said that Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans. His reply:

Analyzing the vote in the 1968 presidential election, and relying on the demographer Donald (?) Bogue's Population of the United States, I wrote--as near as I can remember--"Jews have Episcopalian bank accounts and Puerto Rican voting habits." (2)

Dr. Donald J. Bogue worked for Population Association of America and the University of Chicago. Currently is a professor emeritus. He was well known for his studies of population, demography, and human ecology. For more information see the web sites about him http://www.populationassociation.org/sidebar/paa-fund-campaign/honored-members/donald-j-bogue/ and http://sociology.uchicago.edu/people/faculty/bogue.shtml

Himmelfarb is referring to the book Population of the United States (Glencoe, Ill., Free Press [c1959] ) It has been updated and the most recent version is dated 2010.

In talking to a lawyer friend at breakfast last Monday about correct citations he told me of a case he worked on. The opposing attorney wanted to use a case as a precedent. Not only could she not produce the correct citation or a copy of the case, she incorrectly interpreted the legal situation. She did not know the law or the relevant cases. The judge couldn't allow an argument without a basis.

While academic writing is not the same as a court case, scholars need to be care to document what they write and create citations for their quotes. Remember Stuhlman's Rule of Citations ==>; Citations must be reversible, meaning I should be able to look up and verify your citation. The corollary is APA style does not follow Stuhlman's Rule.

Here is the summary of what Miriam Himmelfarb reported about her father’s quote.

Miriam was able to discover some more sources concerning the quote. In Jews and Gentiles (New York : Encounter Books, ©2007. a collection of Himmelfarb’s essays edited by his sister, Gertrude Himmelfarb), there is an essay called "Jews, Episcopalians, Puerto Ricans."

On p. 211 it says: "After the 1968 election I wrote what was eventually to become an anonymous aphorism, that Jews had the incomes of Episcopalians but voted like Hispanics ('Is American Jewry in Crisis?' in Commentary March 1969)."

This indicates that "'Is American Jewry in Crisis" is the source we are seeking. That article appears as "Crisis" in The Jews of Modernity (Basic Books, 1973).
On page 91 Bogue is mentioned, and there are some sentences related to this issue, but not identical to the famous line:

1. "But on the one hand, we know that Jews have voted left of their bank accounts."

2. "Jews voted like the Mexicans of the West and the Puerto Ricans of the East--the poor, racial minorities."

I also found this in the Introduction to Jews and Gentiles (the Introduction, including the footnote, were written by my aunt Gertrude Himmelfarb):

On page vii, footnote 2: In “Jews, Episcopalians, Puerto Ricans,” the “anonymous aphorism,” as Himmelfarb described it (p. 211), refers to Hispanics rather than Puerto Ricans. In an earlier article making the same point, the reference was to Mexicans and Puerto Ricans (“Crisis” [1969] in Jews of Modernity, p. 91). He himself generally used the term Puerto Ricans, and it is in that form that the aphorism is now familiar.

Miriam tried to find out more about her father generally using the term Puerto Ricans (3)but had no success.

This leaves two possibilities according to Miriam and I agree:

1. He used the line orally but did not record it in writing.

2. Someone else paraphrased what he said.

There is no way of making this determination with 100 percent certainty without documentary evidence. No one has admitted to have heard him say the exact quote and his e-mail does tend to indicate that that phrasing was not his.

As in the first article the statement is a reasonable summary of what he said. Just because Himmelfarb was right and others summarize or paraphrase his words it does not release people writing about him or his work from giving proper citations.

=======
Notes:

1. For Shmuel Rosner and everyone who want to cite my article here is my advice. For a bibliography use: Stuhlman, Daniel D. “Mistaken Attribution” Kol Safran July 7, 2011. Web. [date of access] http://kol-safran.blogspot.com/2011/07/mistaken-attribution.html

“Kol Safran” is the name of the blog and corresponds to the name of the publication. If one does not know the authorized version of my name, check my name against the author authority entry in Library of Congress. MLA style does require a city of publication. Since the author and publisher are the same there is not need to use “n.p.” or repeat the name. MLA does not require a URL since they claim the URL could change. I recommend using the URL for a blog because as long as the blog exists, the URL will not change and after the blog ceases to exist the URL can be used with the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/index.php) to find the article. The Internet Archive only indexes web sites by URL. The access date is important because sometimes the articles change.

I do not advise the use of APA style because it violates Stuhlman’s Rule for Citations. For an in text citation I recommend : “Mistaken Attribution” by Daniel Stuhlman found in the blog Kol Safran, July 7, 2011

2. In Bogue’s book on pages 705-708 he discusses the income levels by religious group. The median income of heads of households for Jews is $5954. The closest Christian group is the Episcopalians at $5000. The next group, the Presbyterians, is $4586. However, Bogue summaries his finds as: “Education is a much more potent factor than religious preference in determining the income level of households …” Since Jews have a much higher level of education compared to other groups the income level is higher. This is not a 100% correlation. 23.% of Episcopalians completed at least 4 years of college while only 21.8% of the Jews completed 4 or more years. The Presbyterian rate was 12.8%. Himmelfarb was right to say that Jews and Episcopalians had similar incomes.
The general Kol Safran blog comments now include a recommendation for citation.

3. In a recent exchange with catalogers on AUTOCAT, they discussed the problem in the ambiguity of the terms Spanish American and Hispanics. In conversation nuance and context can clear some of the ambiguity, in library subject headings there is no easy way to distinguish an immigrant from Spain , a person who speaks Spanish , and someone from a Latin American country. Using a search engine to search by keywords would lead to even more ambiguous results. The first hits are for the Spanish-American War because results are based on a algorithm of popularity or likelihood of correctness. On screen six of the search results we finally get a hit for a site not related to the war.

New President Interview -- Part 8

Creating a Community*

Q>; Jonathan Sacks in his book, The home we build together said, “ Society is the home we build together when we bring our several gifts to the common good.” Previously you said that Sacks’ theory of society has influenced your theory of management. Would you elaborate?

A> Sacks talks about how we live in a diverse society and need to build a community. His lessons work for the classroom as well as the administrative

Visiting scholar, Asher Lopatin, giving a lecture

aspects of the College. In the classrooms when I was in elementary school, the teacher was the authority and the students were the sponges to absorb knowledge and the soldiers to follow orders. Many college classes were large lectures where the teacher gave a lecture on the model of the “sage on the stage.” These classrooms did not consider diversity. Students who didn’t comply were either disciplined or made to leave.

Now I tell faculty that most courses should be on the model of respecting the knowledge and gifts of each student. If the teacher wants to pour in knowledge, the lecture hall is an inefficient venue. Students do not retain enough form lectures. In the “common good” model, students are given assignment to prepare them for the classroom. In the classroom the teachers guide the students to understanding the materials and learning to be critical thinkers. Part of the class time is lecture but a bigger part is the exchange of ideas. Assignments are given to enable students to learn on their own and explore the subject in depth. The balance between the learning activities will vary with the subject being taught. For example the humanities lend themselves to more discussion than the lab sciences.

There is a passage we say in the Jewish prayer book based on the Talmud Berakhot 64a. “Students increase peace in the world ... great shall be the peace of your children. Read here not your children, but your builders.” The words in Hebrew for “children” and “builders” vary only by the sound of the first vowel. This is a profound lesson for both teachers and managers. First, we have to teach our students and staff the basics or groundwork. By turning them into people who can create we increase peace. For American society that means we working toward a nation of learners who can live together in peace. On the institutional level it means we create a College that is creative in solving our challenges as members of a community. The goal of the College is education, but along the way we are community members with family and personal lives. The College community is not built for us, but with us as contributing, creative members.

Sometimes the “sweat equity” of students is the hard work of studying and learning so that they master a subject. They earn their role in the College community and the larger community with their actions outside of the classrooms.

Q> Is the College a society, a community or both?

A community is a group of people who build something together. At a meeting (administrative or classroom) the encounter is face-to-face. Meetings can be times to complain, report on previous actions, exchange ideas, or build. For the organization to be effective the meeting has to give people tasks for working together toward a goal. They have to walk away from the face-to-face meeting with something to work on side-by-side. Side-by-side activities accomplish more for community building than talking to people. The ideal administrative meeting would have a common goal and at the end a clear procedure for the next step. For example everyone would have a task to perform before the next meeting.

We just celebrated Independence Day. The United States, unlike most countries, was based on a dream. The Declaration of Independence was the codification of that dream. It was a covenant for a community to be united for a common good. It had no force of law. Rejoicing in the memory of the event that created this county is not a religious event. A college is not a state, but we have some of the aspects of a community based on a covenant.

The covenant is written in our mission and in the idea of what education is for the city, state and country. Education’s goal is to create informed citizens for our multiple intertwined communities. The College’s mission is to provide the resources for education. The resources consist of the physical (buildings, grounds and equipment), the human, and the intellectual. The College does provide a large range of services to help students and faculty do their job of education. However, the College is but one agency within the city and large community.

As a community, the College seeks to provide its members with a co--responsibility for justice, kindness, and compassion. We are not all equal. There is a hierarchy in the organization and students have different role in the organization that faculty and staff.

We are not a society. A society is a self-perpetuating home. Our goals include insuring students graduate. They have a limited time on campus and then must move on to the next step in their lives.

As a community we do have to recognize the diversity of individual gifts. Rule is not by fiat. Consensus building is an important part of leadership.

Q> On an everyday practical level what is being done for community building?

For students any club, sport, or student group is an opportunity to make a community. I learned a great deal about cooperation and team work from participating in a team sport and from playing in musical groups. The star player or performer can go only so far without support from a team.

For faculty and staff I will encourage them to participate in committees and groups that share in the governance and planning for the college. I will encourage groups to implement decisions so that we can move forward in a way that works rather than stumbles.

While the mission is to graduate students, we hope to have a lifetime connection to the students through alumni associations. We offer several kinds of services for graduates and hope they will support us with many kinds of support. We office library privileges and placement help for members of the alumni association. We offer networking opportunities for connecting graduates for business, professional, and social opportunities.

Q> How has the concept of peer reviewed journal articles evolved?

A> The standard in academia especially in the sciences is for professors and researchers to seek peer review of research. The manuscripts submitted for publication are reviewed by experts. Usually the process is blind review with neither party knowing the identity of the other. A prestigious publication will receive many more manuscripts than they can use. For example the New English Journal of Medicine publishes about 5% of the articles submitted. Replication of results of experiments is an important part of scientific process. This reminds me of the reasons God didn’t get tenure. 1) His only written work did not have any citations and was written in ancient Hebrew; 2) His only experiment, creation of the world, can not be replicated; and 3) He refuses to meet face-to-face with any students or colleagues.

In the social sciences and humanities blind peer review is less important. Experiments cannot be replicated like recipes. In the era of blogs, web pages and Wikipedia peer review can be almost instantaneous. For example: earlier this week, a professor in Brooklyn and a librarian in Frankfurt read my blog article. They sent comments and I was immediately able to verify the comments and make changes to my article. If this were a print publication changes would take months and the reader of the unchanged article would probably not know about the changes. I am doing a better service to my readers by making immediate changes. While I did not make a mistake, the added information clarified two points I made. Sometimes letting people read or hear preliminary results enables me to make corrections before publication.

While academics like peer-reviewed and scholarly journals, we have to look at additional types of publications. Professors who publish blogs and web sites that are connected to their teaching and research interests should get the same recognition and credit as those who publish in the more traditional venues. However, a short 500 word blog entry is not the same as a 5,000 word article 50,000 word book. A 500 word carefully researched and documented article is not the same as 500 word opinion piece written in a half hour. A stream of conscience or opinion blog entry is not the same as an academic entry. A blog can be less formal than a journal article, but still needs evidence and citations to be taken seriously. We have to judge the publications on their own merits not on artificial designations.



=========
*Part eight of an imaginary interview with the newly appointed president of the College. Note this is just for your information and amusement. Any connection to a real college president is strictly coincidental.

Mistaken Attribution

If enough people claim something is true, can we believe it to be true? Recently a query on H-Judaic, a list serv for Judaica, asked for the source of the “Jews earn like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans.” Many people have attributed this statement or aphorism, “Jews earn like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans” to Milton Himmelfarb.

When quoting someone usually we put the statement in quotation marks and in academic publication a citation or source is supplied. However, no one can give a citation probably because he never wrote it. Milton Himmelfarb (October 21, 1918 – January 4, 2006) worked for the American Jewish Committee for more than 40 years. He was one of the editors of the American Jewish Yearbook and a contributing editor of Commentary Magazine. Commentary frequently published his editorial opinions and commentary. Even the New York Times obituary (“Milton Himmelfarb, Wry Essayist, 87, Dies” / by Joseph Berger, January 15, 2006) and an article in the New Republic (April 21, 2005 “The Bashing of Bolton, &C / Jay Nordlinger http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/214251/bashing-bolton-c/jay-nordlinger ) attributed this statement to him.

Table from American Jewish Yearbook 1983 p. 117

Himmelfarb's observations on Jewish voting patterns goes back at least to an opinion in the December 1960 issue of Commentary, “In the community: Jewish vote?” In this article he talks about Jewish self-interests and voting. In general he says that Jews take liberalism as their own because it is in their self interest. He never mentions “Episcopalians” as a group. In June 1973 in the Commentary article, “The Jewish Vote (Again)” he talks about the Jews voting according to their own self interests. He says, “… American Jews had become economically to resemble the Episcopalians, the most prosperous of all white groups, their voting behavior continued to be most like the voting behavior of one of the least prosperous of all groups, the Puerto Ricans.” Which is the closest to the aphorism that everyone claims Himmelfarb wrote. Himmelfarb stated that if Jews were voting by economic self-interested they would have overwhelmingly voted for Nixon. They did not. Some of his ideas on Jewish voting also appear in his book, The Jews of modernity (New York, Basic Books, 1973).

Why do so many people think that Himmelfarb said the aphorism? First, it seems to be a concise condensation of many of his writings on Jewish voting patterns. Second, it gives credence to the observation. However, I question the need to put the statement in quotes. I could find nothing in American copyright law that forbids false attribution of statements or works. Some statements that were made famous by Benjamin Franklin were no created by him. Some statements attributed to Mark Twain and even famous rabbis were never authored by them. By attributing a statement to a famous person the true author is both modest and trying to make the statement more important than it is. False attribution and misrepresenting an author’s is not allowed under the Australian Copyright law. (Copyright Act of 1968 section 195 AD).

The statement does not misrepresent Himmelfarb’s ideas, but I question if it is even protected by copyright. Obvious facts, lists, and directories are not automatically protected. If you make a list of ingredients, a shopping list, or list of facts they are not automatically protected. If you were to read a table that had a voting report of elections broken down by groups and made the statement, “Jews vote like Puerto Rican New Yorkers,” this would be a reports of facts. It would not be protected by copyright. Likewise if you read government earning statistical report and said “Jews are in the same economic earning group as Episcopalians,” this would be an obvious fact that is not copyrightable. Before you jump on my case, the context of how you use the facts may make them copyrightable. If the statement was part of a larger work and this was analysis, it would be probably be protected. Short sentences out of context are usually not protected.

Searching for the Prussian Emancipation Act of 1812

 


On H-Judaic, a list serv for professors of Judaica, a retired professor who is writing a book wanted to find the text of the Prussian Emancipation Act of 1812. I thought this would be an easy search using Google. I was mistaken. A search in English yielded many books and articles that mention this edict and portions of the text, but not the full text. The professor said that she had a summary of the text in English, but wanted the full text.

Since this was a complicated search, I hope that you can learn some of the search tricks that I need to use to find the text. I first had to read up and understand this edict. This was the document of emancipation for the Jews of Prussia issued by King Friedreich Willhelm III. The people of Prussia felt this was a reward for the achievements that Jews accomplished in Prussia. In other countries the rulers imposed citizenship and rights to the Jews. The edict eliminated most of the anti-Jewish laws that had existed from the Middle Ages. This edict ended the Middle Ages and its limitations on human rights. It was a great step toward modernity.  . The edict allowed Jews most freedoms of citizens and  required them to adopt family names.  Strangely,  since they couldn’t be university professors, some Jews were encouraged to convert. Foreign Jews who married Prussians were not granted all the rights as citizens. The provisions of the 1812 edict were not enforced uniformly in the Kingdom. For example the city-state of Lübeck expelled Jews who has settled there during the Napoleonic era.(1)

Prussia in 1812 was a German kingdom that included the cities of Berlin, Brandenberg, Hanover, and Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt an der Oder, Koenigsberg, and Breslau. Prussia existed from 1701 until Germany’s defeat in World War 1 in 1918. It had very irregular borders and islands of other states were completely surrounded by Prussia. It was the biggest and most populous of the German states. The borders changed in 1805 and 1807. Today parts of Prussia are in Germany, Poland, Lithuania, and Russia. During the aftermath of World War 2, many areas no longer had a German character. For example the city of Königsberg, largely destroyed in the war, was renamed Kaliningrad (Калининград)in 1946. Königsberg was the city’s name from the year 1255.(2)

Since the edict was Prussian law I searched for a law book with the text. I found the compiled law of Prussia in Gesetz-Sammlung für diu Königlichen Preussischen Staaten., (Collected Royal Laws of the Prussian State) but strangely the volume that covers 1812 is either missing or never existed. The volume covering 1806-1810 was published in 1822 in Berlin. (3)

After I understood something about the edict I could return to use Google. By doing a search in German using Google books I found the complete text of the 1812 Emancipation Act in the book, Der Entwurfeiner Verordnung über die Verhaltnisse der Juden in Preussen und das Edikt vom 11. Marz 1812 / von Moritz Veit. Leipzig : F. A. Brockhaus, 1847, starting on page 27. It is printed in German Fraktur font. Here's the link for finding the book with Google books:

Here is the link for finding the book with Google books http://books.google.com/books?id=w4pDAAAAcAAJ&pg=PR3&dq=Der++Entwurfeiner+Verordnung+%C3%BCber+die+Verhaltnisse+der+Juden&hl=en&ei=12kTTp27BabL0QGjuvy2Dg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Another copy is available from Freimann-Digital-Collection of Frankfurt University Library http://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/freimann/content/titleinfo/96788

The Salomon Ludwig Steinheim-Institut für deutsch-jüdische Geschichte at the University of Duisburg-Essen has a digital archive of text that includes a plain text version of Moritz Veit’s book (http://www.deutsch-juedische-publizistik.de/pdf/1847_Veit.pdf)

According to WorldCat, this book is only available in electronic format. However, I have learned that the book is available in Frankfurt University Library-Judaica Division.

This was not a quick search. Google is a great tool, but the search required an understanding of the search terms in both English and the original German and a brief lesson in what this document is and its significance. During the search process I read many articles on the topic and checked encyclopedias for background. Without the background I would not have known that the result was correct.

==========
Notes:
1> There are many articles and books that discuss the emancipation of Jews in German lands,  Examples are:  “The process of emancipation from the Congress of Vienna to the revolution of 1848/49,” by Arno Hertzog  in Leo Baeck Institute year book XXXVII 1992 p. 61- 69 and “The terms of emancipation 1781-1812,” by H.D. Schmidt in  Leo Baeck Institute year book I  1956.  Modern Judaism and historical consciousness : identities, encounters, perspectives, by Andreas Gotzmann and Christian Wiese  ( Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2007) see chapter 12 Jewish historical culture and Wissenschaft.

2>  One of the challenges of  the geography of Europe is that cities have changed countries and names very often.  Frequently cities had German, Polish, Russian and Yiddish names. The catalog of Jewish Theological Seminary Library list more than 150 books published in Königsberg and none from Kalingrad.

3>  Note added on July 7. Since the original publication I received additional information from Bonnie Anderson: the University of Iowa Law Library has a copy of the Gesetz-Sammlung fűr die Königlichen Preussischen Staaten, 1806-65. Thanks also to Rachel Heuberger of Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt a. M (Frankfurt University Library) for providing information about this item in their collection.
 

Notes received from Reina Wiliams:

The subject line of this email grabbed my attention immediately. I am working as an Online Librarian at a proprietary school. Yesterday, I was helping a student in chat, and he was angry he could not search the library databases like Google. He even submitted a feedback form saying how dissatisfied he was with the library web resources. He stated he could just Google his topic. This student fails to realize that the web resources may not be credible or accepted by his instructor. Librarians at the very least have to be present to teach students how to evaluate web resources.
 

Where is WorldCat when you need it?

On a recent Sunday night rerun of the TV show Criminal Minds (episode "The Fisher King: Part 2" Original Air Date: 20 September 2006 ) the Behavior Analysis Unit (BAU) was presented with a code. Dr. Spencer Reid recognized it as a book code. A book code uses a book as a key. The plain text message has a location in the book for the word. In the show the plain text had three numbers representing the page, line and word within the line. The sender and receiver both need the same edition of the same book.

Dr. Reid figured out that the book was The Collector / by John Fowles (fn1) published in London in 1963. The title of the book was derived from other clues given by the suspect. This is a well known book with more than 100 editions and translations. It was a television moment. That means ordinary people would not connect a 1963 baseball card and a shadow box containing a butterfly to the title or a book and its date of publication. To decode the message he needed to find the book. The book has a plot similar to the TV episode (a woman is held captive in a cellar by psychopathic suspect).

The BAU’s data analyst, Penelope Garcia, was asked to find the book. She specializes in accessing secure databases and creating quires that compare two or more databases. According to her biography, she is self taught and never went to college. She is able to enter secure databases that she does not have official credentials faster than I can enter a database that I have full permission to use. Her computers give her results faster than my computers can respond to the enter key. I guess that is just because the show operates in television time. The book query had her flustered. She said that she didn’t know what database to check. She was stuck. Eventually Dr. Reid reported that he was checking some libraries. He never said they he needed a librarian for help.


WorldCat (WorldCat.org) is the database to check for this book. It is a publically accessible database that does not require a fee. However, an ordinary end user search would not find the correct edition. WorldCat has an advanced search that allows one to use multiple search parameters. I entered the title “collector,” author “fowles” and the date “1963.” Worldcat gave me three hits; all were for the 1963 Little, Brown edition published in Boston. I wondered if the show’s writers were creating a fictional London edition.

I went to search the catalogue (fn2)of the British Library (http://catalogue.bl.uk/). Using the advanced search option and I found the 1963 London edition published by Jonathan Cape. The TV show did not say which British city was the city of publication, but the London edition was the only one from Great Britain. This proved that the book exists. Dr. Reid would need to find the book in a library nearby. WorldCat not only gives the bibliographic information but also the names of the libraries that own it. The list is ordered by the closest library.

I returned to WorldCat and refined the search to include London, 1963. This search gave me the London 1963, edition. The list of libraries included many within 10 miles. However, after searching their catalogs I found only the Little, Brown 1963 edition. I thought WorldCat had a glitch in their search algorithm.

WorldCat did not match the exact edition. They could be figuring that as a Chicago resident I would want the American edition. Scholars sometimes need exact editions as do TV crime fighters. Since the American and British editions did not have the same number of pages there is no way Dr. Reid could use the American edition to solve his coded message.

My error was that I missed selecting the option to search for this edition only. Once I selected that option I found the book in the University of Chicago Library. Its copy has a note on the cover "Uncorrected proof" The library of the University of Michigan and Indiana University also have copies without the note.

The reason American libraries generally only have American editions is because the British editions would not be sold in this country. London editions would only come from gifts, bequests or purchases of used books. The law covering the importation of English language books is under Title 17 Copyright Chapter 6. Prior to 1986 books offered for sale were required to be manufactured in the U.S. or Canada (exceptions are noted in the law.) The TV episode did not say anything about a British connection to the suspect. I assume they were just trying to make puzzle harder to solve for the audience. Dr. Reid found a library with the book and talked to someone by phone who had the book in hand.

This search information and knowledge of the book trade would be common knowledge to a librarian, but I did not hear the word, “librarian” mentioned in the episode. An ordinary searcher would have missing the London edition because it was not found with the first search. Too many patrons want instant answers and don't take the time for a through search. It is really no small wonder that the self taught, Penelope Garcia, did not even think of calling a librarian for help.

On June 24, 2011 the New York Times had an article “In Lean Times, Schools Squeeze Out Librarians” by Fernanda Santos (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/nyregion/schools-eliminating-librarians-as-budgets-shrink.html?_r=2) about the vanishing school librarian. Budget cutting is eliminating school librarians. In New York there is a law requiring schools to have a certified librarian (http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/libdev/excerpts/finished_regs/912.htm)

§91.2 Employment of school library media specialist Each school district shall employ a certified school library media specialist, unless equivalent service is provided by an alternative arrangement approved by the commissioner, in accordance with the following standards:

The article pictures a school library in shared by Public School 9 and Middle School 571 in Brooklyn that was recently renovated, but has no librarian. Apparently the schools don’t care about breaking the law.

Is it any wonder that a non-college educated TV character does not know to ask a librarian? What happens in the real world? I hope the next time Garcia has trouble finding a book, she turns to the expert librarians.

-----------------
Notes:
1. John Fowles (1926 - 2005 ) was born and educated in Great Britain.
2. British spelling is used on purpose.

Steven Arakawa of Yale University Library wrote in an email, " The Yale University library has generally purchased modern British authors from British publishers." Research libraries frequently have deals with foreign publishers or agents to acquire books. Some major universities do a better job of acquiring foreign imprints than Library of Congress. I did not mean to imply that British imprints are in any way illegal to import. The copyright law and treaties make provisions for foreign imprints. Some of the limitations on British fiction go back to the time when no copyright treaty existed between the U.S. and Great Britain. Charles Dickens and Mark Twain were very unhappy that publishers in the other country were selling their books without paying royalties. Some of these issues I discussed in my blog entries on copyright.

The point in the TV episode was the coder and the decoder needed the exact same edition to get the message.

I have never done a line by line analysis of the differences between an American and a British edition. I assume that the American editions have American spellings and the British have British spellings and sometimes concepts, idioms, or terminology may be localized. Sometimes the title of the book is different in other countries. For example the first Harry Potter book was called Harry Potter and the philosopher's stone in the British edition and Harry Potter and the sorcerer's stone in the American edition. Since the Chicago Public Library has both editions, some significant differences must exist.

Arakawa assumes that Yale wants the British editions of British authors because it is closer to the author's intentions.