Over at the LibraryLaw Blog is a post entitled: Will ACTA end the purchase of foreign titles by libraries? If you haven’t been following ACTA and you’re a foreign language librarian you might take heed! ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) is essentially a meeting that was top secret and aims to draft an agreement between countries, but their work has been leaked. The ramifications of this trade agreement is unclear, but there are some pretty startling potential ramifications that may come out of it.
Do any of you librarians who work with foreign language academicians know about what you are able to purchase and bring back into the country for non-commercial use? What is your current practice for purchasing foreign language works? How would the inability to collect these works affect your patrons, your service, and your collection?
But foreign language works are not the only issue librarians and library advocates have rasied with the leaked text. The Library Copyright Alliance, along with some other groups, has issued a document entitled: Concerns with the Leaked Internet Chapter of ACTA (pdf).
We’ll have to wait until Wednesday when the text of ACTA will officially be released, but it’s sure to be rife with fodder for discourse on copyright and how libraries provide services and do their good work.
Filed under: legislative Tagged: | acta, copyright, legislative
