Reading notes for Security and Economics

W. Y. Arms -- Implementing Policies for Access Management

This article addresses issues in access management of electronic documents. Many institutions wish to restrict access to online documents for reasons of privacy, security, or payment restrictions. The access model's framework places policies at the center, such that every user and collection has an associated policy. However, under this model any policy change would require altering every document, a time-consuming and error-prone prospect. Alternatively, another approach uses containers of information to encapsulate policies and more easily transmit/change/enforce them. The article's table in section two was helpful for illustrating a simple breakdown of users, attributes, and operations all comprising a policy.

Of course, digital materials' metadata allows for many attributes to be associated with every item, and users' logins may easily demarcate different populations. However, interoperability is still a challenge when dealing with multiple libraries' collections. The article shows why it's best to keep attributes, policies, operations, etc. separate for easy management.

Lesk Chapter Nine

The chapter begins by pointing out that traditional libraries have often been financially extravagant, and questioning whether digital libraries offer a more economically reasonable alternative.

Funding models for digital libraries include:
* institutional support
* charging users
* advertisers
* other, such as pledge drives for donations

Of course, the traditional library has not been monetized, so users may be resistant to paying for digital library services. Although costs for digital copying are low to nil, if consumers expect instant and unlimited copies, publishers stand to lose money.

Costs of academic texts and journals are particularly high, causing many libraries to reduce their offerings -- a loss to scholars. Sometimes libraries switch to on-demand acquisition only. I was interested in the notion of libraries as "buyers' clubs," wherein people pool their money to buy a single copy of something, but the article mentions many problems (and even paradoxes) with this approach.

Subscription libraries are one option, with parallels both in history and in organizations such as video lending services. A per-item or a per-month/year fee model may be used.

One problem libraries may face with digital materials is revocation of priorly owned materials. When a library cancels a subscription to a print journal, it still owns the titles it has already bought; in the digital realm, all access to back issues may be denied with the cancellation of a subscription.

Yet another issue is the difficulty of obtaining access to copyrighted work in order to digitize it. This process can consume far too much time and money to be worthwhile.