Monday, October 31, 2022

New Library Website

Library Information Services CUI Lahore pleased to share that the new library website has been developed. This website has new trends and features which make the site more attractive and user-friendly. This site can also be accessed through other devices like phones, tablets, etc. You can access the site through the below link: library.cuilahore.edu.pk This library site has the Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) of library resources, and information about all digital resources and services. This site will also provide you with information about our departmental libraries. The pages for Repository, Digital Library, and LibraryGUides are also available on the site. Help and online chat are also important features of this site. Mr. Mansoor Sheraz, software engineer is the man who dedicatedly works for this site and converts our ideas into webpages. These types of people are the real assets of COMSATS. Well done Mansoor sb and please accept our lot of appreciation. Thanks to Naeem Akhtar sb, Sr. Manager-IT for his guidance and support. Our library staff including, Ms. Nasira Munir, Naveed Siddique, and Muhammad Ishtiaq sb for their technical and professional support. Your feedback will definitely help us to improve the quality.

MOU Signing Ceremony between CUI Lahore & UMT Libraries

Library Information Services CUI Lahore aims to provide opportunities to its students and faculty to access latest literary and research-oriented resources. In this regard, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has been signed between Library information services CUI Lahore and UMT Lahore Library. The purpose of this MoU was to strengthen research, library services and promote a reading culture among library users of both institutions. From COMSATS side, the MoU was signed by Dr. Rashid A. Khan, Additional Registrar, CUI Lahore, and Dr. Muhammad Tariq, Library Incharge. From UMT side, Mr. Khalid Naqvi, Director office of corporate Linkages and placement- OCLP UMT Lahore and Mr. Zaheer Ahmad, Director Libraries signed the MoU. This MoU will definitely create strategic alliance and seamless linkages among both libraries to cooperate in areas of: 1. Sharing Library Materials. 2. Research collaboration 3. Sharing professional expertise in library science 4. Conducting workshops/ seminars in mutually agreed areas The ceremony was graced by the following officers: Dr. Muhammad Tariq, Library Incharge, CUI Lahore. Mr. Zaheer Ahmad, Chief Library officer, UMT Lahore, Prof. Dr. Muhammad Asif, Convener Library Information Services CUI Lahore, and Ms. Nasira Munir, Assistant Librarian. At the end of the ceremony, the shield was presented to the officials of COMSATS university. Later on, the COMSATS delegation met with Rector, UMT and he congratulated both parties for this wonderful professional venture. Finally, the delegates visited the UMT library which is in the renovation phase. The COMSATS delegates thanked Mr. Zaheer for the wonder arrangement of the ceremony and his hospitality. https://www.facebook.com/LIS.CUILahore

Tuesday, October 04, 2022

Understanding Digital Rights Management 5: Lessons Learned from DRM

In the words of Bruce Schneier, “[DRM] is an impossible task”1 and “trying to make digital files uncopiable is like trying to make water not wet.”2 Since the advent of the Internet and digital file sharing, many lessons have been learned, and various media industries, not just publishing, have witnessed the adverse effects of DRM. These have been the key takeaways for publishers and libraries: • There is no DRM scheme that cannot be hacked. According to the available literature on the subject, DRM can always be hacked.3 • More DRM can lead to fewer (not more) readers. This is particularly true for self-published authors or those trying to break into publishing, whose primary goal is to expose their work to as many as readers as possible before they can afford the luxury of making a living as a published author and being in a position to enforce strict DRM measures (as has been the case with J. K. Rowling, as discussed in chapters 1 and 3). • There is no DRM technology that can eliminate piracy. Those who choose to break the law by engaging in illegal downloading will do so even if the content is free already.4 Piracy is more rampant two decades into the twenty-first century than ever before. • The current generation of digital media consumers has always had access to free content and does not want to pay for it. “Retailers are trying to sell content to a consumer base that is not in the habit of paying for digital media and does not necessarily equate digital piracy with theft.”5 New generations of readers are more likely to view DRM as an obstacle that will move them away from the desire to consume content in the first place. (The Library Journal survey mentioned in chapter 4 confirmed this for college students in the United States.6) • The most sensible way to move forward with DRM for publishers, authors, and libraries is to strike a balance between security, utility, and accessibility.7 Indeed, piracy can become less attractive “not through restrictive DRM, but through features and benefits that cannot be found on P2P [peer-to-peer] sites.”8 It remains to be seen what the future holds for digital content and DRM. More investigation is needed into the impact of DRM-free books, as well as those with light DRM. Likewise, more investigation is needed into the impact of e-books available through libraries. A simple Google Scholar search for “digital rights management and e-books” and “piracy and e-books” yields very few articles, and those that pop up were published in the first decade of the twenty-first century, not the second. Those articles that are available rarely, if at all, discuss piracy in the context of libraries. (The references in this paper reflect that as well.) As of fall 2019, the author of this paper could not locate a single study tracking the effect of free e-books available through libraries on the sales of those books in local or online bookstores. Without such knowledge, claims made by publishers like Macmillan about the cannibalization of sales remain unjustified. Perhaps the most logical way to proceed is to take clues from the lessons learned thus far, and those lessons point to the desirability of less DRM and more flexibility for users. They also point to libraries as being uniquely positioned to tackle the problem of digital piracy by competing with pirate sites. Library platforms give users what pirate sites do not: online safety, no advertising that distracts from reading and research, no vulnerability to virus attacks, and a higher quality of digital files. That said, the book industry cannot overlook the obvious problem of free content. “Free content is a popular solution to the DRM problem. Yet free information removes the monetary incentive for creating content, relying entirely on enhanced reputation for the creator’s reward.”9 Indeed, in order to continue creating and publishing high-quality content, authors and publishers will need assurance moving forward that they will be able to receive just compensation. This leads to the conclusion: there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the conundrum that is DRM and digital piracy, but there are many sensible solutions that together give the book and library industry more clarity as to what works and what doesn’t. We can all agree that too much of anything backfires, even when it comes to protecting copyrighted materials. ————————– Additional Resources Hauser, Tobias, and Christian Wenz. “DRM Under Attack: Weaknesses in Existing Systems.” In Digital Rights Management, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 2770. Edited by Eberhard Becker, Willms Buhse, Dirk Günnewig, and Niels Rump, 206–23. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2003. Kotobee. “Ebook DRM and Security: What Is It and How It Works.” Kotobee (blog), January 17, 2017. www.kotobee.com/blog/ebook-drm-security-what-how. Ku, William, and Chi-Hung Chi. “Survey on the Technological Aspects of Digital Rights Management.” In Information Security: 7th International Conference, ISC 2004, Palo Alto, CA, USA, September 27–29, 2004: Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3225. Edited by Kan Zhang and Yuliang Zheng, 391–403. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2004. Minow, Mary. “Library Patron Internet Records and Freedom of Information Laws.” California Libraries, April 4, 1999: 8–9. Notes 1. Bruce Schneier, “The Futility of Digital Copy Prevention,” Crypto-Gram (newsletter), May 15, 2001, https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/2001/0515.html#3. 2. Bruce Schneier, “Quickest Patch Ever,” Wired, September 7, 2006, https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2006/09/quickest_patch_ever.html. 3. See, for example, Ed Felten, “Why Unbreakable Codes Don’t Make Unbreakable DRM,” Freedom to Tinker (blog), December 3, 2002, https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2002/12/03/why-unbreakable-codes-dont-make-unbreakable-drm. 4. Priti Trivedi, “Writing the Wrong: What the E-book Industry Can Learn from Digital Music’s Mistakes With DRM,” Journal of Law and Policy 18, no. 2 (2010), article 10, https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/jlp/vol18/iss2/10. 5. Trivedi, “Writing the Wrong,” 956. 6. Mirela Roncevic, “The Long and Winding Road to DRM-Free E-books in Academic Libraries,” in No Shelf Required 3: New Era for E-books and Digital Content, ed. Mirela Roncevic and Peyton Stafford(Chicago: ALA Editions, forthcoming). 7. Kurt Schiller, “A Happy Medium: Ebooks, Licensing, and DRM,” Information Today 27, no. 2 (February 2010), www.infotoday.com/it/feb10/Schiller.shtml. 8. Trivedi, “Writing the Wrong,” 965. 9. L. Jean Camp, “First Principles of Copyright for DRM Design,” Internet Computing, IEEE 7, no. 3 (May–June 2003): 64, https://doi.org/10.1109/MIC.2003.1200302.

Monday, April 04, 2022

Quarterly newsletter of Library Information Services CUI Lahore Campus

I am pleased to share that the new Issue of LIS Bulletin (January- March 2022), Vol-X issue-I, ISSN: 2309-5032 has been published by Library information Services CUI-Lahore. #Read_Enjoy #online_Services #library #LIS_CUI_Lahore #Bulletin https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=5193891827335733&set=pcb.5193894920668757

Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Collection Development Report 2019-2021

Collection cevelopment Report 2019-2021 https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=5061350180589899&set=a.5061353270589590

Tuesday, January 18, 2022

LIBRARY BULLETIN (December Fall 2021)

I am pleased to share that the new Issue of LIS Bulletin (December Fall 2021), ISSN: 2309-5032 has been published by Library information Services CUI-Lahore. You can access the LIS Bulletin through the link https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?vanity=librarycuilahore&set=a.4953644301360488 #Read_Enjoy #online_Services #library #LIS_CUI_Lahore #Bulletin

Monday, January 17, 2022

Over 120 library systems reach 1 million digital checkouts in 2021

We had another record-setting year in digital reading, with libraries, schools, colleges and companies circulating half a billion titles through OverDrive in 2021. We also had a record 121 library systems surpass one million digital checkouts in 2021. This includes 22 library systems hitting this milestone for the first time. In total, 506 million ebooks, audiobooks and digital magazines were checked out by readers last year. Libraries continue to provide a vital service to their communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Readers around the world discovered or rediscovered a love of reading thanks to digital collections, which allowed them to safely seek and enjoy books from home. Digital book clubs like Big Library Read connected readers from across the globe and we look forward to getting more books into the hands of more readers through our digital book clubs so mark your calendar for our 2022 dates! The 2021 Million Checkout Libraries In 2021, we had two library systems surpass eight million checkouts individually. This was a record previously only held by Toronto Public Library, which became the first library ever to hit nine million checkouts in a calendar year. Libraries from 7 countries reached the million checkout mark, including UK and Germany for the first time. In the United States, 37 states are represented on the list. A complete list of library systems in 2021’s Million Checkout Libraries is below. 9 million checkouts Toronto Public Library 8 million checkouts National Library Board Singapore Los Angeles Public Library 7 million checkouts King County Library System MELSA: Twin Cities Metro eLibrary The Ohio Digital Library Wisconsin Public Library Consortium 5 million checkouts New York Public Library Greater Phoenix Digital Library Tennessee READS 4 million checkouts Multnomah County Library (OR) Digital Downloads Collaboration Seattle Public Library Harris County Public Library (TX) Maryland’s Digital Library CLEVNET (OH) 3 million checkouts Calgary Public Library Beehive Library Consortium Mid-Continent Public Library San Diego County Library Auckland Libraries Brooklyn Public Library San Francisco Public Library Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library LA County Library Sno-Isle Libraries Boston Public Library Ontario Library Service Consortium North Carolina Digital Library Sacramento Public Library 2 million checkouts Livebrary.com Cuyahoga County Public Library Minuteman Library Network Digital Library of Illinois Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Midwest Collaborative for Library Services Metropolitan Library System Kentucky Libraries Unbound San Antonio Public Library Fairfax County Public Library St. Louis County Library Pikes Peak Library District Edmonton Public Library Denver Public Library Las Vegas-Clark County Library District Austin Public Library Santa Clara County Library Oregon Digital Library Consortium Hillsborough County Public Library Cooperative Salt Lake County Library Services Bridges Broward County Library Washington County Cooperative Library Services Ottawa Public Library Indianapolis Public Library Chicago Public Library Nashville Public Library Wake County Public Libraries CW MARS 1 million checkouts The Free Library of Philadelphia Pierce County Library System Nassau Digital Doorway Montgomery County Public Libraries Orange County Library System Washington Anytime Library British Columbia Libraries South Australia Public Library Services Vancouver Public Library Saskatchewan Library Consortium Charlotte Mecklenburg Library OC Public Libraries District of Columbia Public Library Lee County Library System Contra Costa County Library New Hampshire State Library Pima County Public Library Buffalo & Erie County Public Library Timberland Regional Library Halifax Public Libraries Mississauga Library System Missouri Libraries 2Go Hamilton Public Library Bergen County Cooperative Library System Arapahoe Library District Fort Vancouver Regional Library District Fraser Valley Regional Library Baltimore County Public Library Brisbane City Council Library Services Kent District Library San Jose Public Library Georgia Download Destination Westchester Library System NC Kids Digital Library Western Australia Public Libraries Ocean State Libraries eZone Hawaii State Public Library System MontanaLibrary2Go Northern California Digital Library downloadLibrary OK Virtual Library Download Destination Arkansas Digital Library Consortium Douglas County Libraries Peninsula Library System Winnipeg Public Library NorthNet Library System Louisville Free Public Library Albuquerque Bernalillo County Library System eLibrary NJ Dayton Metro Library Fort Worth Public Library Indiana Digital Download Center Jacksonville Public Library Libraries NI Houston Public Library Camellia Net Digital Catalog Berlin, Verbund Öffentlicher Bibliotheken (VÖBB) Nebraska OverDrive Libraries Okanagan Regional Library eIndiana Digital Consortium The Libraries Consortium