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Thread ID: 4505 | Posts: 4 | Started: 2003-01-18
2003-01-18 04:49 | User Profile
Pat Schroeder's New Chapter The Former Congresswoman Is Battling For America's Publishers
By Linton Weeks Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, February 7, 2001; Page C01
At a small reception for publishers of scientific and academic journals, Patricia Schroeder waves her hand toward several dozen egghead types who are cocktailing it at the Corcoran Gallery of Art -- sampling shrimp and cheese kebabs, wining on not-too-shabby Chablis and schmoozing above the soothing strings of the Bellini Ensemble.
"They're terrified," she says.
She ought to know. Schroeder is president of the Washington- and New York-based Association of American Publishers, sponsor of the event. Like a nurturing shepherd, she moves gently among her flock. But when she talks about threats to the group, she stiffens her back.
And who, you might be wondering, is giving Schroeder and her publishers such a fright?
Librarians, of course.
No joke. Of all the dangerous and dot-complex problems that American publishers face in the near future -- economic downturns, competition for leisure time, piracy -- perhaps the most explosive one could be libraries. Publishers and librarians are squaring off for a battle royal over the way electronic books and journals are lent out from libraries and over what constitutes fair use of written material.
Grossly oversimplified: Publishers want to charge people to read material; librarians want to give it away.
"We," says Schroeder, "have a very serious issue with librarians."
With her squinting, smiling, you've-just-got-to-understand expression and her crinkly-caring voice, Schroeder is the publishing world's latest best hope. Her hair is silver. Her eyes are sparkly. The strap on her purse is short; she clutches it like an AK-47. She is a woman on a mission.
"Technology people never gave their stuff away," Schroeder says. "But now folks are saying, 'You mean the New England Journal of Medicine is charging people?' "
Publishers have to figure out a way to charge for electronic material, Schroeder says. "Markets are limited. One library buys one of their journals," she explains, pointing to the Brie eaters. "They give it to other libraries. They'll give it to others."
If everyone gets a free copy, she says, the publisher and the writer and others involved in making the book go unpaid. "These people aren't rich," she says of those in the room. "They have mortgages."
Other publishers from the gargantuan conglomerates that own Random House and Simon & Schuster will soon be rolling into town. This is the one time of the year when the predominantly New Yorkish world of publishing comes to Washington to talk about common concerns. The group's general convention, closed to the public, runs today and tomorrow at the Mayflower Hotel. The AAP represents almost 300 publishing companies.
The theme this year is "Content in a Technical World."
American publishers are on the ledge of a revolution. They look around and see the music and film industries struggling to adapt to change. They want to avoid the Napster monster: that is, technology that makes copying and distribution of e-books so easy.
"We wanted to put people's fingers into light sockets," Schroeder says of this year's agenda. "You don't have to look at polls to know how young people like to get their music: for free."
Besides hobnobbing with Hill people, the publishers will be rubbing elbows with an unusually glittery guest list. Christie Hefner of Playboy Enterprises is speaking to the flock. So are Henry Yuen of Gemstar-TV Guide International and Peter Chernin of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Mix that altogether with AOL Time Warner's presence and there is change in the air, a shift in the agenda away from words toward image-based infotainment.
In the center of this whirling world, the ever-in-control Schroeder frets for those around her. She spends days in Washington bending the ears of key policymakers and supporting legislation that is favorable to her members and battling proposals that are not. She spends days in New York listening to publishers drone on about their druthers. She worries about protection of intellectual property. She wants writers and publishers to make lots of money. She puzzles over secure ways to deliver electronic books. She's adamant that the country needs to focus more on reading to children under the age of 5. And she's concerned about citizens' rights to free speech and privacy.
"Working for the AAP, I find a wonderful convergence of all these," Schroeder says. "It doesn't rely on lobbying for anything I don't believe in."
Traditionally, the AAP had been a sleepy association manned by former-ambassador types who excelled in high teas and subtle politicking. New York publishers looked wistfully downwind to Washington, wishing that their little group could have the same clout as the Motion Picture Association of America and its white-haired herald, Jack Valenti.
In 1997, the AAP decided to jack up the noise. They hired Schroeder, a well-respected former congresswoman with a reputation for nitty-grittiness.
"In her responsiveness and her outreach to the legislative and operational branches of the Washington, D.C., government," says Peter Olson of Random House, "Pat Schroeder has taken the mission of the AAP to a whole new level of recognition, respect and impact."
"Follow-up is her middle name," says Laurence J. Kirshbaum of Time Warner Trade Publishing. "Pat is an absolute joy. She makes our jobs easy. She's got great energy. She's a wonderful communicator and she has very good common sense."
He adds, "She is constantly pulling us along."
Look at her r�sum� and you'll see what Kirshbaum means by energy.
Schroeder was born in Portland, Ore., 60 years ago. Her father was a pilot, "so we moved all over," she says. A graduate of the University of Minnesota and Harvard Law School, she comes off as both guileless and gutsy.
At Harvard, she met and married fellow student Jim Schroeder. After graduating in 1964, they moved to Denver and made a home for their two children, Scott and Jamie. But Schroeder was born to run.
In 1972 she was elected to the House of Representatives from Colorado's 1st District as a Democrat. The average contribution to her campaign, she recalls, was $7.50. She moved her family to Washington -- the kids were 6 and 2.
In Congress, Schroeder was a champion of the Equal Rights Amendment, and the first woman to be appointed to the Armed Services Committee. She also took a tenacious interest in First Amendment issues, copyright protection laws and intellectual property legislation. She served 12 terms and retired undefeated in 1996. (In 1987 she thought about running for president. She cried when she announced that she had decided not to run.)
After leaving public office, she taught at Princeton for a while, but "I couldn't stand the commute."
In 1997 she was chosen president of the AAP. She makes $370,000 a year. "A lot less than Jack Valenti," she's quick to say.
The job is taking its toll. She does more traveling now than she did as a congresswoman, she says. Every once in a while she thinks about life after the AAP. "I don't want to be carried out."
Through it all she has held on to a self-deprecating sense of humor. She spent her birthday last year at Machu Picchu in Peru. "I wanted to find ruins that were older than I am."
Her husband works in the private sector, "lowering tariffs," she says. She would like to spend more time with him and with her children -- Scott lives in San Francisco and Jamie is in Montana.
But first she has some wars to wage. Like her battle against libraries.
"Libraries have spent all this money on technology," says Pat Schroeder. "They don't have any money left for content."
Nancy Kranich, president of the American Library Association, begs to differ.
"The reason we're in a bind," says Kranich from her office at New York University, "is that the price of some of the materials has skyrocketed, without any explanation." She cites one chemistry journal, Tetrahedron Letters, that costs $14,000 a year.
Public and academic libraries do not want to pass on their costs to the public. In principle, librarians believe that patrons should have free and easy access to all information.
In Kranich's mind, library-goers should be able to duplicate limited amounts of information for educational purposes. Suppose you want to copy a journal article, quote a section of a book or use a line from a poem, she says. "That is all permitted under the fair-use provision of the copyright law. In the digital arena, fair use has been narrowed to the point of disappearing."
"The publishing community does not believe that the public should have the same rights in the electronic world," Kranich says.
The AAP is looking for ways to charge library patrons for information. "Politically," Schroeder says, "it's the toughest issue. Libraries have a wonderful image."
No one, she says, wants to go up against libraries.
"That," Schroeder says, "is why we are here."
é 2001 The Washington Post Company
url: [url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36584-2001Feb7?language=printer]http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A...anguage=printer[/url]
2003-01-18 05:05 | User Profile
Uncle Frank's Diary Number One
Says Schroeder, "We have a very serious issue with librarians."
"If Schroeder and the AAP have their way, the balance will be gone, and we'll be living in a world that no one concerned about the principles of either political freedom or publishing in a democratic society wants to see. If librarians stand by and let it happen, we'll deserve all the bad press we get." Librarians don't get much bad press. They don't need it. The stereotypes surrounding the library profession are sufficient to do the bad job on them. Why, my old alma mater, the University of Michigan School of Library Science, doesn't even use the dreaded word in its name any more. It has become the "School of Information."
"What are you studying in graduate school, Son?"
"Uh, I'm studying information, Dad."
Today's most intense career-building librarians are busy distancing themselves--at least in their PR efforts--from anything that smacks of such antiquated fuddy-duddyism as books, paper, glue, human interaction, reading rooms and such. They're working hard to disavow their history, in hopes of being seen as serious information professionals who pirouette across the Internet, going where no bun-becoiffed, sensible-shoed librarian, male or female, has gone before. They are, shall we say, with it.
Me, too. In fact, I'm seldom without it. I write this at the end of a day in which I spent almost all my time with my head stuck in a computer monitor. Get it off, get it off! None of that patron-izing nonsense for this 21st century former book guy! Let's see, did I communicate face-to-face with a single library user today? No, I did not. Success! I did e-mail like crazy, I did online searching, I answered questions--and all without once lowering myself to the dismal level that requires talking and listening to another person. I did it all on my PC.
Today's librarians are trying hard to be seen as up & at-'em techno wizards, cutting edge, cyberspace aces, and so on. Sometimes the effort bears fruit. Sometimes the fruit proves a little sour, such as when librarians get blamed for poor innocent youth stumbling across feelthy pictures on the Internet when they're supposed to be using the lib's webstations to work up reports on, oh, how they spent their summer vacations.
I spent my summer vacation downloading smut at the public library.
But, OK, librarians are starting to look pretty smart and in the forefront, in spite of those old stereotypes. And they should look pretty smart, because they are, most of them. So just when librarians are looking smart, who comes along and paints 'em up as the evil of the evil, the enemies of truth, justice, and the American Way?
Why, Pat Schroeder, president of the Association of American Publishers.
In a now-notorious article in the Feb. 7 Washington Post ("Pat Schroeder's New Chapter"), staff writer Linton Weeks let Schroeder have her way with librarians, who, as Schroeder sees it, threaten the livelihoods of publishers and authors. But especially publishers.
Says Schroeder, "We have a very serious issue with librarians."
In Schroeder's view of the publishing world, librarians are busy giving away the farm that poor publishers work so hard to tend. "One library buys one of their journals. They give it to other libraries. They'll give it to others." Pretty soon, by golly, those nefarious librarians will drive Elsevier, Bertelsmann, and other hand-to-mouth mom & pop publishers straight to the poorhouse. "Libraries have spent all this money on technology," Schroeder contends. "They don't have any money left for content." So, basically, they steal it.
Schroeder, a retired 12-term U.S. Representative from Colorado, wants to be darned sure that publishers get the money they have coming to them. None of this freebie library stuff on her watch!
The main problem with Schroeder's observations is that they are all wrong. Libraries do not pass around free copies of periodicals to one another. In the tight guidelines that determine interlibrary lending procedures, what goes from one library to another (and ultimately to a specific library user who has requested it) is a copy of a periodical article. Under the strict copyright compliance rules that American libraries follow, only a very limited number of articles from a specific periodical may be freely passed along in this manner over a specified period. Libraries exceeding the allowed quantity must pay for the privilege.
Schroeder's contention that libraries have blown all their bucks on technology at the expense of content is equally off the mark. Yes, for sure, libraries spend ever-increasing chunks of their budgets on technologically related purposes. However, this technology itself often embodies content. In the library where I work, we have a small roster of hardcopy periodical subscriptions, barely over 1,000 titles. Through our subscription to a number of full-text online databases, our users can turn to over ten times that many periodicals in electronic form. Have we sacrificed content for technology? I don't think so. We have simply changed the way we obtain content.
Schroeder's terrible fear that libraries and librarians are exploiting hapless publishers is, in any case, a curious take on the relationship. If there is a genuine source of exploitation in the overall scene, it lies with publishers, particularly those who produce academic journals, who rely on free labor (in the form of academicians toiling in what continues to be a publish-or-perish environment) to produce articles for journals priced at extortionate rates--journals that academic libraries often must buy to satisfy program accreditation requirements.
Such journals--which, again, pay nothing (zero, zip, nada) to their contributors--can cost into several thousand dollars for a single annual subscription. Yes, friends, those vile librarians are shaking down powerless publishers again! Ain't it just criminal?
Two explanations come to mind for Schroeder's characterizations of interlibrary transactions, library technological developments, and the library-publisher relationship. The first is that she is ignorant of the rules and the realities. Schroeder has been president of the AAP since 1997, and is nobody's fool. It defies belief to entertain the notion that she does not know what she is talking about. The other explanation is too obvious to bear discussing.
Why does this matter to the independent press?
In an open, democratic society that depends for its political health on the free public flow of information and opinion, libraries serve as a vital conduit in that flow. They make it possible, through their national networking, for citizens everywhere to obtain the materials they need to make sound decisions about the choices facing them.
Thanks to interlibrary lending, a car mechanic from a northern Wisconsin village can go to his little public library and request a copy of an article from a medical journal owned by only a few major research libraries in the Midwest. A Kentucky sharecropper can request an article from an agriculture journal that no library within hundreds of miles owns. A North Dakota homemaker can ask for a copy of an article from In These Times, or Dollars & Sense, or some other alternative periodical.
Most of the time, these folks won't have to pay anything for the articles when they arrive. They support their local libraries with their taxes; that's sufficient. As it should be. An informed public is the first line of defense against tyranny. The same dynamic that allows these individuals to pursue their unique informational needs at little or no personal cost is the one that helps create a climate of freedom for publishers, that helps make it possible for American publishers to flourish. The situation that we have serves everyone involved.
Pat Schroeder hates it, evidently, because too often people can read or see something without ponying up some dough for the privilege.
Speaking of dough, the Post reports that Schroeder makes a modest $370,000 a year for her AAP work. Although small, that sum is undoubtedly a welcome supplement to the income of a retired U.S. Congresswoman struggling to eke out an existence. With her first AAP check, I understand that Schroeder could afford a set of used Mel-Mac dinnerware at a nearby Sally's. The colorful plastic pieces would no doubt brighten the drab surroundings of her congressional pensioner's quarters.
The AAP and Schroeder want to make sure that the Wisconsin mechanic and the Kentucky sharecropper and the North Dakota homemaker pay their dues, as Schroeder has paid hers.
In spite of my opening remarks here about librarians, this one included, spending much of their time with their heads stuck in their computer monitors, one must acknowledge that change happens. There is, I believe, a healthy balance to strike between the traditional bookperson's work and that of the cyberspaceperson. Although I have too many days when the computer seems to have a lock on my sensibilities, I try to seek that balance.
There is also a healthy balance between pay-as-you-go reading and everything-free-for-all at all times. We have had a reasonably good balance in that regard for several decades. If Schroeder and the AAP have their way, the balance will be gone, and we'll be living in a world that no one concerned about the principles of either political freedom or publishing in a democratic society wants to see. If librarians stand by and let it happen, we'll deserve all the bad press we get.
url: [url=http://www.newpages.com/unclefrank/Number01.htm]http://www.newpages.com/unclefrank/Number01.htm[/url]
I already disliked Mrs. Schroeder, but... Now I just Hate the Women!!!!
2003-01-18 16:54 | User Profile
I have lived in Colorado's congressional district 1 for almost eighteen years. I had the slight pleasure of voting against Pat Schroeder every two years for a while. Now I get to vote against Diana DeGette. Hardly worth it really. Truth is, I didn't vote last year in the congressional and local elections---the first time for me since 1966.
Enkidu
2003-01-20 08:15 | User Profile
Enkidu,
Thanks for reply. Well I remember Mrs. Schroeder always attacking our armed forces. But it is funny to see this "Liberal" wage War on America's Libraries. Most "Liberals" are more than willing to sell out if the pay is good.