LlyfrgellyddIt’s Welsh for librarian.

Today, I received a second e-mail from Kathleen Gilroy encouraging me to active my SWIFT account for Computers in Libraries 2008. I also received an e-mail from Jane Dysart; this e-mail included a FAQ about SWIFT, presumably meant to address concerns that others have expressed. (For reference, see blog posts by David Lee King, Jessamyn West, Michelle Boule, and Karen Schneider.)

Since Ms. Gilroy invited feedback on what they can do to improve the user experience, I wrote her a long e-mail. I’ve included it below in its entirety:

Dear Kathleen,

Thank you for your message inviting me to participate in the SWIFT community for Computers in Libraries 2008. To be honest with you, I am rather wary of signing up for SWIFT.

I am chiefly concerned with SWIFT’s terms of service. Specifically, under the “User Content Submissions” section, I am told that

By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part), transmit, and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

I received an e-mail from Jane Dysart earlier this afternoon, which included a FAQ about SWIFT. The FAQ tells me that once my account with SWIFT terminates, that the Otter Group will take down my content. However, I see nothing in the terms of service that suggests that the license will end when content is removed.

I frequently use Creative Commons licenses for my work, and such, I grant many of the rights outlined above to anyone who can use my works. However, I am very hesitant to grant rights to commercial entities – especially such extensive rights as are outlined above. I granted Information Today, Inc. the rights to distribute papers, presentation slides, and recordings of the panel on which I will be speaking.

The difference, however, is that Information Today was very transparent in the agreement about how these items will be used. In short, they will be used to to help disseminate my work, and that of other presenters, more widely in the library community. While I expect this will bring Information Today some profit, I am satisfied because I believe that the proceedings or recordings they publish will be of value to people who work in libraries.

Unfortunately, I am not convinced that using SWIFT will bring similar benefits to librarians and other library staff – nor am I convinced of its benefit to me as a presenter and attendee of the conference.

In the FAQ I mentioned above, the first question asks about the value SWIFT brings to conference-related content that is hosted elsewhere. After reading the response from the Otter Group, I am still uncertain what unique value is being provided that could not be provided by a free tool. The answer suggests that SWIFT aggregates content from other sources; however, it seems as if a simple website that aggregates RSS feeds from each of the sites mentioned would do the same.

Additionally, this FAQ notes that SWIFT will not aggregate photos from Flickr that do not grant commercial entities a license to use these photos. As I know several librarians besides myself use Creative Commons Non-Commercial licenses, I think that SWIFT would miss a significant portion of the photos I would like to view, and I would feel compelled to search Flickr anyway for the excluded photos.

Furthermore, after some consideration, I am not sure I would even wish to use the content in an aggregated form. I will probably rely heavily on Twitter to communicate with others while I am at the conference. I will likely look at and share photographs on Flickr after returning from the conference. If I write a blog entry or article about the conference, I will likely then turn to Technorati or del.icio.us to find other blog posts or links relevant to the conference.

The third question in the FAQ asks about the benefits of SWIFT to presenters – and the response suggests that presentations may be easily shared before or after the conference. However, this seems to be a capability provided by Google Documents, not SWIFT. That response also talks about integration with Facebook, particularly the Facebook “status” feature. However, many Computers in Libraries presenters and attendees (including myself) already use Twitter (which also integrates with Facebook), and in fact, there is already a Twitter account set up for the purpose of aggregating Twitter posts about Computers in Libraries.

The only other benefit there seems to be to using SWIFT is that its integration with Facebook would allow me to see which of my friends and contacts are attending Computers in Libraries. However, this is not something I feel I need – this is something I have already been able to determine through Twitter and through the Computers in Libraries wiki. (Thanks to the wiki, I have even learned of people I don’t know that will be attending.)

In short, I feel that SWIFT would be getting rather extensive use of my intellectual property, and I would be receiving very little in exchange. If I could offer one suggestion, it would be this: ask your potential users to cede fewer copy rights to the Otter Group.

Thank you for soliciting feedback, and I wish you the best in further developments of SWIFT.

Sincerely,

Rikhei Harris