ITI’s Transparency & SWIFT

Rikhei Harris offers some outstanding commentary on ITI aligning with SWIFT for CIL:

http://llyfrgellydd.info/?p=40

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.

I was glad to read this post. I have never had issue with granting ITI rights for any of the conferences I’ve done with them. They also allowed me to post all of my CIL articles on TTW after the agreed upon window. I am also very serious these days about Creative Commons and license all of my presentations that way, while steering clear of granting any rights to commercial companies. Rikhei does a fine job of detailing her views of this offering.