Formal Proposal on Legal Files Sharing - Case Study Example

Formal Proposal on Legal Files Sharing The present formal offer contains solutions to actual problems in the modern education system in general and offers for our university library in particular. The problem is whether internet resources use shall be promoted more intensively in the form of legal file sharing as compared to the current state of affairs, and whether it makes sense to consider the idea of budget optimization by means of reduction of funds usually spent on big amounts of paperback sources, journals in particular. Formal Proposal on Legal Files Sharing The experience of students’ activity both in class and during their home studies shows that there are considerable reasons for provision of electronic versions of books, journals and other paperback sources of information and, consequently, legal electronic files sharing. There is an offer, logically, to reduce the university’s budget for journals purchasing to some extent so that the electronic information access was enforced. The reasons and benefits of this offer will be considered in detail below. Problems Definition There are such problems in the subject matter of the present formal proposal: 1) simplicity of internet-provided access to information and, consequently, loss of interest in paperback sources; 2) difficulties in meeting deadlines of the journals returning and control of the process; 3) students’ spending time in social networks (this time could be used for the purpose of file sharing and, therefore, knowledge gaining); 4) insufficient quantity of the paperback copies of journals to satisfy the needs of all the students; 5) development of internet search technologies which makes the process easier and deprives it of the need to consult the paper sources and visit libraries; 6) students’ unconsciousness in terms of copyright observing. Solutions to the Mentioned Problems Simplicity of internet-provided access to information .The first and the most obvious reason for provision of students with an overwhelming access to any information, particularly including that containing in journals, is because development of internet information storage and sharing technologies has reached a rather high level and it is much simpler to visit one or two websites or browse a couple of files instead of spending much time for paperback reference sources. This, obviously, will provide the students with more time available for their studying activities and let them plan their daily schedules accordingly which is as necessary skill as those ones they acquire within the course of their education. Another benefit will be provided for the university library: there will be less need or no need at all to constantly update the journals kept on the shelves and, as a consequence, will enable optimize the space for books and other literature storage which in its turn reduce spending time for the librarians to take care of big amounts of paperback information sources. As it is also obvious from the offer, the mentioned measure will make it possible to optimize the budget of the university and economize monetary funds which could be spent for other purposes, for example, those which demand urgent investments. Difficulties in meeting deadlines of the journals returning and control of the process. The second proof of introduction of the above mentioned proposal into practice is the problem with the material aspect of the journals fund of the university’s library. Journals, particularly scholarly and those containing unique information on important topics (researches, experiments, findings and other science-related data) and are often available in limited quantities. Such state of affairs requires a strict control over their distribution and giving to the students for the purpose of reading and other ways of information processing. However strict this control may be, the problem of delayed journals return or their no return at all has been existing and will continue do so for many years coming, which will, consequently, create difficulties for other students’ efforts to gain necessary information from the lost paperback journals. This situation can be resolved by means of introduction of file sharing of electronic copies of the mentioned journals: the copy of the necessary page or of the entire journal will be available online on the website of the university or any other website, which will give every student opportunity to visit it and obtain necessary data. From this perspective, the case of the file or files loss is reduced to minimum (several possibilities, however, exist: virus attacks, hackers’ offensives and other cybercriminal activities aimed at files deletion and websites destabilization), and the main profit of this is minimum interest in such actions from the students’ side: deletion of electronic file will lead to necessity to visit the library and take the paper copy of the journal needed, which implies responsibility for its timely return and keeping in good condition which many students fail to do very often. Students’ spending time in social networks. The third factor that should definitely be used in terms of legal file sharing provision is the use of various social media by the students. This is a very convenient and easily accessed way of establishing and maintaining interpersonal communication, and, the students’ contacts with each other aside, social media are also used for the purpose of obtaining of the tutors’ feedbacks and consulting on the studies issues. This means that files may be transmitted through the most popular social media with the same ease as the messages to friends: a couple of clicks may provide stable and reliable file access and even make it available for downloading. This way may potentially be the easiest one for reaching the goal of the above mentioned proposal: the social media have become overwhelmingly available due to the increasing number of electronic devices which provide stable internet access and have many applications and software on board for performing different tasks, including social media access, and it is easy to reach and save files while spending leisure time which also adds more spare time for the students’ and the teachers’ needs. From this perspective, this is a kind of non-traditional approach to the knowledge transfer and obtaining and, therefore, to the education itself when it is possible to study in a form of activity which is not as intensive as everyday studies; such non-traditional approaches to education have become a subject of increasing scientific and practical interest and are supposed to bring about positive effects due to their seeming distance from the daily routine of studies which is the thing that the students are looking for, and it is at least unwise to ignore such a possibility to introduce the information the way it will be accepted for sure. Insufficient quantity of the paperback copies of journals. The reason number four for introduction of file sharing instead of paperback journals copies distribution in a traditional way is also in the fact that the quality of the journals is not always sufficient to cover the demands of the entire number of the students of the university, as it was mentioned in the reason number two above. In this case, the students shall either wait for the journal to be returned back to the library or to share one journal with each other or even with the entire group, which is both inconvenient and counterproductive. The necessity to wait for the reference source to become available creates difficulties for the students in terms of the deadlines meeting and completeness of the information covering within the subject matter of their studies, which, apparently, leads to dissatisfactory grades and potential need to resubmit or rewrite completely their works or study the material once again in order to receive sufficient grades. From this point of view it is much more convenient for every student to have a personal copy of a certain journal in order to, firstly, successfully continue studying and, secondly, manage the time properly which is, as it has already been mentioned above, as necessary as the education itself. The students may and will feel uncomfortable when their efforts will be devaluated by delays in the works submitting and distract them from using paper copies of the journals at all which may deprive the library of its clients and, consequently, will lead to loss of sense of money spending on journals purchasing. Development of internet search technologies. The idea of file sharing of the journals copies also deserves attention from the point of view the way the students prefer to search for information when completing their assignments. Internet has become the primary source of information of any kind, and it has become possible even to do without visiting any libraries or referring to any paper copies of the reference sources; steadfast progress and qualitative improvement of the search engines allow for precise search results within a very short period of time, whereas the same procedure when using traditional ways of information finding take more time and efforts. This has led to the students’ becoming more reluctant to use paperback copies of the information sources which is contributed by increasing availability of information on the internet; moreover, detailed search with the application of specific search methods delivers proper results eliminating the unnecessary things which is usually impossible to do when reading text printed on the paper sources of information. It is, of course, necessary to keep the customs and traditions of education that have existed for thousands of years, but the practice and the results of the students’ activity demonstrate that it is more beneficial to use concrete and definite information which comes from appropriate sources rather than spend precious time on selective reading or consulting excessive amounts of literature. These problems, again, may potentially be solved if the file sharing idea will be applied in practice in the university with its possible interaction with the most used and most popular source engines. The above mentioned reasons provide evidence of necessity of introduction of legal file sharing and potential economy of money that is spent on paperback journals buying. The thing that should be stressed once again is that this file sharing shall be legal, which is also because of several important reasons. Students’ unconsciousness in terms of copyright observing First of all, legal file sharing is important from the point of view of copyright legislation observing. The problem of copyright has been a point of considerable concern over the latest decades, and though there have been introduced legislative acts that are aimed at enforcing legal information obtaining and protection of the right for intellectual property, the difficulties related to the problem have not disappeared; on the contrary, with the technological leap and the development of computer and overwhelming internet access the problem of online piracy has overcome the problems of the previous periods. (Medical Library Association, 2007, 3). From this perspective, it is necessary to secure legal obtaining of the files from the internet which will exclude violation of copyright. Illegal files downloading causes financial losses for the authors of the information obtained, and their further distribution and sharing violates the norms of the intellectual property: in this case, there is no consent of the author for public access to the information which is practically his or her property and cannot be dealt with without his or her decision. The files must be labelled with the copyright marks, which is usually also not observed when the files are accessed illegally, and there is also such obligation as “… [to] educate users and train staff about the copyright implications of large-scale file sharing”. (Medical Library Association, 2007, 5). The second reason is promoting the students’ observation of the rights, particularly the copyright, on the internet as well because the latter is often approached as to a depersonalized space where everything is allowed and downloading of the files on illegal basis is not regarded as a serious law breaking, though it is the case in practice. The students will become aware that there is responsibility for information available virtually as well and that unauthorized access to such information is equal to plagiarism from the paper sources consequences of which are very well known to them and which are definitely not the thing they expect from their studies. Conclusion Taking the above said into consideration, it is possible to state that there is a need to introduce legal file sharing in the university and, therefore, there is a proposal to practically realize this idea. There are obvious benefits from introduction of such a step which include, from the perspective of the university benefits, reduction of money spent on purchasing of the journals in paper form and, therefore, possibility to optimize the space of the libraries and expenditures on their maintenance. There are also benefits from the students’ point of view which will, apparently, be also beneficial for the university: the students will not have to pay excessive attention to observing the terms of the journals return and their return at all; there will be an opportunity to reach any student by means of social media use within the process of file sharing; and the students will be individually equipped with the necessary sources of information which will make the university’s library activity easier. References Medical Library Association. (2007). The Copyright Law and the Health Sciences Librarian. Chicago: Medical Library Association, 1-55. Read More