reviews Book Reviews 247 materials to create a record of reading’s crucial role in her developing identity as a woman and as a Scot living in America. Amy Thomas examines a rare manuscript of Micah Croswell’s, a South Carolina colporteur, conversations with readers in 1854. Croswell’s report for the American Tract Society, though not published at the time, includes superb details on conver- sations he held on his travels. Croswell preserved diverse voices, but his notes also reflect his comfort with people most like himself. Leon Jackson examines the var- ied reactions in nineteenth-century America to Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus, and why it held different mean- ings for different groups. Letters play a significant role in several essays. Barbara Ryan studies fan mail sent to a popular writer (popular with fans, but not with the critics) and the mutually supportive rela- tionship this reflected while Regina Kunzel studies letters written in response to a True Confessions story on unwed mothers and a sidebar from the United States Children’s Bureau telling unwed mothers where they could get help. The author makes the point that letters such as these can teach us more about popular culture than the producers of magazines can. These absorbing essays are generously supplemented with extensive notes for fur- ther reading. Not only do they work well as intellectual tonic, they serve as gateways to a rich body of literature. All in all, an ex- emplary work that should be in all aca- demic libraries.—Ed Tallent, Boston College. Vaidhyanathan, Siva. Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Prop- erty and How It Threatens Creativity. New York: New York Univ. Pr., 2001. 243p. alk paper, $27.95 (ISBN 0814788068). LC 2001-2178. Copyrights and Copywrongs is a cultural his- tory of copyright law, the self-proclaimed goal of which is to explain how essential the original foundations of American copyright law are to the educational, po- litical, artistic, and literary culture of this country. The author makes an eloquent argument for copyright law as it was origi- nally intended, the purpose of which was to encourage creativity and cultural ex- pression, the proliferation of ideas, and the sharing of information. Remuneration and rights of authors were almost by-products of the greater goal to create a robust intel- lectual commons. The essential purposes of the Founding Fathers have steadily eroded as copyright has developed into a form of property law. Vaidhyanathan traces the history of copyright law from its Constitutional foun- dations to the Digital Millennium Copy- right Act of 1998, drawing heavily on case studies and episodes from popular culture to illustrate its evolution. The author ex- plores the role of some giants of American culture in defining and refining copyright law as it is applied to an expanding array of mediums—from print literature to film to stage to music and computer games. Mark Twain’s promulgation of “thick” copyright protections and the extension of authors’ ownership are extensively dis- cussed, as are Thomas Edison’s role in defining copyright in early cinematogra- phy, and D.W. Griffith’s—a key figure in securing copyright protection for stories on film—pioneering application of corpo- rate copyright, a right previously reserved for individual authors. The book is heavily populated with more contemporary icons such as Led Zeppelin, George Harrison, and Steven Spielberg. We know the sto- ries, the songs, and the films that have tested American copyright law. Their fa- miliarity brings life and realism to the case studies and legal machinations. Index to advertisers AIAA 172 Archival Products 250 Annual Reviews 175 CHOICE 228 EBSCO cover 2 Elsevier 171 Emery-Pratt 191 Haworth Press cover 3 Library Technologies 240 Science Direct cover 4 TechBooks 210 248 College & Research Libraries May 2003 The book includes a fascinating chap- ter on American music and the numer- ous challenges it has posed for copyright law. “Music more than any other vehicle of culture, collapses the gap that separates idea from expression.” Extensive essays on the blues tradition and sampling prac- tices in rap music provide informative and entertaining histories of these art forms, but through them Vaidhyanathan also makes a lucid and compelling argu- ment for loose, less ethnocentric interpre- tations of copyright law. The blues art form was built on a tradition of borrow- ing and improvisation, an extension of the oral traditions that passed stories and songs from one generation to the next. Rap, as it developed in the 1970s and 1980s, was composed of two layers—vo- calizations laid over a mosaic of fused sample rhythms and melodies lifted from many different records. Thus, both blues and rap, by definition, borrow from and build upon previous work. Rap was trans- formed by legal decisions against artists in the early 1990s, changing sampling practices. The author argues that the aes- thetic tradition of African-based cultures is ignored by American copyright law, just one more example of racial and cultural biases inherent in our system of laws. The final chapter examines a diverse range of copyright issues that have sprouted in the digital age, including the software wars of the late 1990s, develop- ment of database protection measures, and the rise and fall of Napster. The chapter includes an erudite explanation of what Vaidhyanathan calls “legislative reckless- ness”—the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. He credits the DMCA with “upending more than 200 years of copy- right law” by taking decision-making power away from Congress, courts, librar- ians, writers, artists, and researchers, and putting it in the hands of engineers and companies who employ them.” Techno- logical innovations, rather than democra- tizing information, have been used, with the sanction and authority of copyright law interpretation and new legislation, to further limit public access. Copyrights and Copywrongs is remark- ably readable, free of legal jargon, and en- tertaining. It is thoroughly researched and includes extensive notes. Vaidhyanathan, a professor in the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin, makes a persuasive argument for looser, thinner copyright protections that would benefit both users and creators of cul- tural goods. The original intent of copy- right is lost as it becomes increasingly a vehicle of property law rather than cre- ativity. The current punitive system fa- vors established rather than emerging artists and hinders new creative produc- tion. Librarians and scientists are losing the battle to Microsoft and Disney, result- ing in a steady centralization and corporatization of access to the cultural and information goods of our society. The author ’s arguments are cogent, en- lightening, and important to all informa- tion professionals.—Janita Jobe, Univer- sity of Nevada, Reno. Carpenter, Kenneth E., Wayne A. Wiegand, and Jane Aikin. Winsor, Dewey, and Putnam: The Boston Experi- ence: Papers from the Round Table on Li- brary History Session at the Sixty-Seventh Council and General Conference of the International Federation of Library Asso- ciations and Institutions, Boston, Massa- chusetts. August 1–25, 2001. Ed. Donald G. Davis Jr. Urbana-Champaign: Univ. of Illinois, Graduate School of Library and Information Science. (Occasional Papers, no. 212), 2002. 37p. $8 (ISBN: 0878451218). ISSN 0276-1769. Through the nineteenth century, New En- gland was the capital of American intel- lectual activity and Boston was its uncon- tested center. It is no great wonder that three of the principal figures in the shap- ing of modern librarianship had careers in Boston at the end of the century. The association of these three major American librarians with the city in which IFLA hap- pened to meet in 2001 provides a tenuous rationale for the presentation and publi- cation of these three papers in this pam- phlet, but in reality, these three essays need << /ASCII85EncodePages false /AllowTransparency false /AutoPositionEPSFiles true /AutoRotatePages /All /Binding /Left /CalGrayProfile (Dot Gain 20%) /CalRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CalCMYKProfile (U.S. Web Coated \050SWOP\051 v2) /sRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CannotEmbedFontPolicy /Warning /CompatibilityLevel 1.3 /CompressObjects /Tags /CompressPages true /ConvertImagesToIndexed true /PassThroughJPEGImages true /CreateJobTicket false /DefaultRenderingIntent /Default /DetectBlends true /DetectCurves 0.0000 /ColorConversionStrategy /CMYK /DoThumbnails false /EmbedAllFonts true /EmbedOpenType false /ParseICCProfilesInComments true /EmbedJobOptions true /DSCReportingLevel 0 /EmitDSCWarnings false /EndPage -1 /ImageMemory 1048576 /LockDistillerParams false /MaxSubsetPct 1 /Optimize true /OPM 1 /ParseDSCComments true /ParseDSCCommentsForDocInfo true /PreserveCopyPage true /PreserveDICMYKValues true /PreserveEPSInfo true /PreserveFlatness false /PreserveHalftoneInfo true /PreserveOPIComments false /PreserveOverprintSettings true /StartPage 1 /SubsetFonts false /TransferFunctionInfo /Apply /UCRandBGInfo /Preserve /UsePrologue false /ColorSettingsFile () /AlwaysEmbed [ true ] /NeverEmbed [ true ] /AntiAliasColorImages false /CropColorImages false /ColorImageMinResolution 151 /ColorImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleColorImages true /ColorImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /ColorImageResolution 300 /ColorImageDepth -1 /ColorImageMinDownsampleDepth 1 /ColorImageDownsampleThreshold 1.10000 /EncodeColorImages true /ColorImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterColorImages true /ColorImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /ColorACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /ColorImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000ColorACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000ColorImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasGrayImages false /CropGrayImages false /GrayImageMinResolution 151 /GrayImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleGrayImages true /GrayImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /GrayImageResolution 300 /GrayImageDepth -1 /GrayImageMinDownsampleDepth 2 /GrayImageDownsampleThreshold 1.10000 /EncodeGrayImages true /GrayImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterGrayImages true /GrayImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /GrayACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /GrayImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000GrayACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000GrayImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasMonoImages false /CropMonoImages false /MonoImageMinResolution 600 /MonoImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleMonoImages true /MonoImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /MonoImageResolution 1200 /MonoImageDepth -1 /MonoImageDownsampleThreshold 1.16667 /EncodeMonoImages true /MonoImageFilter /CCITTFaxEncode /MonoImageDict << /K -1 >> /AllowPSXObjects false /CheckCompliance [ /None ] /PDFX1aCheck false /PDFX3Check false /PDFXCompliantPDFOnly false /PDFXNoTrimBoxError true /PDFXTrimBoxToMediaBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXSetBleedBoxToMediaBox true /PDFXBleedBoxToTrimBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfile () /PDFXOutputConditionIdentifier () /PDFXOutputCondition () /PDFXRegistryName () /PDFXTrapped /False /CreateJDFFile false /Description << /ENU (IPC Print Services, Inc. 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