Wednesday, June 29, 2011
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
17
ORDINANCE
From Page 1
Arbor City Attorney Stephen
Postema proposed that council
specify the specifics regarding the
issue of permitting medical mari-
juana in the city.
Sandi Smith (D-Ward 1) -
another strong proponent of the
ordinances - said the while the
process was extensive, she felt it
was necessary in order to develop
legislation that best serves Michi-
gan residents on an issue they find
significant.
"I supportit because it's some-
thing that the state of Michigan
voters have indicated is important
to them," she said.
Smith added that city coun-
cil spent more than a year debat-
ing the issue because she feels
the state did a poor job in laying
out the city's responsibilities in
regards to medical marijuana
policy.
Mike Anglin (D-Ward 5)
echoed Smith's sentiments, say-
ing that the city had little state
guidance on these ordinances and
that he was particularly pleased
with the anonymity clause that
ensured caregivers' names would
not be recorded with the city.
However, Anglin said he
would like to eventually see addi-
tional work done to the zoning
ordinance because, while it guar-
antees that no marijuana will be
sold near grade schools, it does
not factor in preschools and other
childcare facilities.
City Council members Ste-
phen Rapundalo (D-Ward 2)
and Marcia Higgins (D-Ward 4)
voted against the ordinances, and
Tony Derezinski (D-Ward 2) was
absent for the vote.
Rapundalo said he voted
against the ordinances because
he believes the discrepancy
between local and federal law
may potentially hinder the coun-
cil's approved plans. He added he
would have liked to wait and see
what the state policy would be
regarding this issue, as they will
also be working on similar legisla-
tion.
Rapundalo added that he voted
against the ordinances because
they didn't include enough regu-
lation to protect neighborhoods.
Dennis Hayes, an Ann Arbor
attorney with a background in
drug-related legalities, said the
ordinances took a long time to
pass because the council started
with "highly regulated" legisla-
tion and that eventually became
more lenient as council realized
certain technicalities may impede
patients from seeking help from
caregivers.
The recently approved ordi-
nances were an attempt to dem-
onstrate that the city would be
stricter in regards to marijuana
than it has been in the past, Hayes
said.
He added that because the
topic is usually taboo in politics -
except in more presumably liberal
cities like Ann Arbor and Berkeley
- politicians strive to adhere anti-
marijuana policy.
However, he argued that poli-
ticians should discuss it more
openly, noting 74 percent of peo-
ple in Ann Arbor voted for legal-
izing medical marijuana in 2008,
more than the percentage who
voted for Obama in the presiden-
tial election.
"It's somewhere between stu-
pid and ignorant how we treat
medical marijuana and marijuana
in general," he said.
Chuck Ream, owner of the
dispensary MedMAR Pharma-
ceuticals Inc., said that while he
has some concerns about the pub-
lished document, Ream praised
the council for stepping out of
their comfort zone and learning
all about the medical marijuana
industry before voting on the
finalized ordinances.
"It was a good process because
the council was learning all the
way ... When they learned some-
thing new, they made changes,"
he said.
HathiTrust aims to expand digital collection
* of resources through orphan works project
To increase access
to digital works,
'U' launches new
program
By BETHANY BIRON
Editor in Chief
After seven years and the digi-
tization of millions of volumes as
part of the Google Books Library
Project, the University may soon
be able to boast an even larger
number with the help of the newly
announced orphan works project.
John Wilkin, associate Uni-
versity. librarian, said the orphan
works project is an initiative to
identify books that may have
unknowinglycrossedintothepub-
lit domain after copyright holders
have deceased. The project will
play an integral role in helping to
augment the HathiTrust Digital
Library - a collaborative venture
between the University and 52
other libraries around the world
to digitize works and make them
accessible to the public.
Wilkin, who is also the execu-
tive director of HathiTrust, said
that while the Google Books
Library Project has been success-
ful thus far in allowing for the dig-
itization of a multitude of works
from each of the campus libraries,
it ultimately has been hindered
by copyright law that may ren-
der a particular work unusable
until it receives approval from
the rights holder. Engaging in the
orphan works project allows for
an increased amount of resources
to be available to University mem-
bers as well as the general public,
he said.
"I think there's a lot of hope
that when we digitize the library's
collection that it transforms
things, and it does, but so much is
constrained by copyright," Wilkin
said. "So we've been able to open
up far more than we ever have
before."
According to Paul Courant,
the University's dean of librar-
ies, the process of finding copy-
right holders is "laborious" since
it entails extensive and thorough
research. Additionally, he said it
requires consulting with various
book retailers to ensure that the
work is not on sale somewhere,
and thus making it no longer eli-
gible to be considered an orphan.
He added that despite the dif-
ficultly, allowing these works to be
accessible to the campus commu-
nity is important in establishing
an environment that fosters the
sharing and utilization of schol-
arly information and resources.
"We've always wanted to
make use of these works ... we
decided it was very natural since
all of our students and faculty
already are completely eligible to
read these books," Courant said.
"We're just making it easier to
read them in a somewhat differ-
ent way.
Similarly, University spokes-
woman Kelly Cunningham said
the orphan works project is a cru-
cial part of the HathiTrust's mis-
sion to provide access to literature
and scholarly work to the greater
campus community.
"This is part of the library's
mission to preserve knowledge
and to share knowledge, espe-
cially with their own communi-
ty, and this kind of just fits right
along with what their goals and
aspirations are for the University
library," Cunningham said.
Wilkin echoed Courant's
sentiment that the process will
be challenging, and said that
attempting to prove the absence
of a copyright owner can be dif-
ficult, particularly in making the
final decision to include the work
in the database.
"It's really about trying to
prove a negative and those sorts
of processes are very hard," he
said. "You're trying to prove that
there is no rights holder out there,
but the process of making that
determination is extraordinarily
difficult and we've got a nice crew
of people with legal backgrounds
working on this."
Additionally, Wilkin said a
website will be developed in about
three weeks that will list items
the University has determined
as orphans so that the public can
peruse the collection and uncover
if they hold rights to any of the
works. Alleged orphans will sub-
sequently have 90 days before
they can be declared as part of the
project.
If a work is published after
the 90 days and a copyright holder
claims rights to the work, Wilkin
said HathiTrust will immediately
deactivate access to the particular
work and hold a discussion with
the rights owner to determine
future action. However, Wilkin
said for the most part living copy-
right holders are enthusiastic
about being included in the data-
base and that the University often
has authors contacting them from
around the world to be included in
the project.
"Typically when we contact
a rights holder about a work, the
rights holder says 'Oh please open
access of that work to everybody
in the world,"' he said.
He added that the orphan
works project at the University
is one of the first of its kind, and
while similar efforts have been
made at other institutions, it is the
forefront of a new program that
will likely attract notice from oth-
ers around the nation.
"It would be wrong to say
orphan works digitization hasn't
happened, but it hasn't hap-
pened for the published record
in this way, and not on any sort of
scale," he said. "We are singular
in this regard. We will be doing
something that the world will be
watching and I mean that quite
seriously. Other research librar-
ies are going to be paying close
attention to this and it will begin
to shift their activity as they come
along."
GET THE DAILY IN YOUR E-MAIL Subscribe to one of our e-newsletters at michigandaily.com/subscribe