John McDonald

Caltech Library

"Avoiding Piracy in Library Practice"

In an environment where file sharing has been known to run rampant and where the cry “information wants to be free” resonates, well—what’s a librarian to do? John McDonald shares his experience in guarding against piracy in an academic environment populated with Internet natives. A few fascinating case studies and tips for ensuring content security round out this riveting presentation from one who has fought the fight to keep the rights of content owners safe.

BIOGRAPHY

John McDonald has been the Acquisitions Librarian at Caltech since 1999 and and is a frequent speaker at ALA Conferences and the Charleston Conference for Acquisitions & Collection Development. His research intereste include bibliometric analysis of information usage especially online journal usage and citation analysis. A published version of his most recent research on the subject appeared in the January 2007 issue of JASIST, titled "Understanding Online Journal Usage: A Statistical Analysis of Citation and Use". He is currently working towards the completion of his doctoral dissertation that focuses on statistical analysis of online journal usage, but more importantly, has just welcomed his first child, Charlotte, in December 2006.

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