One of the too many listserv’s that I mainly lurk on had a message that I found very sad the other day. A librarian out there had been asked to videotape one of her research/library instruction classes to be used in lieu of her face-to-face class for someone. She was scared and looking for a way to get out of it. Why? Under the veil of pedagogical intellectual property she did not want to become obsolete. She thought that if this video got out no one would want to come in and have her personal lessons anymore. Basically she wants to hoard the knowledge so people must come to her to get the education in this area that is so desperately needed.
This goes against all I know to be the librarians credo. We share. I have rarely met a librarian who was not all about giving intellectual stuff away. What do you think sites like ANTS and PRIMO are all about? They share video tutorials other people have made so that you can put them on your website and use them to get to the widest audience possible.
Out of all of the seven librarians at my institution no ones position is seen as having more staying power than my own (in my own humble opinion). I am the online services librarian my job is to put us online as much as possible. Particularly for those who will never step foot in our library for whatever reason.
It is librarians like the one on that listserv that never cease to surprise and depress me. It is librarians like the one on that listserv that will find herself obsolete and as well it should be.
The Animated Librarian 
February 18, 2010 at 7:42 am
I have encountered this exact issue directly. We had a trainer that did not want to have their office classes recorded. I got the impression that they felt undervalued and that we were trying to steal their information. ERRR What??? I think they felt as though their knowledge was theirs alone, even thought they were teaching free classes. Making a recording of them would be a sort of personal copyright infringement.
I have also noticed that some people hate having a camera turned on them and will do/say anything to get out of it.
I also find it disappointing when guest speakers do not want us to record them. Some authors refuse because they do speaking engagements for money. Maybe they feel like it will undercut their income. I find this especially irritating when they wont let you record, then the first five minutes of their talk will be about how they love the public library and how they lived at the public library as a kid… and the little old lady that helped them get a library card expose them to so many free books they would have never been able to buy since they were poor.
I wish we had a policy for recording that gave us the right to record public events at our library. Does anyone know of libraries that have policies like that?