ARL has released presentations from its 152nd membership meeting, which was titled "Institutional Strategies Supporting E-Scholarship & Multidisciplinary Research."
Here's a selection of the presentations:
MediaSpaces has released Version 0.2 of the OAI2LODServer.
Here's a description from the software's home page:
The OAI2LOD Server exposes any OAI-PMH compliant metadata repository according to the Linked Data guidelines. This makes things and media objects accessible via HTTP URIs and query able via the SPARQL protocol. Parts of the OAI2LOD architecture, especially the front-end, are based on the D2R Server implementation.
Further, it provides a configurable linking mechanism based on string similarity metrics. This allows the automatic linking of OAI-PMH data with other open data sets such as DBPedia or any other OAI-PMH repository exposed via the OAI2LOD Server.
The Repositories Support Project has released several new or updated briefings:
Key Services [ Paper ]
This briefing paper gives an overview of some of the
key services currently available to repository managers and provides further details on how to access and use them.Metadata [ Paper ]
This paper explores the topic of metadata in the repository and includes advice and information on metadata schemas and application profiles.
Making Effective Use of Your Repository [ Paper ]
Repositories are both part of an institution’s local information provision and part of the developing global open access information environment. This briefing paper discusses these contexts, helping the repository to serve the institution’s business needs effectively.
Repository Policy Framework – Updated [Paper]
Updated information about giving structure to your repository planning through the implementation of a policy framework.
Orphan works bills in House (H.R. 5889, The Orphan Works Act of 2008) and the Senate (S. 2913, the Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008) have been marked up by the appropriate Congressional committees. House testimony by Marybeth Peters, The Register of Copyrights, overviews the issues involved in the legislation.
The bills are not without controversy. Prominent copyright reformer Lawrence Lessig wrote an Op Ed piece in The New York Times opposing the bills, calling them "both unfair and unwise." Public Knowledge and others countered his objections. Various associations of content creators, such as photographers, have been vocal opponents of the bills.
Read more about it at "ASMP Urges Photographers to Oppose 'Orphan Works' Bill," "Issue Brief: Orphan Works," "Library Group Favors Senate over House Bill on Orphan Works," "Orphan Works," "Orphan Works Bill Clears Senate Committee, May Soon Find Home," "Release the Orphan Works!," "Senate Marks Up Orphan Works," and "Two Cartoon-Group Presidents Slam Possible 'Orphan Works' Legislation."
The host service that supports digital-scholarship.com is back up.
Keep in mind for any future service outages that Digital Scholarship has two sites that largely mirror each other and use different hosting services:
It is unlikely that both sites would be unavailable at the same time.
For further details, see "Digital Scholarship Publications Overview":
The hosting service that supports digital-scholarship.com is down due to a serious problem. Please use digital-scholarship.org instead. See Digital Scholarship Publications Overview for further details about how to access publications using this site.
The Google Book Search Bibliography, Version 2 is now available.
This bibliography presents selected English-language articles and other works that are useful in understanding Google Book Search. It primarily focuses on the evolution of Google Book Search and the legal, library, and social issues associated with it. Where possible, links are provided to works that are freely available on the Internet, including e-prints in disciplinary archives and institutional repositories. Note that e-prints and published articles may not be identical.
Steve Cisler, who was well-known for his pioneering work as a Senior Scientist for Apple Computer (where he ran its Apple Library of Tomorrow program from 1988-1997) and as a community networking advocate, died on May 15, 2008. Cisler was born on Oct. 14, 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky. At the time of his death, Cisler was a Research Associate and Project Manager for the KnowledeX project at Santa Clara University's Center for Science, Technology, and Society. His obituary ("Steve Cisler: Librarian Knew a Lot about a Lot") was published in the The Mercury News.
Here is a speaker profile from a 2007 conference:
Steve Cisler, upon graduation from Northwestern University in 1965, started a school library in rural Togo, West Africa when he was a Peace Corps teacher. After three years doing search and rescue with the U.S. Coast Guard, he attended University of California Berkeley where he received his Master of Library Science. He only began using computers in middle age, at a public computer lab in his branch library in Contra Costa County Library where he worked for 14 years. In 1985 he joined The Well and ran an online forum on information and libraries for many years. In 1988 at Apple Computer Inc Advanced Technology Group, he started a grant program called Apple Library of Tomorrow for innovative projects in libraries, museums, and local community networks where citizens were setting up local free Internet services. He supported the first copyright-free online book about the Internet (the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Big Dummies Guide to the Internet). He worked on deregulation of the radio frequencies and standards that became known as 802.11 or Wi-Fi. Over the past 7 years he has consulted in Latin America, Thailand, Jordan, and Uganda on short-term projects involving telecenters, school computer labs and indigenous groups using information and communication technologies. In 2004 he spent eight months disconnected and driving around the U.S. and Mexico talking to people NOT using the Internet. From 2005-6 he chaired a working group on piracy and intellectual property in the Pacific as part of the Pacific Rim New Media Summit in San Jose in August 2006. He lives in San Jose, Calif., with his wife, an elementary school principal. His hobbies include gardening, kayaking, and winemaking. He can be reached at sacisler@yahoo.com and he posts from time to time on http://place.typepad.com/digitalcommons.
Steve Cisler was an extraordinary man, who early on clearly saw the transformational potential of the Internet and worked diligently to help realize that potential with his usual joie de vivre. In 1993, Cisler won the LITA/Gaylord Award for Achievement in Library and Information Technology, and in 1996 he won a Silver Award from the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. Cisler served on the Editorial Board of The Public-Access Computer Systems Review from 1992-2000.
There has been an outpouring of tributes to Steve. Here is a sample: "Steve Cisler—First Internet Librarian," "Steve Cisler, Digital Librarian, RIP," and "Steve Cisler, RIP." He will be greatly missed.
The Open Access Webliography has been updated with current links, Internet Archive links (for works no longer available except there), or notes that the work is completely unavailable. The textual content of the document has not been updated.
The Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography, Version 2 is now available from Digital Scholarship.
This bibliography presents selected English-language articles, conference papers, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). Where possible, links are provided to sources that are freely available on the Internet, including e-prints in disciplinary archives and institutional repositories. Note that e-prints and published articles may not be identical.
The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which provides information about new works related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, e-prints, journal articles, magazine articles, technical reports, and white papers.
Especially interesting are: "Case Study: Open Access Yields Solid Growth for Hindawi," "Implementing the New NIH Policy," "In the Kingdom of the Blind: Successfully Implementing Institutional Repositories in the United Kingdom and the SHERPA Partnership Experience," "Institutional Repositories: The Experience of Master's and Baccalaureate Institutions," "The Justification of Intellectual Property: Contemporary Philosophical Disputes," Key Concerns within the Scholarly Communication Process: Report to the JISC Scholarly Communications Group, Open Doors and Open Minds: What Faculty Authors Can Do to Ensure Open Access to Their Work through Their Institution, Research Library Publishing Services: New Options for University Publishing, and "Supporting the Research Base: The Research Information Network and Scholarly Communications in the United Kingdom."
The Open Access Directory, a Wiki for factual information (vs. narrative descriptions) about the open access movement has been launched.
Here's the press release:
Peter Suber and Robin Peek have launched the Open Access Directory (OAD), a wiki where the open access community can create and maintain simple factual lists about open access to science and scholarship. Suber, a Research Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College, and Peek, an Associate Professor of Library and Information Science at Simmons College, conceived the project in order to collect OA-related lists for one-stop reference and searching.
The wiki will start operating with about half a dozen lists—for example, conferences devoted to open access, discussion forums devoted to open access, and journal "declarations of independence"—and add more over time.
The goal is to harness the knowledge and energy of the open access community itself to enlarge and correct the lists. A list on a wiki, revised continuously by its users, can be more comprehensive and up to date than the same list maintained by an individual. By bringing many OA-related lists together in one place, OAD will make it easier for users, especially newcomers, to discover them and use them for reference. The easier they are to maintain and discover, the more effectively they can spread useful, accurate information about open access.
The URL for the Open Access Directory is oad.simmons.edu.
The wiki is represented by an editorial board consisting of prominent figures in the open access movement. The Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at Simmons College hosts and provides technical support to the OAD.
Editors and administrators
- Robin Peek. Editor, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College
- Athanasia Pontika. Assistant Editor, Doctoral Student, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College
- Terry Plum. Technical Coordinator, Assistant Dean for Technology and Director, Simmons College
Editorial board members
- Charles Bailey. Publisher, Digital Scholarship
- Leslie Chan. Program Supervisor for New Media Studies, University of Toronto Scarborough
- Heather Joseph. Executive Director, Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)
- Melissa Hagemann. Open Society Institute
- Peter Suber. Research Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College, Visiting Fellow at Yale Law School, and Senior Researcher at SPARC
- Alma Swan. Key Perspectives Ltd
- John Wilbanks. Vice President, Creative Commons
Read more about it at "Launch of the Open Access Directory."
The Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2007 Annual Edition is now available from Digital Scholarship.
Annual editions of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography are PDF files designed for printing. Each annual edition is based on the last HTML version published during the edition's year.
The SEPB 2007 Annual Edition is based on Version 70 (12/18/2007). The printed bibliography is over 260 pages long. The PDF file is over 1 MB.
In addition to updated URLs, hundreds of additional URLs have been added to the SEPB 2007 Annual Edition. (The additional URLs will be added to Version 72 of the SEPB HTML edition.)
Aside from the next Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (5/7/08) and any Digital Scholarship publication announcements, DigitalKoans will be on break until 6/2/08.
Vuze has issued a report (First Results from Vuze Network Monitoring Tool) analyzing the network management tactics of ISPs.
Here's an excerpt from the report:
We believe that there is sufficient data to suggest that network management practices that "throttle" internet traffic are widespread. At a minimum, more investigation is required to determine whether these resets are happening in the ordinary course of business or whether they represent the kind of throttling practices which target specific applications and/or protocols, harming the consumer experience and stifling innovation.
Read more about it at "Study: All Major Broadband Providers Disrupt P2P," "U.S. Senate Committee Tackles Net Neutrality Today," and "Vuze Says Some ISPs Abuse TCP Resets; Data Not That Clearcut."
Starting next week, the North Carolina State University Libraries will check out Kindles and Sony Reader Digital Books from its Learning Commons. Users will ask library staff to load desired e-books on the readers at check-out.
Read more about it at "Library to Offer New Reading Options."
Another interesting development is that the NCSU Libraries are supporting both Weblog (WolfBlogs) and Wiki (WolfWikis) services for NCSU community members.
The University of Florida Digital Library Center has announced that it has digitized over 1.7 million pages, with about 100,000 pages being added in the last month alone. Their digitization statistics are available online. (Thanks to Open Access News.)
Read more about it "100,000 Pages a Month."
Here's a selection of recent news articles and Weblog postings about the Georgia State copyright infringement lawsuit. See my prior postings for further information about the suit ("Georgia State Copyright Infringement Suit Coverage and Commentary" and "Georgia State Sued by Three Publishers for Alleged Digital Copyright Infringement in E-Reserves, Course Management, and Other Systems").
"Academic Publishers Sue US Uni over Digital Course Material"
It is an estimate that electronic course packs now constitute half of all syllabus reading at American colleges and universities. . . . Cambridge University Press, for example charges 17 cents a page for each student for electronic use, and generally grants permission for use of as much as 20 percent of a book.
"Copyright Suit Tests How Much Is Too Much"
Indeed, the complaint notes that the three plaintiffs have published more than 100 books and monographs authored by GSU professors. That GSU is a nonprofit institution shouldn't have any bearing on how much unauthorized copying it can do, Smith [Frank Smith, Cambridge University Press] says.
"We're a nonprofit," he points out. "I assume they wouldn't want their classes flooded with students who weren't paying tuition, but you could say there's no extra cost to filling another desk. I'm sure they would resist that, and I could see why."
The educational area is one where courts have traditionally afforded a greater degree of leeway in fair use and even the plaintiff's lawyer has to admit that he can't find a law or binding precedent stating how much digital copying would be "not too much." It seems likely that if the case ever makes it as far as a decision that decision would be appealed. My personal opinion is that they'll work out a settlement before it gets that far—neither side wants to see a precedent set that would go against them. Plus there's a core reality that academic publishers and educational institutions exist in a kind of death-grip dependency that would harm both if it was violently broken.
"Publishing Group Hires Qorvis for Lawsuit Messaging"
The Association of American Publishers hired Qorvis to handle messaging for three academic publishers' copyright lawsuit against Georgia State University.
So, . . . what's left if you really, really, really believe that educators ought to be able to use whatever they need to and want to use in their classrooms without worrying about what it costs or whether it's fair use?
Consumer resistance, or OA.
If that case every reaches the stage of arguing the fair use defense, I hope the court will look very hard at the second fair use factor—the nature of the copyrighted work. Previously, the action on this factor has been minimal and has largely focused on published versus unpublished works and how much originality is necessary for "thick" or "thin" protection. But the economics of a particular segment of publishing, especially one as dysfunctional as scholarly publishing, ought to be considered when analyzing fair use, and factor two is a good place to do that. If the system is structured in a way that undermines the whole incentive purpose of copyright, as I have argued the scholarly publishing is, factor two, which really focuses on the expectations of creators of different types of works, should strongly favor an expansive application of fair use.
"What Does the Lawsuit against Georgia State Mean?"
There are a number of possible outcomes in this case. Settlement is possible. The complaint itself is somewhat vague in its details; while specific examples are provided for some of the allegedly infringing uses, the publishers provide no specific details or examples of professors linking to course material from their open web pages, or any information about specifically infringing behaviors within the course management system. Although it claims the copying is in excess of what is permitted as fair use, the publishers do not offer a specific discussion of what it considers to be the bounds of fair use, nor does it adequately define course packs, nor offer any interpretation of the cited cases against copy shops, other than to broadly claim that they act as guiding precedence.
CRIA has released Strategies for Open and Permanent Access to Scientific Information in Latin America: Focus on Health and Environmental Information for Sustainable Development, a report about the 2007 workshop of the same name.
Read more about it at "Workshop Report: Strategies for Open, Permanent Access to Scientific Information."
EDUCAUSE has released a podcast on P2P file sharing called "Don't Download This Panel." The podcast is from a panel discussion about the topic at the EDUCAUSE 2008 Western Regional Conference.
The speakers are:
The National Endowment for the Humanities' Office of Digital Humanities has announced the Humanities High Performance Computing Initiative.
Here's an excerpt from the announcement:
As you may have seen in today's Chronicle of Higher Education, the NEH has just announced our new Humanities High Performance Computing initiative—HHPC for short. Our goal is to start a conversation about how high performance computers—supercomputers—can be used for humanities research. We are working with colleagues at the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation to provide you with information on how high performance/grid computing and data storage might be used for work in the humanities. We are also announcing a new grant competition with DOE to award time and training on their machines. I urge you to check out our HHPC Resources page for more information.
Here's an excerpt from the Humanities High Performance Computing Resource page:
So what do we mean by "HHPC?" Humanities High-Performance Computing (HHPC) refers to the use of high-performance machines for humanities and social science projects. Currently, only a small number of humanities scholars are taking advantage of high-performance computing. But just as the sciences have, over time, begun to tap the enormous potential of HPC, the humanities are beginning to as well. Humanities scholars often deal with large sets of unstructured data. This might take the form of historical newspapers, books, election data, archaeological fragments, audio or video contents, or a host of others. HHPC offers the humanist opportunities to sort through, mine, and better understand and visualize this data.
Jon Udell has posted an interview ("Word for Scientific Publishing") with Pablo Fernicola, a Microsoft Group Manager, about the Article Authoring Add-in for Microsoft Office Word 2007 (see my prior posting "Microsoft Developing Authoring Add-in for Microsoft Office Word 2007 with NLM DTD Support"). (Warning: there is a very annoying Silverlight download pop-up that obscures part of the post.)
Udell has also posted a screencast of Fernicola demonstrating the add-in ("Pablo Fernicola Demonstrates the Word Add-In for Scientific Authors").
CrossRef and iParadigms will launch CrossCheck in June, which will allow publishers to analyze content in both publisher systems and Internet Web sites in order to identify works that may have been plagiarized.
Here's an excerpt from the press release:
CrossRef is partnering with iParadigms, LLC to offer its members—leading scholarly and professional publishers—the opportunity to verify the originality of works submitted for publication using the iThenticate service to check against a vast database of proprietary as well as open web content. Until now, there was no automated way to check submissions against previous publications because the published literature had not been indexed and "text fingerprinted" for this purpose. The CrossCheck database will include the full-text journals of leading academic publishers, and is expected to grow very rapidly over the coming months as CrossRef member publishers sign up for the service.
CrossCheck will be available to all CrossRef members who opt to contribute their content to the database. To use the service publishers will need to integrate the checking tool into their editorial processes and develop suitable policies and guidelines. CrossRef is working with iParadigms, member publishers, and editorial system software producers on appropriate technical information and guidelines for CrossCheck.
JISC has announced JorumOpen, a national repository of open access educational materials under Creative Commons licenses.
Here's an excerpt from the announcement:
It was announced today that Jorum, the UK national repository for learning and teaching materials funded by JISC, is to offer open educational resources. This will make it easier for lecturers and teaching staff to share and re-use each other's teaching resources. JorumOpen—as it will be called—will also provide a showcase for UK universities and colleges on the international stage. . . .
Jorum is managed jointly by EDINA and Mimas, the two National Academic Data Centres funded by JISC at the Universities of Edinburgh and Manchester. During the first phase of Jorum's development, the focus has been on building a system that safeguards investment in digital learning resources and offers controlled access to licensed materials. The result is a service that supports access to over 2,500 learning resources for download for direct use in the classroom and within virtual learning environments (VLEs).
Through the development of JorumOpen, lecturers and teachers will be able to share materials under the Creative Commons licence framework: this makes sharing easier, granting users greater rights for use and re-use of online content and easier to understand. Importantly, it does not require prior registration. As a result availability is global as well as across UK universities and colleges. JorumOpen will run alongside a 'members only' facility, JorumEducationUK, that will support sharing of material just within the UK educational sector; this will be available only to registered users and contributors, as is currently the case.
The Greater Western Library Alliance, a consortium of 31 research libraries, has expressed interest in the SCOAP3 project. The Greater Western Library Alliance joins a growing list of U.S. institutions interested in the SCOAP3 project.
Here's an excerpt from Towards Open Access Publishing in High Energy Physics: Executive Summary of the Report of the SCOAP3 Working Party that explains the project:
The proposed [SCOAP3] initiative aims to convert high-quality HEP journals to OA, pursuing two goals:
- to provide open and unrestricted access to all HEP research literature in its final, peer-reviewed form;
- to contain the overall cost of journal publishing by increasing competition while assuring sustainability.
In this new model, the publishers’ subscription income from multiple institutions is replaced by income from a single financial partner, the "Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics" (SCOAP3). SCOAP3 is a global network of HEP funding agencies, research laboratories, and libraries. Each SCOAP3 partner will recover its contribution from the cancellation of its current journal subscriptions. This model avoids the obvious disadvantage of OA models in which authors are directly charged for the OA publication of their articles. . . .
In practice, the OA transition will be facilitated by the fact that the large majority of HEP articles are published in just six peer-reviewed journals from four publishers. Five of those six journals carry a majority of HEP content. These are Physical Review D (published by the American Physical Society), Physics Letters B and Nuclear Physics B (Elsevier), Journal of High Energy Physics (SISSA/IOP) and the European Physical Journal C (Springer). The aim of the SCOAP3 model is to assist publishers to convert these "core" HEP journals entirely to OA and it is expected that the vast majority of the SCOAP3 budget will be spent to achieve this target. The sixth journal, Physical Review Letters (American Physical Society), is a "broadband" journal that carries only a small fraction (10%) of HEP content; it is the aim of SCOAP3 to sponsor the conversion to OA of this journal fraction. The same approach can be extended to another "broadband" journal popular with HEP instrumentation articles: Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A (Elsevier) with about 25% HEP content.
