Month: August 2008

Repositories Support Project Launches RSP Blog Directory

The Repositories Support Project has launched the RSP Blog Directory.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

It provides a list of recommended and informative blogs regarding the repository scene from around the globe. Listed blogs include personal creations from those with first hand experience of repository management and/or technical development of repository software; blogs for specific repositories, projects and software developers; as well as blogs for groups and societies with an interest in the open access movement and digital curation.

Adrian K. Ho Named Scholarly Communication Librarian at Western Libraries of the University of Western Ontario

Adrian K. Ho has been named the Scholarly Communication Librarian at the Western Libraries of the University of Western Ontario.

Ho is the lead author of the "Open Access Webliography." An e-print of this article, which was published in Reference Services Review, has been retrieved from Digital Scholarship over 63,000 times. Ho's latest project is an investigation of collaborations between research libraries and university presses, which he conducted as part of the Association of Research Libraries' 2007/08 Leadership and Career Development Program. He is a member of the Association of College and Research Libraries' Scholarly Communication Committee. He is also the current Chair of the Association of Library Collections and Technical Services' Collection Development and Electronic Resources Committee.

Ho was formerly the Collections Coordinator at the University of Houston Libraries, where he authored the Transforming Scholarly Communication Weblog. He holds an MA in Communications Studies, an MLIS, and a BA in Humanities.

Video Clips from the Open Access Documentary Project

With grant support from the Open Society Institute, Intelligent Television and BioMed Central are engaged in the Open Access Documentary Project, which is producing videos about the benefits of open access. The first video clips from the project are now available. They are interviews with John Wilbanks, Vice President of Science at the Creative Commons, and Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC.

University of Tennessee Libraries' "Newfound Press Business Plan, 2008-2011"

The University of Tennessee Libraries' "Newfound Press Business Plan, 2008-2011" is available.

Here's an excerpt:

The University of Tennessee Libraries launched its digital imprint, Newfound Press (www.newfoundpress.utk.edu), in 2005 to develop a framework for making peer-reviewed scholarly and specialized works available worldwide. Building on local digitization investments, Newfound Press has published two monographs, with two more in production and a third in the referee process. The Press currently hosts one born-digital journal and is considering a proposal for a second. To experiment with digital multimedia publication, the Press has compiled text, recordings, and ephemera from two scholarly conferences for public access. Through Newfound Press, the University of Tennessee demonstrates an open access publishing model that explores issues such as creating a process for peer review “on the fly,” exploring new channels for the discovery of research results, and establishing credibility as a viable scholarly publications venue.

New Report Says U.S. Lags Far Behind in Internet Speed Race

The Communications Workers of America have released Speed Matters: A Report on Internet Speeds in All 50 States.

Here's an excerpt:

The median download speed for the nation [the U.S.] was 2.3 megabits per second (mbps). In Japan, the median download speed is 63 mbps, or 30 times faster than the U.S. U.S. also trails South Korea at 49 mbps, Finland at 21 mbps, France at 17 mbps, and Canada at 7.6 mbps. The median upload speed from the speedmatters.org test was just 435 kilobits per second (kbps), far too slow for patient monitoring or to transmit large files such as medical records.

Five TexTreasures Digitization Grants Awarded

The Texas State Library and Archives Commission has awarded digitization grants to five TexShare member libraries.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

TSLAC received 28 TexTreasures grant proposals. The exciting projects that have been funded are:

  1. "Houston Oral History Project" ($17,474)—The Houston Public Library is partnering with Mayor Bill White to preserve and make the video-recordings of significant Houstonians available on the web.
  2. "Early Texas Newspapers: 1829-1861" ($24,637)—The University of North Texas Libraries and the Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin will partner to microfilm, digitize, and provide free public access to the earliest Texas newspapers held by the Center for American History.
  3. "The Witliff Collections" ($20,000)—The project creates an online exhibit accessing the primary source materials of researcher Dick J. Reavis held by the Southwestern Writers Collection at the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University about the siege of the Branch Davidians at Mount Carmel outside of Waco in 1993.
  4. "Austin History Center Glass Plate Negatives" ($12,889)—The Austin History Center, a division of the Austin Public Library, will digitize the complete Hubert Jones collection of 471 glass plate negatives containing subjects local to Austin and Texas.
  5. "Tejano Voices Project" ($20,000)—The University of Texas at Arlington Library will digitize and describe 60 of the 174 oral history interviews with notable Tejanos and Tejanas from across Texas conducted in 1992-2003 by Dr. Jose Angel Gutierrez, associate professor of political science at UT Arlington.

PubMed Central Deposit and Author Rights: Agreements between 12 Publishers and the Authors Subject to the NIH Public Access Policy

The Association of Research Libraries has released "PubMed Central Deposit and Author Rights: Agreements between 12 Publishers and the Authors Subject to the NIH Public Access Policy" by Ben Grillot, a second-year law school student.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

To help authors make informed choices about their rights, Grillot compares how the agreements of 12 publishers permit authors to meet the requirements of the recently revised National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy and share their works while they are under embargo. . . .

Grillot focuses his analysis on how the agreements differ in: the terms and procedures of deposit of the work, the length of any embargo period, and the rights of the author to use and share the work during the embargo period. . . .

Grillot concludes that the significant variability in publisher agreements requires authors with NIH funding to closely examine publisher agreements and the rights granted and retained when deciding where to publish their research. His analysis of these 12 agreements will help authors determine what to look for in an agreement and what questions to ask before signing.

Legal Victory for Open Licenses: Jacobsen v. Katzer and Kamind Associates

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has upheld the validity of an open source license, the Artistic License, in Jacobsen v. Katzer and Kamind Associates.

Read more about it at "Court of Appeals for Federal Circuit Overturns Jacobsen v. Katzer—Ruling as Text," "Federal Circuit Says Open Source License Conditions Are Enforceable as Copyright Condition," "Huge and Important News: Free Licenses Upheld," and "The Model Train Patent Story—Jacobsen v. Katzer et al."

Memo to Campus CIOs about the Higher Education Opportunity Act's Illegal File Sharing Provisions

The American Council on Education, the Association of American Universities, EDUCAUSE, and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges have issued a memo to campus Chief Information Officers about the Higher Education Opportunity Act's provisions related to illegal file sharing.

Free Wireless U.S. Broadband, Censorship Included

Since it was announced, the FCC's proposal for a free national wireless broadband service has been controversial.

Free speech advocates don't like this provision of the proposal:

That filters or blocks images and text that constitute obscenity or pornography and, in context, as measured by contemporary community standards and existing law, any images or text that otherwise would be harmful to teens and adolescents. For purposes of this rule, teens and adolescents are children 5 through 17 years of age;

CTIA-The Wireless Association and individual wireless companies have voiced opposition to the plan as well, citing business and technical concerns.

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) has introduced the Wireless Internet Nationwide for Families Act of 2008 (H.R. 5846) in the House, which is similar to the FCC proposal.

Read more about it at: "22 Public Interest Groups Roast FCC Smutless Broadband Plan"; "Congressional Dems Back Porn-Free Wireless Broadband Network"; "FCC Moves Ahead with Plan for Smut-Free Wireless Broadband"; "FCC Wants Free Broadband Service, Plus Content Filtering"; "FCC's Planned Free WiFi Is for Five Year Olds"; "GOP Pols Oppose Smut-Free Wireless Network Proposal"; and "Martin Defends Smut-Free, Wireless Network to Wary Congress."

Taking Forward the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property: Penalties for Copyright Infringement

The UK Intellectual Property Office has released Taking Forward the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property: Penalties for Copyright Infringement.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Currently the maximum fine that Magistrates' Courts can award for online copyright infringement is £5,000.

To reflect the commercial damage that large scale copyright infringement causes, the UK-IPO is consulting on increasing the level of fine handed down by a Magistrates’ Court to a maximum of £50,000. . . .

Scotland does not have Magistrates’ Courts; therefore the consultation considers introducing maximum levels of fines for Scottish summary courts that deal with equivalent cases in Scotland.

Free Press Releases Blocking or Metering: A False Choice

Free Press has released Blocking or Metering: A False Choice.

Here's an excerpt:

The bottom line is this: Making consumers choose between having applications blocked and limitation pricing is what economists call a Morton’s Fork. Neither path is desirable because they both have the same outcome: reducing the innovative power of the Internet. Such an outcome would do great damage to the major driving force behind much of the social and economic change that has occurred over the past 20 years—not to mention all the benefits the Internet promises for the foreseeable future.

Presentations/Reports from the JISC/CNI Meeting on Transforming the User Experience

Presentations are available from the JISC/CNI meeting on Transforming the User Experience.

Here's a selection:

Helen Aguera, Senior Program Officer at the National Endowment for the Humanities, has also reported on the conference in a series of Weblog postings:

Information Technology and Libraries Launches ITALica Weblog

Information Technology and Libraries has launched the ITALica Weblog.

Here's the announcement:

Hello friends, Information Technology and Libraries (ITAL), LITA's peer-reviewed quarterly journal, is about to launch a new weblog called ITALica at http://ital-ica.blogspot.com/. ITALica addresses a need we on the ITAL Editorial Board have long sensed, that is, an area for "letters to the editor", updates to articles, supplementary materials we can't work into the journal,. . . you-name-it. One of the most important features of ITALica will be a forum for readers' conversations with our authors: we'll ask authors to host and monitor discussion for a period of time after publication of their articles, so that you'll then have a chance to interact with them.

ITALica is currently a pilot project. For our first author-hosted discussion, we are very pleased to have as host Jennifer Bowen of the University of Rochester.

Many of you will know—either because you attended, or because you've heard the buzz about it since—about the 'Creating the Future of the Catalog and Cataloging', program at the ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim. This program, which was sponsored by ALCTS CCS, and co-sponsored by the LITA Next Generation Catalog Interest Group and the ALCTS Networked Resources and Metadata Interest Group, drew an overflow crowd of several hundred and featured as presenters—in addition to Jennifer—Diane Hillmann, Tim Spalding, Roy Tennant, and Martha Yee.

Jennifer's presentation was in large part based on her paper 'Metadata to Support Next-Generation Library Resource Discovery: Lessons from The eXtensible Catalog, Phase 1', just published in the June 2008 issue of ITAL. We on the ITAL Editorial Board believe that the eXtensible Catalog (XC) project at Rochester represents a significant contribution to the future development and directions of both library metadata and the library catalog as a discovery tool. Jennifer will host the first ITALica, contributing her thoughts about the ALA program, updating her ITAL paper with more recent developments in the XC initiative, and engaging in discussion with those of you who care to contribute. LITA members can access the full version of Jennifer's paper online, at the ITAL website . . . from where you can also then find a link to the ITALica discussion. You can also access ITALica directly (no membership in LITA required) at (http://ital-ica.blogspot.com/). Jennifer will be monitoring the discussion from 18 August to 15 September 2008.

Beginning with the September issue of ITAL, we plan to expand ITALica discussions to include all articles and other features in that and subsequent issues. We hope to see many of you online at ITALica for what promises to be the first in an ongoing series of very stimulating discussions!

cheers,
Marc Truitt, Editor, ITAL, for the Editorial Board

OpenCollection Version 0.54-3 Released

OpenCollection version 0.54-3 has been released.

Here's an excerpt from the Overview page:

OpenCollection is a full-featured collections management and online access application for museums, archives and digital collections. It is designed to handle large, heterogeneous collections that have complex cataloguing requirements and require support for a variety of metadata standards and media formats. Unlike most other collections management applications, OpenCollection is completely web-based. All cataloging, search and administrative functions are accessed using common web-browser software, untying users from specific operating systems and making cataloguing by distributed teams and online access to collections information simple, efficient and inexpensive.

See the Features page for more details about this open source software.

Fedora 2.2.3 Released: Important Security Fix

Fedora Commons has released version 2.2.3 of Fedora, which contains an important security fix.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Today Fedora Commons released version 2.2.3 of the popular Fedora software that includes the repair of a serious security defect and several bug fixes. Dan Davis, Chief Software Architect, Fedora Commons, explained, "Every installation of Fedora 2 should update to 2.2.3 due to the security update. There have been no exploits that have been discovered but it is important to maintain repositories at the latest security update level." Fedora 2.2.3 is strictly a maintenance update; new features may be found in Fedora 3.0 which was released for general availability on July 29th . Also, the license has been changed to the familiar Apache License 2.0 for Fedora 2.2.3. Fedora 2 will be maintained until August 2009 and thereafter be placed in an "end of life" status. At least one more release of Fedora 2 is planned though there may be additional releases to fix critical defects.

Sony Reader vs. Amazon Kindle: Can Sony Win?

An article in the Financial Times ("Why Sony Lost the Battle of the E-Book") suggests that, despite the Sony Reader's earlier market presence, the unique features of the Kindle (e.g., wireless access to e-books), its large e-book stock (145,000 titles), and its strong unit sales (240,000 units) and e-book sales (12% of Amazon book sales in both digital and print formats) bodes ill for the Reader's ability to attain marketplace dominance.

Read more about it at "Amazon May Have Actually Sold a Bunch Of Kindles (AMZN)" and "We Know How Many Kindles Amazon Has Sold: 240,000."

Resources at Columbia's Copyright Advisory Office's Web Site

In January 2008, Kenneth Crews became the founding director of the Copyright Advisory Office at Columbia University. There are a variety of useful resources at the CAO's web site about U.S. copyright law, especially fair use.

Of particular interest, are:

Digital Curation Centre Releases "Creative Commons Licensing"

The Digital Curation Centre has released "Creative Commons Licensing" as part of its Legal Watch Papers series.

Here's an excerpt:

CC is of great relevance to digital curation in the way it simplifies and increases third party access to and usage of copyright works. Curation is dependant on a range of strategies that require the making of copies and modifications. Unhindered, copyright could impinge on digital curation considerably. However use of these licences may ameliorate the difficulties.

A Look at the Development and Future of Scholarly Communication in High Energy Physics

Robert Aymar, Director-General of CERN, has deposited a e-print of "Scholarly Communication in High-Energy Physics: Past, Present and Future Innovations" in the CERN Document Server.

Here's an excerpt from the abstract:

Unprecedented technological advancements have radically changed the way we communicate and, at the same time, are effectively transforming science into e-Science. In turn, this transformation calls for an evolution in scholarly communication. This review describes several innovations, spanning the last decades of scholarly communication in High Energy Physics: the first repositories, their interaction with peer-reviewed journals, a proposed model for Open Access publishing and a next-generation repository for the field.

Of particular interest is his description of the INSPIRE Project, "a fully integrated HEP information platform for the future," that will have "text- and data-mining applications, citation analysis and other tools, and Web 2.0 features."

For further information about INSPIRE, see "Information Systems in HEP get INSPIREd" and the INSPIRE Wiki.