Thursday Threads: SOPA, PROTECT-IP, Research Works Act, and Broad E-Textbook Pilot

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Peter Murray

One could say it is an all intellectual property edition of DLTJ Thursday Threads. How could one miss the outpouring of opposition to SOPA/PROTECT-IP? If that was an overwhelming story you might have missed the introduction of the Research Works Act that could end the open access mandates now at the National Institutes of Health and coming elsewhere. And because we need some good news, Internet2 announced a new electronic textbook pilot that could be really interesting.

This is a preview of Thursday Threads: SOPA, PROTECT-IP, Research Works Act, and Broad E-Textbook Pilot. Read the full post (1176 words, 4:42 minutes estimated reading time)

Slidecast of David Lewis’ “Collections Futures” Talk

Posted on March 2, 2011 by Peter Murray

At the 2010 Annual RLG Partnership Meeting, David Lewis (Dean of the IUPUI University Library) gave a talk entitled “Collections Futures”. I’ve followed David’s ideas since we crossed paths a few years ago; his ideas on applying Clayton Christensen’s disruptive innovation theories to libraries ring true to me. This presentation is in part an update on his earlier work on this theme and an expansion to include new ideas from Clay Shirky and John Seely Brown.

With David Lewis’ permission and in keeping with the Creative Commons license he used to publish the work, I have synchronized his slides and the audio recording using Slideshare.net. That effort is embedded below and is available on the Slideshare site.

This is a preview of Slidecast of David Lewis’ “Collections Futures” Talk. Read the full post (389 words, 3 images, 1:33 minutes estimated reading time)

Thursday Threads: Digital Reference Librarians, First Sale Danger, Open Access, Data Modeling

Posted on December 23, 2010 by Peter Murray

When I say “<blank> is a question answering system. A question can be posed in natural language and … <blank> can come up with a very precise answer to that question” — what comes to mind to fill in the <blank>? If you guessed a system developed by IBM to appear alongside human contestants on Jeopardy, you’d be right. That quote comes from video posted by IBM earlier this year that is the topic of the first DLTJ Thursday Threads entry. This weeks other entries look at possible erosions of copyright first sale doctrine, the state of open access publishing, and a proposition for new definitions to terms of art in data modeling.

If you find these threads interesting and useful, you might want to add the Thursday Threads RSS Feed to your feed reader or subscribe to e-mail delivery using the form to the right. If you would like a more raw and immediate version of these types of stories, watch my FriendFeed stream (or subscribe to its feed in your feed reader). Comments and tips, as always, are welcome.

This is a preview of Thursday Threads: Digital Reference Librarians, First Sale Danger, Open Access, Data Modeling. Read the full post (1249 words, 5:0 minutes estimated reading time)

Federal Research Public Access Act Reintroduced

Posted on June 30, 2009 by Peter Murray

New legislation was introduced in the U.S. Senate last week to support the publication of federally-sponsored research results under open access terms.
Sponsored by Senator Lieberman of Connecticut and co-sponsored by Senator Cornyn of Texas, it mandates open access to author pre-print versions with peer review changes in federally-run repositories within six months of publication. Called S.1373, it is a nearly identical version to the bill of the same name that these two senators introduced in 2006, which ultimately died in committee. The 2006 version was supported by a wide variety of organizations including the American Library Association, as tracked by the Alliance for Taxpayer Access (ATA).

This is a preview of Federal Research Public Access Act Reintroduced. Read the full post (925 words, 3:42 minutes estimated reading time)

Online Editions of Out-of-Print Books Result from Library/Press Partnership at Univ of Pittsburgh

Posted on May 26, 2009 by Peter Murray

Late last month, the University of Pittsburgh Press and Library System announced a joint effort to revive 500 titles with online and print-on demand access. I originally found this via a post on the Course materials, Innovation, and Technology in Education (CITE) blog. Since we have been ramping up discussions here in Ohio about ways OhioLINK can be an aggregation point for efforts at the four university press services in Ohio, I was interested to read about this and learn more.

This is a preview of Online Editions of Out-of-Print Books Result from Library/Press Partnership at Univ of Pittsburgh. Read the full post (763 words, 3:03 minutes estimated reading time)

Beyond Federated Search Redux

Posted on April 1, 2009 by Peter Murray

It started with a post by Carl Grant on the Federated Search Blog: Beyond Federated Search – Winning the Battle and Losing the War?. I bookmarked this in Delicious and copied this extended quote from the text into the bookmark:

I’ve long argued that librarianship on top of digital information is about the authority/authenticity/appropriateness of the information provided to the user, as opposed to the overwhelming amounts of information available via other search tools that don’t provide that differentiation. In order to meet those tests, one thing that is clear is that libraries and librarians should never cede control to other organizations over the content they offer to their end-users. It doesn’t matter if that happens because the content providers fail to provide access via federated search, or whether the library has allowed third party organizations to determine what content they can access via a local index discovery tool. Ceding this control cripples the ability of a library to build unique and precise informational offerings that target the needs of their end-users.

This in turn got pulled into my FriendFeed stream and the ensuing discussion seemed too valuable to let sit there, so I’m creating this post with those replies and adding a little bit more of my own thoughts. (Since all of these were public comments, I believe it is good nettiquete to reproduce them here with attribution. If not, please let me know…particularly if you are one of the people quoted!)

This is a preview of Beyond Federated Search Redux. Read the full post (1441 words, 5:46 minutes estimated reading time)

Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship

Posted on February 22, 2009 by Peter Murray

Earlier this month a group of law schools released a statement promoting open access publishing of law school journals. Called the Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship, it was signed by representatives from Duke, University of Virginia, Georgetown University, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University, Yale University, Stanford University, University of Texas, Columbia, Northwestern, Harvard, New York University, University of Chicago University of California — Berkeley, Barry University, University of Cincinnati, and Fordham University.

The undersigned believe that it will benefit legal education and improve the dissemination of legal scholarly information if law schools commit to making the legal scholarship they publish available in stable, open, digital formats in place of print. To accomplish this end, law schools should commit to making agreed-upon stable, open, digital formats, rather than print, the preferable formats for legal scholarship. If stable, open, digital formats are available, law schools should stop publishing law journals in print and law libraries should stop acquiring print law journals. We believe that, in addition to their other benefits, these changes are particularly timely in light of the financial challenges currently facing many law schools.

This is a preview of Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship. Read the full post (266 words, 1:04 minutes estimated reading time)

H.R.801 Threatens Open Access Requirement for Gov’t Funded Research

Posted on February 15, 2009 by Peter Murray

The Alliance for Taxpayer Access called out the introduction of proposed legislation that would prohibit the federal government from requiring publication of federally-funded research under open access terms. This would not only reverse the NIH Public Access Policy but would also stop other federal agencies from following a similar course. This is, in my humble opinion, bad. I continue to think that open access to federally-funded research is an appropriate expectation based on the use of taxpayer money — both individual and corporate money — to fund such research. To the extent that the proposed legislation would prevent this from happening, I oppose it.

This is a preview of H.R.801 Threatens Open Access Requirement for Gov’t Funded Research. Read the full post (1038 words, 4:09 minutes estimated reading time)

NIH Mandatory Open Access Provision Becomes Law

Posted on December 19, 2007 by Peter Murray

President George W. Bush signs into law H.R. 2764, the Consolidated Appropriations Act 2008, also known at the omnibus, making appropriations for the Department of State, foreign operations, and related programs for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2008, and for other purposes, after boarding Air Force One Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2007. White House photo by Chris Greenberg

Update 20071227T1147 : Title of the post changed to reflect the certainty of the bill being signed into law. Via Peter Suber’s Open Access News comes word from the Washington Post that President Bush signed the bill yesterday. Congratulations to the Alliance for Taxpayer Access and all those involved in making this happen. I’m sure we’ll be following the outcomes and impacts of this law for years to come.

This is a preview of NIH Mandatory Open Access Provision Becomes Law. Read the full post (351 words, 1 image, 1:24 minutes estimated reading time)

Support Public Access to Research Funded by the National Institutes of Health

Posted on October 22, 2007 by Peter Murray

The blogosphere is abuzz with what would seem to be the final hurdle for open access to taxpayer funded research by the National Institutes of Health. Over the course of the summer, advocates for public access to this research successfully added provisions to the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations bill that mandate deposit of manuscripts into PubMed Central no later than one year after publication when NIH funds were used to conduct the research. That legislation passed the house, and this afternoon the full Senate is considering amendments to its version of the appropriations bill. On Friday, Senator Inhofe filed two amendments that would either be strike the mandatory public access provisions from the bill, or modified the existing policy a way that would severely limit its effectiveness.

This is a preview of Support Public Access to Research Funded by the National Institutes of Health. Read the full post (1677 words, 6:42 minutes estimated reading time)

Disruptive Library Technology Jester

We're Disrupted, We're Librarians, and We're Not Going to Take It Anymore

Tag Archives: open access