One of the very relevant aspects of the Google Book Search Settlement Agreement to libraries is the provision that allows for free public access to the full text of books in public and academic libraries. The Notice of Settlement summary says: "Google will provide, on request, 'Public Access' licenses for …

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University System of Ohio

The University System of Ohio invites you to submit proposals for the Learning, Libraries and Technology Conference …

Earlier this week U.S. Senate passed its own version of the "College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007" (H.R.4137 to amend and extend the Higher Education Act of 1965, and for other purposes) by unanimous consent (hence no recorded vote) and appointed members of a conference committee …

Colorado Community College System (CCCS) signed an agreement with Pearson Education for flat-rate access to Pearson textbook content online. News of this comes by way of a link left by Lorcan Dempsey in a comment to an earlier DLTJ entry that pointed to a blog entry by Michael Cairns talking …

Who knew the college textbook marketplace could be so complex? The agents in this ecosystem and their interests are so intertwined that as a whole it poses a massive amount of inertia for those who attempt to change the marketplace. I've been involved for about a year with an effort …

This morning's Chronicle of Higher Education Wired Campus blog has a story with the title "Should Colleges Sell Ads to Pay for New Technology?" that links to a blog posting by Martin Weller of the Open University in the U.K. As it happens, a colleague and I were talking …

There has been an increasing focus on the cost of textbooks in the mainstream media this year, and I don't think it is the case that I'm just becoming more sensitized to it. Take for example the editorial from the Washington Post on February 7th. The second paragraph succinctly describes …

Applications are invited for two positions at OhioLINK: an Assistant Director of Library Systems -- User Services Development and an Assistant Director of Electronic Licensing. OhioLINK is a consortium of Ohio’s college and university libraries and the State Library of Ohio. It serves more than 600,000 students, faculty, staff …

At the Ohio Digital Commons for Education conference yesterday I had the privilege of chairing a panel for a session called "Teaching with Digital Texts: Comparative Experiences from the Field". The panel was a mixture of the principle investigators and the publisher representatives from two pilot projects that ran last …

Stu Hicks, one of OhioLINK's systems engineers, told the OhioLINK staff last night about a new program at Microsoft called DreamSpark. Through this program, post-secondary students around the world who are attending accredited schools or universities can download some of Microsoft's big developer and designer tools free of charge. At …

The Chronicle of Higher Education had an article today [subscription required] about legislation pending on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives that in part includes rules for disclosure of textbook selection and pricing. The lever is the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, a major law that …

The preliminary program [PDF] and conference registration for the 2008 Ohio Digital Commons for Education (ODCE) Conference is now available. As a member of the conference planning committee and a track co-chair for the Moving Ohio Forward track, I got an early look at the sessions to be presented and …

Richard Akerman's recent post highlighting SOA resources at Educause reminded me about the aggregation point on Educause Connect for SOA resources. I'm assuming significant number of those interested in applying SOA to library systems are at an institution of higher education or in some related organization, so I'm adding the …

At the Academic Library Association of Ohio meeting last week, I saw a presentation by John Burke, director of the library at Miami University – Middletown, and Krista McDonald, director of the library Miami University – Hamilton called "You Can't Do That! Library-Initiated Textbooks on Reserve Programs." It was an introduction to …

Spotted in the Chronicle of Higher Education Online this morning is mention of two lectures by Wendy Seltzer that will happen today on the topic of copyright and fair-use doctrine. Here are the summaries and hCalendar events (the latter being useful if your browser and/or RSS reader understands the …

As others have noted, there is now an online petition in support of public access to publicly funded research in the United States. The text of the petition is short:

We, the undersigned, believe that broad dissemination of research results is fundamental to the advancement of knowledge. For America’s …

A few months back I referred to a project that used video to present information about accessibility needs in the classroom. That article was about how difficult it is to create markup for embedded video that is universally accessible and valid HTML. Late last month the larger project that used …

This is a summary of a presentation by James L. Hilton, Vice President and CIO of University of Virginia, at the opening keynote session of Open Repositories 2007. I tried to capture the esessence of his presentation, and omissions, contradictions, and inaccuracies in this summary are likely mine and not …

Join George Siemens — a leading theorist on the implications of technology and societal trends on learning and knowledge — to examine how changing learner expectations impact educators, institutions and the process of learning. Siemens will present the opening keynote address, Connectivism: Content, Connections, Conversation, on Monday, March 5, 9:45-10:45 …