Open Access Attitudes of Computer Science Professors

My Communications of the ACM came in the main recently, and in an article about the future of scholarly publishing in computer science (in general -- and what the ACM Publications Board is thinking about doing), there was this paragraph about the attitudes of a subset of ACM members towards open …

Continue reading »

Libraries as Provisioner, Quartermaster, and Curator

Yesterday I heard Catherine Murray-Rust give a keynote at the Georgia Knowledge Repository workshop. She used the phrase, and I think I transcribed this correctly, "provisioning of knowledge" when describing the activities that institutional repositories can do. That phrase reminded me about a recent discussion on a mailing list (I …

Continue reading »

My ALA Anaheim 2012 Schedule

It is that time of year again where representatives from the library profession all gather for the annual Annual Library Association meeting. This year it is in Anaheim, California on June 21–26. And as the pace of technology continues to push libraries into new areas of content and service …

Continue reading »

Thursday Threads: Research Works Act, Amazon Kindle Give and Take, OCLC's Website for Small Libraries

I've been away from DLTJ Thursday Threads for a while, but that doesn't mean the fun hasn't stopped. This week there are stories about the beginning and the end of the Research Works Act (again, one might add), Amazon's continuing shifts in the ebook marketplace, and an announcement of beta …

Continue reading »

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

Continue reading »

Slidecast of David Lewis' "Collections Futures" Talk

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 …

Continue reading »

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

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 …

Continue reading »

Federal Research Public Access Act Reintroduced

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 …

Continue reading »

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

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 …

Continue reading »

Beyond Federated Search Redux

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 …

Continue reading »

Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship

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 …

Continue reading »

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

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 …

Continue reading »

NIH Mandatory Open Access Provision Becomes Law

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
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 …

Continue reading »

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


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 …

Continue reading »

More on Commercial Versus Not-For-Profit Open Access Publishing

DLTJ featured a discussion last month on what I saw as the outcomes of "clashing values" between the interest of businesses and that of not-for-profit higher education. The discussion started with "Educational Patents, Open Access Journals, and Clashing Values" and continued with a focus on open access publishing specifically with …

Continue reading »

What Is BioMed Central?

My posting on Friday about the clashing values of academic institutions and businesses prompted a comment from Bill Hooker about linking to his blog posting about the pricing structure at BioMed Central (BMC). His comment and the e-mail I received this morning from BMC (reproduced below) got me rethinking about …

Continue reading »

Educational Patents, Open Access Journals, and Clashing Values

This posting has two goals -- first, to introduce DLTJ readers to the notion of "Educational Patents" or "edupatents" and provide an update on events of this week. Second, to frame the sometimes contentious interaction between academic institutions and supporting businesses as one of "clashing values." The former serves as a …

Continue reading »

Article-Level OAI-PMH Harvest Available from DOAJ

Earlier this year the DOAJ began offering a new schema for registered articles that significantly improves the value of OAI-PMH harvested article content. Prior to this addition the only scheme available was Dublin Core, which as a metadata schema for describing article content is woefully inadequate. (Dublin Core, of course …

Continue reading »

Petition for Public Access to Publicly Funded Research in the U.S.

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 …

Continue reading »