Is Open Access to Information Through Libraries on the Agenda at the African Union When It Comes to Assessing Countries’ Development under the African Peer Review Mechanisms? :
“Is the issue of Open Access to information through libraries part of business for the African Union (AU) when it comes to assessing countries’ performance under the African Peer Review Mechanisms (APRM)? Whereas the scope of this review is limited as on record it focuses on three areas, namely politics, economics and good governance, in fact individual countries are free to incorporate relevant cross-cutting issues, such as HIV/AIDS, gender, or information access. The paper indicates that although technically speaking the matter of Open Access might in some regions be more of a librarians’ preoccupation, they should not remain indifferent but rather seize the opportunity to influence others, such as researchers and political leaders, on the relevance of Open Access in the business of the APRM. A brief is given on the prevailing situation in Africa, as well as relevant factors to be addressed, as positively and/or negatively affecting how Open Access becomes part of the APRM
processes.”
URL : http://www.ifla.org/files/hq/papers/ifla76/146-chadzingwa-en.pdf
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‘Open Access, Copyright and Freedom of E…
‘Open Access, Copyright and Freedom of Expression’ – Panel Discussion :
“As part of the 2010 Summer School on Law, Language and Culture, Fiona Macmillian (Birkbeck School of Law), Stina Teilmann (Danish Design School) and Boris Turovskiy (Pirate Party) took part in a panel discussion on ‘Open Access, Copyright and Freedom of Expression’ at the Lagerhalle Osnabrück.The dicussion was moderated by Peter Schneck (Osnabrück University)”
URL : http://www.blogs.uni-osnabrueck.de/americanstudies/2010/08/19/open-access-copyright-and-freedom-of-expression-panel-discussion/
The Book of MPub : “The Book of MPub cu…
The Book of MPub :
“The Book of MPub curates research and critical thinking from students in the Master of Publishing program at Simon Fraser University. In doing so, it makes a contribution to a collective discourse on innovative technologies in publishing—epublishing, new business models, and crowd sourcing and social media. The Book of MPub furthers discussion in three formats: blog, ebook and the classic, ever-evocative print form. The experimental process is itself research, and both documentation of the insights gained and the final product are comprehensive resources for the publishing industry at large.”
URL : http://www.lulu.com/product/file-download/the-book-of-mpub/12041531
Understanding the Information Requiremen…
Understanding the Information Requirements of Arts and Humanities Scholarship :
“This paper reports on research of scholarly research practices and requirements conducted in the context of the Preparing DARIAH European e-Infrastructures project, with a view to ensuring current and future fitness for purpose of the planned digital infrastructure, services and tools. It summarises the findings of earlier research, primarily from the field of human information behaviour as applied in scholarly work, it presents a conceptual perspective informed by cultural-historical activity theory, it introduces briefly a formal conceptual model for scholarly research activity compliant with CIDOC CRM, it describes the plan of work and methodology of an empirical research project based on open-questionnaire interviews with arts and humanities researchers, and presents illustrative examples of segmentation, tagging and initial conceptual analysis of the empirical evidence. Finally, it presents plans for future work, consisting, firstly, of a comprehensive re-analysis of interview segments within the framework of the scholarly research activity model, and, secondly, of the integration of this analysis with the extended digital curation process model we presented in earlier work.”
URL : http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/144
Towards Interoperable Preservation Repos…
Towards Interoperable Preservation Repositories: TIPR:
“Towards Interoperable Preservation Repositories (TIPR) is a project funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services to create and test a Repository eXchange Package (RXP). The package will make it possible to transfer complex digital objects between dissimilar preservation repositories. For reasons of redundancy, succession planning and software migration, repositories must be able to exchange copies of archival information packages with each other. Every different repository application, however, describes and structures its archival packages differently. Therefore each system produces dissemination packages that are rarely understandable or usable as submission packages by other repositories. The RXP is an answer to that mismatch. Other solutions for transferring packages between repositories focus either on transfers between repositories of the same type, such as DSpace-to-DSpace transfers, or on processes that rely on central translation services. Rather than build translators between many dissimilar repository types, the TIPR project has defined a standards-based package of metadata files that can act as an intermediary information package, the RXP, a lingua franca all repositories can read and write.”
URL : http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/145
Pushing Libraries and Archives to the Ed…
Pushing Libraries and Archives to the Edge of the Law :
“The ability to digitize hard copies, the proliferation of born digital content, and access to online distribution holds the promise of improved access to archival materials. Despite these advances, libraries and archives are increasingly hindered in providing this access by the legal issues surrounding their collections. However, this unfortunate problem can be resolved with a mixture of good policy, careful action, clarification of uncertain legal implications, and a reliance on the protections afforded to libraries and archives by the law.
This paper explores the legal issues faced by archivists and librarians in digitizing and distributing their materials. Through a discussion of current archiving practices, this paper walks readers though the relevant sections of the copyright act, as well as other implicated areas of the law. By showing potential sites of legal conflict, engaging difficulties with seeking permission to use library and archival content, and suggesting areas where archivists can push the boundaries of their rights more aggressively, this paper provides a glimpse of the legal landscape surrounding digital archiving, and offers suggestions on how to successfully navigate it. It is my sincere hope that this effort can empower librarians and archivists to make full use of their collections, to assert the full scope of their rights under the law, and to become advocates helping to shape the national discussion over the future of digital collections.”
URL : http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1659853
Why Intellectual Property Rights in Trad…
Why Intellectual Property Rights in Traditional Knowledge Cannot Contribute to Sustainable Development :
“This paper makes a simple point: If sustainability (however defined) is the goal, intellectual property rights in traditional knowledge do not move us toward the achievement of that goal. The reason is that the only social policy justification for recognizing intellectual property rights at all is that they supposedly serve as an incentive to create socially desirable works of authorship and inventions. They are not and should serve as a reward for past achievements. In other words, outside of their usual incentive function of promoting new technology, intellectual property rights in traditional knowledge have no role to play in the sustainability analysis. This is not to say that traditional knowledge is irrelevant to sustainability; indeed, there is good reason to believe that much can be learned from study and implementation of traditional practices in a wide range of fields. Nor is it to say that intellectual property rights in general play no role in advancing the goal of sustainability. The incentives supplied by intellectual property rights to authors and inventors may help induce new technologies and methods for preserving what is left of the natural state of the planet and its ecosystems. The point is only that intellectual property rights in traditional knowledge can do no good (in promoting sustainability) and may do much harm, by tying up knowledge in exclusive rights that inhibit its application to sustainability (or anything else) without any compensating social gains.”
URL : http://works.bepress.com/dennis_karjala/5/