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FOS Newsletter, 3/4/02
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Peter Suber
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Mar 04, 2002 08:50 PST
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Welcome to the Free Online Scholarship (FOS) Newsletter
March 4, 2002
More on the Budapest Open Access Initiative
University of Southampton press release on BOAI
http://www.soton.ac.uk/~pubaffrs/02022.htm
BioMed Central press release on BOAI
http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/pr-releases.asp?pr=20020214
SPARC and SPARC Europe press release on BOAI
http://www.arl.org/sparc/core/index.asp?page=f52
ARL press release on BOAI
http://www.arl.org/scomm/boai.html
("Open access as defined by the BOAI is a laudable goal in sync with the
aims of ARL. The BOAI states that those works that 'scholars give to the
world without expectation of payment' should be freely accessible online
without cost to the user. ARL is committed to working with scholarly
publishers interested in experimenting with new funding models to develop a
realistic assessment of the economic impact of open access. The Association
believes an environment that better reflects the values of the research and
educational communities could have the benefit of restoring to the academic
community the control of its own intellectual property while reducing
costs. It would demonstrate to policy makers and legislators the economic
and intellectual vitality of a system that more fully balances societal
good with economic interests.")
Stephen Strauss, Napster for scientists? (For the _Globe and Mail_)
http://makeashorterlink.com/?S22820B7
Stevan Harnad's correction of errors in this article
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1905.html
Stevan Harnad's reply to the ALPSP criticism of the BOAI
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1860.html
My editorial for Cortex, which includes some discussion of BOAI
http://www.topica.com/lists/fos-forum/read/message.html?mid=903623859&sort=d&start=105
* The Budapest Open Access Initiative
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/
(Sign it, persuade your institution to sign it, take steps to implement it,
and spread the word.)
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The eJournals Delivery Service
The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) and the
Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) have launched the eJournals Delivery
Service (eJDS). Unlike other programs to delivery scientific ejournals to
developing countries, this one doesn't depend on local internet
connectivity. In regions where insufficient money or bandwidth mean that
scientists have email but not full internet connections, the eJDS will
deliver free copies of requested articles by email. eJDS allows
participating researchers to search the net and follow hyperlinks all by
email, by clicking on links in email attachments displayed in their
browsers. Document delivery depends on whether the ICTP has a subscription
to the relevant journal. Users can request a maximum of 3 articles per
day, 12 per week, and 100 per year, to avoid overburdening the system. If
publishers want to put limits on ICTP's freedom to copy and distribute
their articles, ICTP will honor them.
The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics is named for
the Pakistani Nobel laureate in physics (1979), located in Trieste, Italy,
supported by UNESCO and IAEA, and devoted to advancing research in
developing countries.
The eJournals Delivery Service
http://www.ictp.trieste.it/ejournals/
(Thanks to Ann Okerson.)
User's manual
http://www.ictp.trieste.it/ejournals/manual/manual_toc.html
(If you want to see how eJDS simulates an internet experience through email
alone.)
ICTP and TWAS also coordinate a well-established Donation Programme to
channel donated books, print journals, and equipment to needy institutions.
http://www.ictp.trieste.it/~donation/
The Abdus Salam ICTP
http://www.ictp.trieste.it/
The Third World Academy of Sciences
http://www.twas.org
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Timeline of the FOS Movement
Since I launched it last week, my timeline has greatly improved, thanks to
suggestions and details from Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Stevan Harnad, Thomas
Krichel.
Here are some questions that will help me improve it further.
--When did Medline become free?
--When did Perseus move from CD's to the web?
--When was NCSTRL laid down before it was relaunched in 2001?
--Are there important FOS "firsts" not already on the timeline? Are there
other landmarks in the evolution of FOS not already on the timeline?
Timeline of the FOS Movement
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm
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The SSSCA
The Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA) is the radical
extension to the DMCA that would require all computers to contain
government-approved, hardware-level security devices. It would prohibit
any attempt to bypass or remove these security devices, build a new
computer without one, or log into the internet without a "secured" (or
crippled) computer. It would punish violators with up to five years in
prison and fines over half a million dollars (see FOSN for 9/14/01, 10/5/01).
The content industry, led by Disney, loves the SSSCA because it will
provide hardware support for copy protection. The computer industry, led
by Intel, hates it because it would let lawmakers dictate how to build
computers. It would also hobble universal Turing machines in order to make
them safe for copyrighted entertainment, a preposterous trade-off. In
general, democrats side with the content industry and republicans side with
the computer industry.
On February 28, Senator Fritz Hollings held the first public hearing on the
SSSCA. Hollings drafted the bill but has not yet introduced it. Early in
the hearing he made his position perfectly clear. If Congress doesn't pass
the SSSCA, he argued, it will "essentially sanction the Internet as a haven
for thievery".
In his testimony, Disney CEO Michael Eisner argued that the computer
industry opposes the bill only because it profits from piracy.
Eisner also turned from the senators to engage fellow witness, Leslie
Vadasz, Executive VP of Intel. Eisner got Vadasz to admit that there is no
technology that can protect content once it is stolen and placed
unprotected on the internet. What's disturbing is that Eisner and Hollings
apparently believe this justifies the SSSCA.
Official transcripts of the witnesses
http://commerce.senate.gov/hearings/hearings.htm
Dan Gilmour, Intel backs consumers over Hollywood
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/2764054.htm
("Neutering PCs is only part of Hollywood's plan. Its goals would
inevitably turn the Internet into a variation on pay-TV.")
Declan McCullagh, Content Spat Split on Party Lines
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,50754,00.html
Amy Harmon, Hearings On Digital Movies and Piracy
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/01/technology/01DIGI.html
David McGuire, Entertainment, Tech Execs Square Off Over Piracy
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/174859.html
Gretchen Hyman, Disney Fights 'Digital Piracy' Before Senate
http://siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article/0,,3531_983191,00.html
Jack Valenti's pre-hearing public letter, complaining that "the movie
industry is under siege from a small community of professors" and can't
make money without the SSSCA.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62085-2002Feb24.html
Letter of opposition to SSSCA by IBM, Microsoft, Motorola, Intel and others
(February 27, 2002)
http://216.110.42.179/docs/sssca.opponents.letter.022702.html
Letter of opposition to SSSCA by the ACM (September 26, 2001)
http://www.acm.org/usacm/SSSCA-letter.html
Many of the critical companies have banded together to form the Computer
Systems Policy Project
http://www.cspp.org/
Working draft of the SSSCA (August 6, 2001)
http://cryptome.org/sssca.htm
Anti-SSSCA petition
http://www.petitiononline.com/SSSCA/petition.html
StopPoliceware.org (anti-SSSCA site)
http://www.stoppoliceware.com/rip_mix_burn_jail.php
As I go to press, Declan McCullagh and Robert Zarate report in _Wired News_
that the House of Representatives is skeptical of the SSSCA and would
probably kill it even if the Senate passes it.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,50784,00.html
* Postscript. Congressional deference to publishers at the expense of
readers, and the elevation of one legitimate interest over all legitimate
interests in conflict with it, was already extreme in the DMCA and has
reached truly psychotic proportions in the SSSCA. In the DMCA readers lost
their fair-use rights, purchasers lost their back-up rights, and libraries
lost their lending rights. With the SSSCA, computers will lose their
universality and become jukeboxes with built-in calculators. Congress has
already upset the constitutionally-mandated balance of interests within
copyright law, and now threatens to put entertainment ahead of every other
use of the power of computation.
The hearing makes pretty clear that Hollings is less interested in passing
the SSSCA than using it in order to terrorize the computer industry into
negotiating a private-sector solution with the content industry. But this
is not very reassuring. Congress likes to call these solutions "voluntary"
because they make legislation unnecessary. But of course any changes
brought about by the threat of the SSSCA are about as voluntary as money
transfers brought about by the threat of stabbing.
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The USA PATRIOT Act
The USA PATRIOT Act has been on the books since October 2001, but for some
reason there has been a recent spike of commentary on it, especially on its
implications for libraries and scholarship. Here's a sampling.
In the March issue of _American Libraries_, Karen Schneider calls the
Patriot Act the "last refuge of a scoundrel", quoting Samuel Johnson's
definition of patriotism. Actually, she has stronger words for
it: "treason pure and simple". Because the act authorizes the FBI to
demand any kind of records, including library borrowing records, Schneider
recommends that libraries identify their sensitive records and decide what
to do with them: "if you want sign-up sheets shredded every day, [then
make sure that] that is in fact what happens. When the court order comes,
it is too late to 'pull an Enron' and rush to the shredder". True
patriots, she argues, protect the constitution and the people they serve.
http://www.ala.org/alonline/netlib/il302.html
(Thanks to Walt Crawford.)
In New York City on March 5-6, _Scientific American_ will host an
international conference on how the war on terror has affected privacy and
security.
http://www.globalprivacysummit.net/
In the March 1 _Chronicle of Higher Education_, Scott Carlson and Andrea
Foster report that colleges worry that complying the act will turn them
into spies on their own students and faculty. "Opening student computer
files without their permission. Reporting on the library books checked out
by a graduate student. Collecting data on who on campus is sending e-mail
to whom. To many college technology and library officials, these sound
like invasions of privacy that are antithetical to the traditions of
academe. But these are the sorts of actions that a new law may well permit
or in some cases require." Quoting Peter Swire, law professor at Ohio
State University: "Universities uphold the importance of free inquiry, and
we don't want to chill that inquiry by having researchers and students
think that their every move is being tracked by the government."
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v48/i25/25a03101.htm
(Accessible only to CHE subscribers.)
The _Chronicle_ also sponsored a colloquy (online discussion) on how
institutions should comply with the act (starting February 27).
http://chronicle.com/colloquylive/2002/02/patriot/chat.php3
In a February 28 speech at Vanderbilt, Nadine Strossen, head of the ACLU,
said that the PATRIOT Act threatens the privacy and freedom of all
Americans, not just those suspected of committing terrorist acts. She
accuses Congress of being "being supine and not even taking the trouble to
read this behemoth law before they passed it".
http://makeashorterlink.com/?N24A61A7
(Thanks to Freedom News Daily.)
In the February 15 _LLRX_, Mary Minow predicts "that there will be a great
many more surveillance orders, everywhere in the country, and in turn there
will be more requests for library records, including Internet use
records." It's also possible that the FBI will want to place its
eavesdropping software, Carnivore (aka DCS1000), on library servers.
http://www.llrx.com/features/usapatriotact.htm
In a couple of recent columns, Nat Hentoff reviews the damaging effects of
the Patriot Act on libraries and booksellers, and the privacy of their
patrons. From the third of these columns: "This, mind you, is part of a
law in the United States of America, not the People's Republic of China."
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0209/hentoff.php
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0208/hentoff.php
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20020225-88465531.htm
* Postscript. Why all this commentary now? I'm not sure. There hasn't
been a notable incident to set it off. One possibility is that while the
legislation was adopted in the heat of passion following September 11,
cooler heads are starting to speak. Even if some were willing to call it
"treason pure and simple" the day it was adopted, editors are now more
likely to let the statement stand. Americans who find the act justified
are now more willing to admit that at least it is controversial and that in
America critics and dissenters may still speak their minds (John Ashcroft
is a notable exception).
* PPS. The USA PATRIOT Act is capitalized not from patriotism but because
it is an acronym --for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing
Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.
Text of the USA PATRIOT Act
http://makeashorterlink.com/?J19022C7
EFF summary of its major provisions
http://makeashorterlink.com/?N33052F1
* PPPS. The constitution is harder to amend than legislation precisely so
that it will check episodes of legislative hysteria. Hope lies a
courageous plaintiff willing to go to court, and a few courageous federal
judges willing to live up to their oath.
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More on deleting scientific information from the web
Like the recent surge of PATRIOT criticism, there has been a recent spate
of stories on governments deleting information from the internet to keep it
from terrorists, even though this has been happening continuously since
September 11. (See FOSN for 10/5/01, 10/12/01.)
February 27 _New York Times_, deletions by the federal government
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/27/politics/27INFO.html
February 26 _New York Times_, deletions by New York State
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/26/nyregion/26ALBA.html
February 24, _Washington Post_, deletions by the federal government
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58430-2002Feb23.html
(The article in this set most closely focusing on scientific
information. Quoting Michael Levi, who leads the effort to purge sensitive
information from the one million pages hosted by the Federation of American
Scientists: "We often err quite strongly on the side of caution." The
Energy Department ran a search across its online scientific documents, and
removed 9,000 containing keywords like "nuclear" or "chemical
storage". Staffers are looking through the 9,000 and putting back those
found to be harmless.)
February 14, _Chronicle of Higher Education_, removing CDs from Federal
Depository Libraries
http://chronicle.com/free/2002/02/2002021401t.htm
_Information Today_ poll on the subject
http://www.infotoday.com/
(Top of the page; not likely to last much longer.)
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Developments
* CalTech already maintains a number of OAI-compliant archives. It is now
willing to set up a new one for any research unit at the university willing
to sign the Author Permission Agreement and willing to agree that the
archives are archival and that no papers entered will be removed.
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1883.html
* Hussein Suleman and Edward Fox have launched the Open Digital Libraries
project (see FOSN for 12/19/01). For this purpose, an "open digital
library" is a network of OAI-compliant archives. The archives share
content and services through the OAI interface. Users can create and plug
in modules for additional power. The project already has modules for
harvesting, aggregating, and searching. This new power requires extending
the OAI standard slightly, but the extension is separable from the original
standard.
http://oai.dlib.vt.edu/odl/
* The University of Michigan has launched the OAIster Project. The project
uses the OAI metadata harvesting protocol to reach content residing in the
deep or invisible internet and make it visible (readable, searchable). It
will also use Michigan's DLXS middleware to index the newly visible
resources to make them easier to find and retrieve. The project will
apparently work with any deep internet content except that which is
protected by password. OAIster is funded by a grant from the Mellon
Foundation.
OAIster home page
http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/
DLXS home page
http://www.dlxs.org/aboutdlxs.html
* Resource, the Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries, is developing
Cornucopia, a portal to the UK's free online museum collections. The site
is in beta, and Resource welcomes your comments.
http://www.cornucopia.org.uk
(Thanks to Managing Information Newsletter.)
* A Java Specification Request dated February 26, 2002, proposes a standard
API for content repositories to interact with applications that operate on
their content. (PS: This need isn't met by OAI, since many kinds of data
can't be well-captured by the Dublin Core at the heart of the OAI
standard. However, if work starts on a new standard, let's make sure that
it subsumes OAI.)
http://makeashorterlink.com/?Z2771277
* The World Health Organization (WHO) has become an institutional member of
BioMed Central (BMC). This allows WHO researchers with accepted articles
to avoid the processing fees that BMC charges other authors in order to
cover the costs of dissemination and make access free for readers. Because
WHO is an important friend of FOS and producer of research, this is an
important endorsement of the BMC business model.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/inst/who.asp
* Dialog, the large commercial database of scholarly journals, now offers
free searching of its unfree texts. Users running free searches get a hit
list of article titles, but not full citations (not authors, journal
titles, or dates). If they register a credit card with Dialog, they can
purchase access to full-text directly from the hit list. Dialog
misleadingly calls this service "open access". (PS: This may be Dialog's
attempt to catch up with Elsevier, which offers free searching of its
unfree texts through Scirus. But the Scirus hit list gives usefully
complete bibliographic citations --everything but page numbers.)
http://products.dialog.com/products/dialogselect/
(Thanks to Gary Price's VASND.)
* The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) and the National Library of
Australia (NLA) are collaborating on several digital preservation
projects. One is to create an online digest of news on digital
preservation with an annual evaluation of the year's developments.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?L6BD2197
* Emerald has launched a new current awareness service. Users, including
non-subscribers, can search Emerald full-text journals and store the
searches. Emerald will notify users by email when newly published articles
contain any of the stored search-strings.
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/rpsv/alerts/ss_index.htm
(Thanks to the Library Link Newsletter.)
* EBSCO has made its full-text articles in biomedicine available through
PubMed's LinkOut.
http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb020225-1.htm
* OCLC has named the winners of its 2002 research awards. Jane Greenberg,
"Optimizing Metadata Creation"
Lorna Peterson, "Operationalizing Barriers in Dissemination of African
Research and Scholarship"
Wonsik Shim, "Reification of Information Seeking Habits"
http://www.managinginformation.com/news/content_show_full.php?id=382
* Survivors of the Shoah is a collection of videotaped testimonies by over
50,000 eyewitnesses to the Holocaust. Presently the tapes can be viewed
only at selected museums in the U.S. and Israel, but eventually all the
tapes will be digitized and made available over the internet --not to
everyone but to "many more strategically chosen sites". A small amount of
the content is available now (select "Enhanced" from the front page). The
collection was produced by the Shoah Visual History Foundation, founded by
Steven Spielberg. The Foundation has been taping and digitizing the
interviews for eight years.
http://www.vhf.org/
(Thanks to ContentWorld.)
A related but much smaller British project, Voices of the Holocaust, is
already online for all visitors. The site contains the oral testimonies of
about a dozen British survivors.
http://www.education.bl.uk/projects/voices/main.htm
(Thanks to Gary Price's VASND.)
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New on the net
* Leiden University has created a directory of free online journals,
organized by discipline and alphabetically by title. Journal titles and
associated subject terms are searchable, and users can limit searches to
full-text journals or include those offering only TOCs and absstracts. A
separate page lists newly added journals. This isn't comprehensive
directory of FOS, but it's the closest thing I've seen so far.
http://www.library.leidenuniv.nl:8003/freejournals.htm
(Thanks to Charles Bailey's Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog.)
* _Medical Approaches_ is not only a free online medical textbook. It's a
dynamic one that promises to remain authoritative and up to
date. (PS: This is such a natural way to take advantage of the
internet. Why is it so rare? One of the earliest and most important
examples is the _Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy_. Are there other
notable examples?)
M.J. Rose on _Medical Approaches_ in Wired
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,50655,00.html
Medical Approaches
http://www.medicalapproaches.com/
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://plato.stanford.edu/
* The Text-e online seminar has moved on to the last text on its syllabus,
Umberto Eco's "Authors and Authority". It will be the subject of
discussion from February 28 to March 14. Here's how Eco encapsulates his
topic: "What is the role of the expert and of the intellectual at a time
when information is accessible to virtually everyone? Do intellectuals play
the role of a 'Web-filter'?"
http://www.text-e.org/conf/index.cfm?ConfText_ID=11
* Two Finnish universities have released Fle3, an open-source learning
environment allowing groups of students or researchers to "carry out
knowledge building dialogues, theory building and debates by storing their
thoughts into a shared database". The source code and a file of tips for
teachers are available for downloading at the site.
http://fle3.uiah.fi/
(Thanks to Educause.)
* The File Room is an archive of worldwide censorship, organized by date,
location, medium, and grounds for censorship. For each incident it gives a
concise report. The collection covers censorship from the Ancient Greeks
to the present.
http://www.thefileroom.org/FileRoom/documents/CategoryHomePage.html
(Thanks to Phil Agre's Red Rock Eater.)
* If you're planning to give a public talk about how copyright law is
harming libraries and scholarship, you'll appreciate Russell McOrmand's
notes on the questions you're likely to face and suggestions on how to
answer. For example, are you a socialist? McOrmand has also posted the
slides he uses in his public talks.
http://weblog.flora.ca/article.php3?story_id=114
(Thanks to LIS News.)
* Ephemera ("Critical Dialogues on Organization") is a new free online
peer-reviewed journal.
http://www.ephemeraweb.org/
* Thomas Krichel has created a mirror of the FOS Newsletter home
page. Thanks, Thomas.
http://fos.openlib.org/
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Share your thoughts
* The College Art Association (CAA) would like to file an amicus brief
supporting Eric Eldred's Supreme Court case against the Bono Copyright
Extension Act (FOSN for 4/24/01, 2/25/02). To prepare its brief, the CAA
requests the help of teachers, scholars, and curators. You needn't have
legal expertise. If you can show that extending copyrights for an
additional 20 years, and the corresponding shrinkage of the public domain,
will harm your work, your profession, or those you serve, the CAA would
like to hear from you. The deadline is March 28.
http://www.studiolo.org/CIP/AmicusLetterEldredCAA.htm
(Thanks to Ellen Fernandez.)
* The NSF is soliciting applications for "projects that demonstrate how
modern information and communications technologies can fundamentally change
the way in which topical material is represented and delivered to diverse
communities of users." Applicants should send an optional letter of intent
by April 27 and their full application by May 27.
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2002/nsf02085/nsf02085.html
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In other publications
* In the March 8 _Chronicle of Higher Education_, Deanna Marcum and Anne
Kenney argue that one solution to the preservation of books printed on
acidic paper is to digitize rather than microfilm them. After
digitization, the works could be made accessible "universally" (I assume
this means free of charge) on the web. Three problems face this
strategy: first, find good ways to keep the digital copies readable over
the long term; second, coordinate libraries so that they don't duplicate
labor that only has to be performed once; and third, find external funds to
cover their costs.
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v48/i26/26b02001.htm
(Accessible only CHE subscribers.)
* In the March 4 _Los Angeles Times_, Jonathan Tasini, the plaintiff in the
landmark Supreme Court on digital rights, has an op-ed piece supporting
Eric Eldred's suit to overturn the Bono Copyright Extension Act. "Rather
than carry the water for an industry bent on impoverishing us in this
lifetime and reaping the benefits long after we are gone, creators should
embrace the principle that human knowledge advances when information is
shared, that cultural expression belongs to the public and that the
intellectual wealth of a nation, in the form of ideas and information,
cannot --and should not-- be locked up as the property of a few."
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-000015874mar03.story
(Thanks to BNA's Internet Law News.)
* In the March/April _Technology Source_, Steven Gilbert interviews Phil
Long about MIT's Open Knowledge and Open Courseware initiatives.
http://ts.mivu.org/default.asp?show=article&id=979
* In the same issue of _Technology Source_, Laura Gasaway describes why
universities need a faculty copyright ownership policy and gives some
suggestions on how to draft or revise such a policy.
http://ts.mivu.org/default.asp?show=article&id=982
* In the March/April of _CLIR Issues_, Daniel Greenstein argues that
digital libraries should be tested by their support for scholarship. One
way for research libraries to provide this support is to create free online
archives and other channels for presenting the results of research. "One
immediate question is whether digital libraries are adequately connected to
their scholarly communities to sustain these new and laudable
objectives." (Greenstein, who was formerly the Director of the Digital
Library Federation, was recently appointed the Executive Director of the
California Digital Library.)
http://www.clir.org/pubs/issues/issues26.html#connecting
* In the same issue of _CLIR Issues_, Deanna Marcum describes the January
31 meeting of the CLIR and AAP Working Group created to address issues
common to libraries and publishers (see FOSN for 1/16/02). Librarians and
publishers tend to have conflicting interests --for example, open access v.
restricted access. But at the meeting they outlined nine issues on which
they should discuss the possibility of collaboration and joint action. One
was digital archiving. Another was economic models for maintaining digital
archives.
http://www.clir.org/pubs/issues/issues26.html#joint
* In the February 28 _Guardian_, Stuart Millar reports on the launch of the
Digital Preservation Coalition in a ceremony at the House of Commons. One
of his anecdotes serves nicely as a parable to explain the need for the DPC
and similar initiatives: "To mark the 900th anniversary of the Domesday
Book in 1986, the BBC launched an ambitious project to capture information
on the modern UK, storing contributions from researchers and thousands of
schoolchildren on two hi-tech 12in laser discs. The original Domesday Book
can still be read, but the information on the 17-year-old discs is now
almost unreadable because the technology to access them is obsolete."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4364669,00.html
* In the February 28 _Business Week_, Heather Green reports that copyright
law is hindering Brewster Kahle's plan to create a free archive of the
entire internet. Quoting Lawrence Lessig: "[Kahle] has the technology, he
has the money, and he has the business plan. All he needs is the
permission of the lawyers, and he won't get it."
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2002/tc20020228_1080.htm
(Thanks to LIS News.)
* On February 26, DigiCULT put online its recommendations on how European
cultural heritage institutions can "unlock the value of their collections"
by moving online. "The conversion of all sorts of cultural contents into
bits and bytes opens up a completely new dimension of reaching traditional
and new audiences by providing access to cultural heritage resources in
ways unimaginable a decade ago."
http://www.salzburgresearch.at/fbi/digicult/
* In a February 26 story in _Wired News_, Brad King describes two new WIPO
treaties to take effect over the coming months. They change the worldwide
copyright rules for software, movies, and music. Most of King's article is
on the US DMCA, which was implemented in order to satisfy the terms of an
earlier WIPO treaty, but which went well beyond the requirements of the treaty.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,50658,00.html
* An anonymous February 24 _Reuters_ article describes John Perry Barlow's
take on recent copyright developments.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/2739160.htm
* In the February 21 _Writ_, Julie Hilden argues that subpoenas for a
bookstore's records to see who bought what violate the First Amendment and
should not be enforced.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hilden/20020221.html
(Thanks to LIS News.)
* In the February 21 _Guardian_, Hamish Visit interviews Brewster Kahle,
creator of the Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4359816,00.html
(Thanks to NewsAgent.)
* In the February 15 _CNet_, Eliot Van Buskirk describes Lawrence Lessig's
plan for the Creative Commons. He focuses on music rather than other
digital content, but still gives more detail relevant to FOS than we got
from the first wave of stories on the Creative Commons.
http://music.cnet.com/music/0-1652424-8-8813258-1.html
* The February issue of _CLIRinghouse_ contains an anonymous exploring ways
to help students find useful digital scholarship. The problem is that four
out of five college freshmen turn to mainstream search engines when they
have to find scholarship or information for an assignment. These search
engines usually miss the most useful resources in the invisible web, on
which colleges spend so much money in licensing fees and on which scholars
spend so much time in peer review. The Mellon Foundation is funding some
experiments whose general approach is to make database content more visible
rather than to train freshmen to look beyond Google. Some of the
experiments have the encouragement and assistance of the Digital Library
Federation.
http://www.clir.org/pubs/cliringhouse/house06.html
* The February issue of _RLG Focus_ contains several FOS-related articles.
http://www.rlg.org/r-focus/i54.html
Stephen Prowse, "CURL Establishes Interlending Network with SHARES"
http://www.rlg.org/r-focus/i54.html#curl
David Larsen, "Why the University of Chicago Uses Ariel 3.01 for Electronic
Document Delivery
http://www.rlg.org/r-focus/i54.html#why
Ricky Erway, "Discover the Riches within RLG Cultural Materials"
http://www.rlg.org/r-focus/i54.html#discover
Tony Gill, "Seeking International Synergies for Digital Content Creation"
http://www.rlg.org/r-focus/i54.html#seeking
* The February issue o the _INASP Newsletter_ contains several FOS-related
stories.
http://www.inasp.org.uk/newslet/feb02.html
Jacinta Were, "PERI, expected impact in Africa"
http://www.inasp.org.uk/newslet/feb02.html#2
Alfred Martey, "PERI in Ghana"
http://www.inasp.org.uk/newslet/feb02.html#3
Michel Menou, "The 'holy' quest for impact"
http://www.inasp.org.uk/newslet/feb02.html#4
* The February issue of the _Librarian's eBook Newsletter_, contains two
stories of interest to FOSN readers.
Anon., Why libraries have turned from netLibrary and Questia to ebrary.
http://www.lib.rochester.edu/main/ebooks/newsletter2-3/ebrary.htm
Anon., Recent articles about ebooks
http://www.lib.rochester.edu/main/ebooks/newsletter2-3/article.htm
* In a February paper posted to the _National Library of Australia_, David
Toll describes Australia's ambitious plan to create seamless online access
to the nation's "documentary information". For some content access would
be free, while for other content it would be priced but affordable.
http://www.nla.gov.au/nla/staffpaper/2002/toll1.html
(Thanks to Gary Price's VASND.)
* In the January/February issue of _The American Spectator_, Lawrence
Lessig excerpts his new book, _The Future of Ideas_. I recommend the book
strongly, but if you don't have time for it, or if you need a test run,
then I recommend these excerpts.
http://gilder.com/AmericanSpectatorArticles/Lessig/ControlPrint.htm
(Thanks to C-FIT.)
* The January/February issue of _eCulture_ is now available. It contains
short reports on many of the EU's IST digital programs, and longer stories
on digitization cooperation in Europe, the DigiCULT study (see above at
February 26). Separate stories don't have separate URLs.
http://www.cordis.lu/ist/ka3/digicult/en/newsletter.html
* The January issue of _ERCIM News_ is devoted to e-government. In
addition to the e-government pieces, there are the following FOS-related
articles on other topics.
http://www.ercim.org/publication/Ercim_News/enw48/
Donatella Castelli, "Open Archives Forum"
http://www.ercim.org/publication/Ercim_News/enw48/castelli.html
Ingeborg Solvberg, "European Conference on Digital Libraries 2001"
http://www.ercim.org/publication/Ercim_News/enw48/ecdl2001.html
Matthias Hemmje and Umeshwar Dayal, "Third DELOS Workshop on
Interoperability and Mediation in Heterogeneous Digital Libraries"
http://www.ercim.org/publication/Ercim_News/enw48/hemmje.html
Hachim Haddouti, "International Mediterranean Workshop on Digital Libraries"
http://www.ercim.org/publication/Ercim_News/enw48/haddouti.html
* Andreas Aschenbrenner's Diploma Thesis (December 2001) is now
online: Long-Term Preservation of Digital Material: Building an Archive
to Preserve Digital Cultural Heritage from the Internet.
http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/~aola/publications/thesis-ando/
----------
Following up
* France wants to try the former CEO of Yahoo for condoning war crimes by
allowing the auction of Nazi memorabilia on Yahoo. For background on the
France-Yahoo conflict, and an explanation of why it's relevant to FOS, see
FOSN for 11/9/01, 11/16/01.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-845821.html
http://makeashorterlink.com/?O3E21187
----------
Catching up (old news I should have discovered earlier)
* Lars Aronsson maintains Project Runeberg, a free online archive of Nordic
literature and art on the internet since 1992.
http://www.lysator.liu.se/runeberg/
----------
Conferences
If you plan to attend one of the following conferences, please share your
observations with us through our discussion forum.
* International Spring School on the Digital Library and E-publishing for
Science and Technology
http://cwis.kub.nl/~ticer/spring02/index.htm
Geneva, March 3-8
* CURL ePrints Workshop
http://www.lib.gla.ac.uk/News/eprintsworkshop.shtml
Glasgow, March 4
* Search Engine Strategies
http://seminars.internet.com/sew/spring02/index.html
Boston, March 4-5
* Preserving an Open Society in an Age of Terrorism (hosted by _Scientific
American_)
http://www.globalprivacysummit.net/
New York, March 5-6
* Redefining [Digital] Preservation (ARL and the University of Michigan)
http://www.lib.umich.edu/conferences/preservation/
Ann Arbor, Michigan, March 7-8
* Towards an Information Society for All
http://www.britishcouncil.de/e/infoexch/berlin.htm
Berlin, March 8-9
* Knowledge Technologies Conference 2002
http://www.knowledgetechnologies.net/
Seattle, March 10-13
* 17th ACM Symposium on Applied Computing. Special tracks on Database and
Digital Library Technologies; Electronic Books for Teaching and Learning;
and Information Access and Retrieval
http://www.acm.org/conferences/sac/sac2002/Tracks.htm
Madrid, March 10-14
* Digitization for Cultural Heritage Professionals: An Intensive Program
http://www.ils.unc.edu/DCHP/
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, March 10-15
* EUSDIC Spring Meeting. E-Content: Divide or Rule
http://www.eusidic.org/Paris2002Spring%20Meeting.htm
Paris, March 11-12
* Open Publish 2001
http://www.open-publish.com/openpublish/
Seattle, March 11-14
* ARL Workshop on Interactive Publishing of Data on the Web
http://dl.lib.brown.edu/arl/index.html
Charlottesville, Virginia, March 11-15
* Computers in Libraries 2002
http://www.infotoday.com/cil2002/default.htm
Washington D.C., March 13-15
* International Conference on the Statistical Analysis of Textual Data
http://www.irisa.fr/manifestations/2002/JADT/welcome.htm
St. Malo, March 13-15
* The Electronic Publishers Coalition (EPC) conference on ebooks and
epublishing (obscurely titled, Electronically Published Internet
Connection, or EPIC)
http://www.epccentral.org/epic.html
Seattle, March 14-16
* Licensing and Digital Content: A Symposium
http://www.nfais.org/EventDetails.asp?EventID=9
Philadelphia, March 15
* Digital Resources and International Information Exchange: East-West
http://www.iliac.org/seminar/sem1.html
March 15 (Washington DC), 18 (Flushing NY), 20 (Stamford CT)
* Internet Librarian International 2002
http://www.internet-librarian.com/index.html
London, March 18-20
* The New Information Order and the Future of the Archive
http://www.ed.ac.uk/iash/archive.conference.html
Edinburgh, March 20-23
* Institute of Mueum and Library Services. Building Digital Communities
http://webwise.mse.jhu.edu/
Baltimore, March 20-22
* Advanced Licensing Workshop
http://www.arl.org/scomm/licensing/advlic.html
Dallas, March 20-22
* Electronic Publishing Strategy
http://www.alpsp.org/tEPS220302.htm
London, March 22
* Association of Information and Dissemination Centers (ASDIC) Spring 2002
Meeting
http://www.asidic.org/s02program.html
St. Augustine, Florida, March 24-26
* OCLC Institute. Steering by Standards. (A series of satellite
videoconferences.)
http://www.oclc.org/institute/events/sbs.htm
Cyberspace. OAI, March 26. OAIS, April 19. Metadata standards in the
future, May 29.
* WebSearch University
http://www.websearchu.com/
San Francisco, March 25-26; Stamford CT, April 30 - May 1; Washington DC,
September 23-24; Chicago, Octeober 22-23; Dallas, November 19-20.
* European Colloquium on Information Retrieval Research
http://www.cs.strath.ac.uk/ECIR02/
Glasgow, March 25-27
* e-Content: Discovering and Delivering Value
http://www.informationhighways.net/conf/cindex.html
Toronto, March 25-27
* New Developments in Digital Libraries
http://www.iceis.org/workshops/nddl/nddl-cfp.htm
Ciudad Real, Spain, April 2-3
* The New Information Order and the Future of the Archive
http://www.ed.ac.uk/iash/archive.conference.html
Edinburgh, March 20-23
* Copyright Management in Higher Education: Ownership, Access and Control
http://www.umuc.edu/distance/odell/cip/copy_manage2002/
Adelphi, Maryland, April 4-5
* Global Knowledge Partnership Annual Meeting
http://makeashorterlink.com/?F21C3456
Addis Ababa, April 4-5
* International Conference on Information Technology: Coding and Computing
http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~srimani/itcc2002/cfp.html
Las Vegas, April 8-10
* NetLab and Friends: 10 Years of Digital Library Development
http://www.lub.lu.se/netlab/conf/
Lund, April 10-12
* E-Content 2002 (on ebooks)
http://litc.sbu.ac.uk/econtent/index.html
London, April 11
* Censorship and Free Access to Information in Libraries and on the Internet
http://www.db.dk/kon/temadag/Censurogytringsfrihed_eng.htm
Copenhagen, April 11
* International Learned Journals Seminar: We Can't Go On Like This: The
Future of Journals
http://www.alpsp.org/s120402.htm
London, April 12
* SIAM International Conference on Data Mining
http://www.siam.org/meetings/sdm02/
Arlington, Virginia, April 11-13
* Creating access to information: EBLIDA workshop on getting a better deal
from your information licences
http://www.eblida.org/conferences/licensing/licensing.htm
The Hague, April 12
* Licensing Electronic Resources to Libraries
http://www.arl.org/scomm/licensing/pworkshop.html
Philadelphia, April 15
* United Kingdom Serials Group Annual Conference and Exhibition
http://www.uksg.org/conference.htm
University of Warwick, April 15- 17
* Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy
http://www.cfp2002.org/
San Francisco, April 16-19
* EDUCAUSE Networking 2002
http://www.educause.edu/netatedu/events/net2002/
Washington, D.C., April 17-18
* Museums and the Web 2002
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2002/
Boston, April 17-20
* Legal Guidelines for Use of Intellectual Property in Higher Education
http://www.oneonta.edu/conference/copyright/
Oneonta, NY, April 19
* Information, Knowledges and Society: Challenges of A New Era
http://www.congreso-info.cu/venglish.htm
Havana, April 22-26
* DAI Institute on The State of Digital Preservation: An International
Perspective
http://www.clir.org/agenda-digpres.html
Washington, D.C., April 24-25
* The European Library: The Gate to Europe's Knowledge: Milestone Conference
http://www.europeanlibrary.org/
Frankfurt am Main, April 29-30
----------
The Free Online Scholarship Newsletter is supported by a grant from the
Open Society Institute.
http://www.osi.hu/infoprogram/
==========
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Peter Suber
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters
Copyright (c) 2002, Peter Suber
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