Karen Schneider and others have launched a NLW campaign to assist the imprisoned Cuban dissidents. This is one of the first approaches to this issue that I have seen that focuses on the plight of the prisoners themselves and doesn’t make their librarianness [or lack thereof] the central issue. You can work on this project and not have to listen to a lot of polemic vitriol against ALA, you can just help. If you want to work for reform within the US Government and the Helms-Burton Act, this may not be for you. Check out their Freadom Project. Nice going, team.
Category: access
why open access is good for libraries
The Open Access glossary page leads to all sorts of wonderful other pages including this one: “The (Refereed) Literature-Liberation Movement” with a longer article linked at the bottom “For Whom the Gate Tolls? How and Why to Free the Refereed Research Literature
Online Through Author/Institution Self-Archiving, Now” The implications for libraries and librarians are obvious. Can anyone say “serials crisis”?
Online Through Author/Institution Self-Archiving, Now” The implications for libraries and librarians are obvious. Can anyone say “serials crisis”?
an old chestnut from Bruce Sterling
Speaking of free-as-knowledge [nod to Melvil Dewey], here is an old speech by Bruce Sterling about the intersection of money and the public good, and the benefits of Deep Archiving, when he spoke to LITA in 1992.
People talk a lot about the power and glory of specialized knowledge and technical expertise. Knowledge is power — but if so, why aren’t knowledgeable people in power? And it’s true there’s a Library of Congress. But how many librarians are there in Congress?
wi-fi in C@L
If you are in Seattle for PLA [and I am jealous I cannot be with you] and looking for WiFi, read this from technobiblio outlining your options.
mickey mousing the whole damned world – copyright in australia
Oh hey, while you were watching the debates, the US and Australia were entering into a free trade agreement. What does this mean for libraries? Australians suddenly need to shell out a whole bunch more money [generally to businesses and media companies] to use intellectual property that was previously in the public domain.
“Dr Rimmer described the changes as a victory for corporate America over Australia’s public interest, and contradicted the Intellectual Property Review Committee’s recent finding there was no evidence to support a copyright extension. He said Project Guttenberg Australia, an online respository of public domain works, was likely to be among the first to suffer.”