Monthly Archives: February 2009

Feedback on the ongoing UNESCO’s Discussion on Access2OER

Posted on February 17, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Li’s Workblog offers feedback on the first week of UNESCO’s discussion on Access2OER. The discussion, which started on February 9, extends until February 27. Excerpt:

The first week’s discussion focuses on identifying and classifying the main barriers in accessing OER. A range of issues have been mentioned so far, including access in terms of:

  • ability and skills; (Does the end user have the right skills to access?)
  • file formats; (Are the file formats accessible?)
  • local policy / attitude; (Do attitudes or policies pose barriers to using OER?)
  • languages; (How well does the user speak the language of the OER?)
  • disability; (Does the OER meet WAI accessibility criteria?)
  • licensing; (Is the licensing suitable / CC?)
  • awareness; (Lack of awareness is a barrier to OER.)
  • discovery; (If the OER is hidden, not searchable, not indexed, it’s hard to find.)
  • infrastructure; (Lack of power/computers makes access hard.)
  • internet connectivity / bandwidth; (Slow connections pose a barrier to access.)

In the second and third weeks, participants are invited to share their experiences in working around these issues and to discuss possible solutions. For further information on Access2OER and participation in the discussion, please visit http://oerwiki.iiep-unesco.org/index.php?title=Access2OER.

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The Budapest Open Access Initiative Reached its Seven Year Mark

Posted on February 17, 2009 by | Leave a comment

The Budapest Open Access Initiative reached its seven year mark on February 14. An excerpt from a post by Peter Suber, via Open Access News, in 2002 reads:

… the BOAI “statement of principle,…statement of strategy, and…statement of commitment” was the first to offer a public definition of OA, the first to use the term “open access”, the first to call for OA journals and OA repositories as complementary strategies, the first to call for OA in all disciplines and countries, and the first to be accompanied by significant funding.  A good number of OA projects were already under way, but the BOAI helped to catalyze the OA movement and give it energy, unity, and identity.

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YouTube Tests Download and Creative Commons License Options

Posted on February 13, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Youtube announces that it is exploring ways to facilitate access and sharing of its videos- in response to calls from video owners and users- such as accessing videos offline, sharing videos under creative commons licenses, and allowing downloading. (Thanks to Creative Commons) Snippet from the announcement:

We are always looking for ways to make it easier for you to find, watch, and share videos. Many of you have told us that you wanted to take your favorite videos offline. So we’ve started working with a few partners who want their videos shared universally and even enjoyed away from an Internet connection.

Many video creators on YouTube want their work to be seen far and wide. They don’t mind sharing their work, provided that they get the proper credit. Using Creative Commons licenses, we’re giving our partners and community more choices to make that happen. Creative Commons licenses permit people to reuse downloaded content under certain conditions.

We’re also testing an option that gives video owners the ability to permit downloading of their videos from YouTube. Partners could choose to offer their video downloads for free or for a small fee paid through Google Checkout. Partners can set prices and decide which license they want to attach to the downloaded video files (for more info on the types of licenses, take a look here).

For example, universities use YouTube to share lectures and research with an ever-expanding audience. In an effort to promote the sharing of information, we are testing free downloads of YouTube videos from Stanford, Duke, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UCTV (broadcasting programs from throughout the UC system). YouTube users who are traveling or teachers who want to show these videos in classrooms with limited or no connectivity should find this particularly useful.

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Wikileaks publishes $1B worth of congressional reports

Posted on February 11, 2009 by | Leave a comment

IT World posted a story about Wikileaks publishing $1B worth of congrressional reports. (Thanks to ResourceShelf) Excerpt:

Wikileaks.org, the online clearinghouse for leaked documents, has published a complete database of Congressional Research Service reports, which are private research documents written for members of Congress and their staffers.

The 6,780 reports date back to 1990 and comprise all of the digitized reports accessible by congressional offices, said Wikileaks, which estimated their value at US$1 billion. They do not contain classified material, but they do cover politically sensitive topics such as social policy, defense and foreign affairs….

Wikileaks said it expects the reports to give the public a better idea of the information Congress has had at its disposal, and perhaps push lawmakers into making future reports publicly available. “Legally, they belong in the public domain,” [Wikileaks spokesman] Daniel Schmitt said. “It is very important for anyone who is doing research as well as the general public to have access to this information, and see what the congressional research services is [producing].”

Groups such as the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) have been calling for Congress to make Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports public for years, but some have argued that public scrutiny could end up politicizing what is supposed to be an objective, nonpartisan office….

The CDT runs its own project, called Open CRS, which aims to make these reports public, and is working with the Wikileaks project to have the reports it obtained published on the CDT Web site in the next few days, said Ari Schwartz, the CDT’s chief operating officer.

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10,000 Yiddish texts go OA at the Internet Archive

Posted on February 11, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Brewster Kahle, via Internet Archive Forums, drew attention to the fact that 10000 Yiddish literature collection, which make up about half the existing literature in Yiddish, goes open access at the Internet Archive. (Thanks to Open Access News) Here is the announcement at the New York Times:

More than 10,000 works in Yiddish are now accessible online as part of a joint project between the National Yiddish Book Center, based in Amherst, Mass., and the Internet Archive in San Francisco, the two institutions announced on Friday. The scanning began more than 10 years ago as part of a $5 million effort to create the Steven Spielberg Digital Library, said Aaron Lansky, founder and president of the book center. The books will be available for downloading in a variety of formats at archive.org/details/nationalyiddishbookcenter.

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UNESCO launches new discussion on accessing OERs (February 9-27)

Posted on February 9, 2009 by | Leave a comment

The UNESCO Open Education Community announced the launching of a new discussion dwelling on the topic of access to OERs. The discussion, which is open to all, will be held from February 9-27, 2009:

The discussion will be facilitated by Bjoern Hassler of Cambridge University’s Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies.UNESCO’s international Community on Open Educational Resources has been active since 2005. It connects over 700 individuals in 105 countries to share information and discuss issues surrounding the production and use of Open Educational Resources – web-based materials offered freely and openly for use and reuse in teaching, learning and research. UNESCO’s work on Open Educational Resources is generously supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

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Google Unveils Cellphone Version of Digital-Book Collection

Posted on February 7, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Jeffrey Young, via Chronicle: The Wired Campus, posted a story about Google’ newly launched cellphone version of digital book collection. Excerpt:

[Google] took 1.5 million of the books it has scanned through its partnership with several major college libraries and prepped them for the small screen of iPhones or phones using Google’s Android operating system.

The collection only includes books that are in the public domain, so it highlights classics like Emma and This Side of Paradise.

Developers spent about a year working on the cellphone format, said Frances Haugen, a product manager for Google, in an interview today. One key innovation: When users click on any paragraph of the text, they call up a picture of that paragraph from the original scan of the library book. That’s important for times when Google’s software goofed in turning the picture of the text into a digital file. (Such imperfections are common in any book-scanning effort.)

Ms. Haugen said she reread a favorite book, Wuthering Heights, on her cellphone and had no problem reading for long periods on the small screen. It is hard to imagine students doing their English homework curled up with their cellphones, though.

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Spain to introduce OA mandate

Posted on February 6, 2009 by | Leave a comment

José Manuel Nieves reports Spain’s plan to introduce an open access mandate. (Thanks to Open Access News) Excerpt from Google’s translated version:

Next Wednesday, [Spain's] Minister of Science and Innovation, Cristina Garmendia, will formally present the draft of the new and awaited Law of Science and Technology … Regarding the dissemination of results, Chapter III establishes the obligation to publish in open access texts that have been accepted for publication in scientific journals where these have been financed with public funds from the General Administration of State. …

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Sparky Award Winners Announced

Posted on February 4, 2009 by | Leave a comment

SPARC announced the winners of the second annual Sparky Awards, where students had to ingeniously demonstrate via a short video the value of sharing ideas.  (Thanks to Creative Commons) Excerpt:

Four student productions are winners of the second annual Sparky Awards, a contest organized by SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and adopted by campuses nationwide that calls on entrants to creatively illustrate in a short video the value of sharing ideas.

Selected by a distinguished panel of media scholars, educators, librarians, students, and others, the winning videos offer potent and colorful glimpses of how students see sharing of knowledge spurring innovation, solving problems, and improving lives. The winners were announced on January 24 at a public screening held in connection with the American Library Association Midwinter Conference in Denver. The videos will also be screened at the Campus MovieFest Southern Regional Grand Finale in Atlanta March 28 and 29, 2009.

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Harvard University Press Launches Open Access Law Journal

Posted on February 4, 2009 by | Leave a comment

The Harvard University Press announced launching an open access journal called the Journal of Legal Analysis (Thanks to DigitalKoans) Excerpt:

A couple things make the JLA different than the average law journal. First, it’s online. At the end of each year, articles will be bundled, printed, and sold to those who wish to procure such a volume, but the focus is on the website, where all articles will be posted, for free, as soon as they are ready for publication. In addition, we’re hoping the journal fills a gap in the legal publishing landscape by providing a peer-reviewed, faculty-edited journal that covers the entire academy. In the words of Editor-in-Chief Mark Ramseyer: “Until JLA, there has not been a faculty-edited, peer-reviewed journal that covered the whole span of the legal academy. There have been faculty-edited journals for subfields, but not for the entire discipline. With the JLA, we are trying to create a faculty-edited journal that will be the flagship journal for the law school faculty as a whole.”

With all work licensed under Creative Commons, sitting on an open-source platform developed specifically to publish open-access journals of this kind, this is about as free as the dissemination of scholarship can get. Thus, we invite you to visit, peruse, and submit away.

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