NECOBELAC (NEtwork of COllaboration Between Europe and Latin American Caribbean) is a new project for collaboration between Europe and Latin American and Caribbean countries to develop capacity in health-care information, including promoting OA. The project is now conducting a questionnaire to identify “terms and concepts related to those issues to determine their weight within different audience[s]”.

NECOBELAC (NEtwork of COllaboration Between Europe and Latin American Caribbean) is a new project for collaboration between Europe and Latin American and Caribbean countries to develop capacity in health-care information, including promoting OA. The project is now conducting a questionnaire to identify “terms and concepts related to those issues to determine their weight within different audience[s]”.

Writing Space: Readings on Writing is a new OA, Creative Commons-licensed book series of educational essays on writing. (Thanks to Charlie Lowe.)

Writing Space: Readings on Writing is a new OA, Creative Commons-licensed book series of educational essays on writing. (Thanks to Charlie Lowe.)

Kevin Donovan, Notes from Georgetown Symposium on Google Book Search Settlement, Blurring Borders, February 27, 2009. Notes on Google and the Future of Higher Education (Washington, D.C., February 27, 2009).

James Grimmelmann:

• … â??Google may become the only game in town for serious online access to many of these works.â? …
• Settlement makes almost no provision for the privacy of readers …
• All copyright owners are bound by this because of its class-action nature …
• â??This is not the way these types of things should be done in a democracy. We have public institutions to solve gigantic issues, not the courtroom. The courtroomâ??s adversarial approach is the wrong way to determine the future of information.â?
• But the settlement is still a net positive

Siva Vaidytanathan

• … Libraries should have done this, especially because they have special rights under copyright …
• Google needs to still care about this project in ten years.
• â??Why are we betting everything on what may be a fly-by company in the scale of history.â? We are sacrificing better options for expediency. …
• Deeply troubled by lack of user confidentiality …
• Not convinced weâ??ve missed the opportunity
  • Outlining the Human Knowledge Project (like Human Genome Project where scientists rejected Venterâ??s Solera â?? a private project. The two databases complement each other)
  • Pool resources globally â?? to preserve and extend the record of human knowledge …

Kevin Donovan, Notes from Georgetown Symposium on Google Book Search Settlement, Blurring Borders, February 27, 2009. Notes on Google and the Future of Higher Education (Washington, D.C., February 27, 2009).

James Grimmelmann:

• … “Google may become the only game in town for serious online access to many of these works.” …
• Settlement makes almost no provision for the privacy of readers …
• All copyright owners are bound by this because of its class-action nature …
• “This is not the way these types of things should be done in a democracy. We have public institutions to solve gigantic issues, not the courtroom. The courtroom’s adversarial approach is the wrong way to determine the future of information.”
• But the settlement is still a net positive

Siva Vaidytanathan

• … Libraries should have done this, especially because they have special rights under copyright …
• Google needs to still care about this project in ten years.
• “Why are we betting everything on what may be a fly-by company in the scale of history.” We are sacrificing better options for expediency. …
• Deeply troubled by lack of user confidentiality …
• Not convinced we’ve missed the opportunity
  • Outlining the Human Knowledge Project (like Human Genome Project where scientists rejected Venter’s Solera – a private project. The two databases complement each other)
  • Pool resources globally – to preserve and extend the record of human knowledge …

Update. See also Timothy Vollmer’s notes.

Heather West, Senator Wants to Scratch a Seven Year Itch, PolicyBeta, February 27, 2009.

Senator [Joe] Lieberman has written a letter to the Judicial Conference asking why the PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) online system is still charging a â??per pageâ? fee, when the goal of putting these records online in the first place was to make them â??freely available to the greatest extent possible.â? That was seven years ago.

PACER doesnâ??t seem to have made any progress since then. Apparently the public (still) agreesâ??PACER is one of the top vote getters at our Show Us the Data project. In addition, the barrier to accessing court records has inspired citizens to try to free the information in PACER.

PACER was instructed to charge access fees â??only to the extent necessary,â? …

According to Stephen Schultze and Shubham Mukherjee PACER fees amount to almost double the cost of actually running the system, if not more. …

See also our past pasts on:

• PACER
• Joe Lieberman
• Show Us the Data

Heather West, Senator Wants to Scratch a Seven Year Itch, PolicyBeta, February 27, 2009.

Senator [Joe] Lieberman has written a letter to the Judicial Conference asking why the PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) online system is still charging a “per page” fee, when the goal of putting these records online in the first place was to make them “freely available to the greatest extent possible.” That was seven years ago.

PACER doesn’t seem to have made any progress since then. Apparently the public (still) agrees–PACER is one of the top vote getters at our Show Us the Data project. In addition, the barrier to accessing court records has inspired citizens to try to free the information in PACER.

PACER was instructed to charge access fees “only to the extent necessary,” …

According to Stephen Schultze and Shubham Mukherjee PACER fees amount to almost double the cost of actually running the system, if not more. …

See also our past pasts on:

• PACER
• Joe Lieberman
• Show Us the Data

Danny Ash, Experts Seek Intellectual Property Reform, Columbia Spectator, February 25, 2009. See especially this quote:

… â??The Public Library of Science, by 2010, will be fiscally self-sustaining,â? [PLoS Chairman of the Board Harold] Varmus said.

See also our past posts on PLoS or Harold Varmus.

Danny Ash, Experts Seek Intellectual Property Reform, Columbia Spectator, February 25, 2009. See especially this quote:

… “The Public Library of Science, by 2010, will be fiscally self-sustaining,” [PLoS Chairman of the Board Harold] Varmus said.

See also our past posts on PLoS or Harold Varmus.

The University of Salamanca has decided to sign the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.

The University of Salamanca has decided to sign the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.

Open Access: Just Publish is a new 4-minute video from SURF on Open Access Year, in Dutch with English subtitles.

See also our past posts on SURF’s author rights video or Dutch Open Access Year.

Update. See also the video description here.

Ker Than, “Eco Hubble” to Bring Nature Data to the Public, National Geographic News, February 26, 2009.

A network of ecological “satellites” set to monitor environmental change could do for ecology what the Hubble Space Telescope has done for astronomy, researchers say.

Since 1991 raw data from Hubble have been made publicly available for use by professional researchers, educators, and citizen scientists via an online catalog.

“The public can access [the data] and do their own research,” said Hubble spokesperson Ray Villard. “They paid for it. They deserve it.”

A similar openaccess model is key to the National Ecological Network Observatory, or NEON, a new program set to be up and running by 2016.

NEON will link together already existing field stations across the U.S. that are using planes and orbiters, ground-level sensors, and human-run labs to monitor activity in the wild. …

With funding from the National Science Foundation, NEON program managers plan to collect and archive data online for at least 30 years. …

NEON will also create opportunities for the public to aid scientists in conducting field research, said senior team member Carol Brewer, a biologist at the University of Montana. …

A number of librarians, library, archival and information organizations (see VPL) are taking notice of Twitter. Today, it’s the Library of Congress – Twitter. No word yet out of the Library and Archives Canada though here is the Nova Scotia Archives. Long seen as an innovator, here’s the twitter feed …