Tuesday, June 22, 2004

British Columbia Library Association adopts a resolution supporting OA. On June 19 the British Columbia Library Association adopted a A Resolution on Open Access. Excerpt (omitting a series of good "whereas" clauses): Be it resolved that the BCLA formally declare its commitment to Open Access by signing onto one of: the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, the Budapest Open Access Initiative, or the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing, and; Be it further resolved thatthe BCLA write a letter to the Premier, with copies to presidents of BC post-secondary institutions, applauding local leadership in Open Access, such as the Public Knowledge Project, the CARL Institutional Repository Project, and Library and Archives Canada's Theses Canada Portal, and; Be it further resolved that the BCLA encourage the BC library community to support Open Access by cataloguing and providing access to open access journals and promoting awareness of Open Access, and that the BCLA encourage post-secondary institutions to formally declare their support by signing on to Open Access initiatives, and; Be it further resolved that the BCLA educate the library community in BC about Open Access through articles in the BCLA Reporter, sessions at BCLA Conferences, and information on the BCLA web page. (Thanks to Heather Morrison.) [Open Access News] 9:17:30 PM      Google It!.

Kahle v. Ashcroft submission site. Kahle v. Ashcroft is a lawsuit that challenges changes to U.S. copyright law that have created a large class of "orphan works." Orphan works are books, films, music, and other creative works which are out of print and no longer commercially available, but which are still regulated by copyright. Because the copyright system contains no mechanisms to create and maintain useful records of copyright ownership, people who would like to distribute or use these orphaned works -- digital libraries, or creators who would like to include the work in their own creative expression -- often are unable to clear rights. The copyright system thus denies public access to these orphan works, without creating any countervailing benefit either to authors or the public at large. To learn more about the case, read the Kahle FAQ. Thanks to Ali Houissa for bringing this to my attention. [Open Access News] 2:54:45 PM      Google It!.

ATi HDTV Tuner For The PC Arrives [Slashdot] 2:07:17 PM      Google It!.

Virtual reality significantly reduces pain-related brain activity [Science Blog - Science News Stories] 1:49:02 PM      Google It!.

Wearable Cell Phones Are Here [Slashdot] 7:58:06 AM      Google It!.

Smokers 'will die 10 years early'. Smoking cigarettes cuts an average of 10 years off a person's life, a landmark study suggests. [BBC News | Science/Nature | UK Edition] 7:46:40 AM      Google It!.

Ann Wolpert on institutional repositories. The OCLC Members Council discussed expanding access to information at its annual meeting this year (May 23-25). Ann Wolpert, the Director of Libraries at MIT, ... She noted that digitally accessible information is statistically demonstrated to be used 10 times more often than print. 'So faculty have a tremendous incentive to move their content onto the Web because they know it is going to be read on the Web,' she said. 'There are really compelling reasons for provosts and presidents of academic institutions to make an institutional repository a priority in terms of making a statement about how innovative an organization is, or the depth and breadth of its intellectual content.' " [Open Access News] 7:43:17 AM      Google It!.

OA data sharing in China. Today marks the start of the International Workshop on Strategies for Preservation of and Open Access to Scientific Data in Beijing (June 22-24). It's a good sign that the keynote address by Cheng Jinpei, China's Vice Minister of Science and Technology and member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has already been reported in the Chinese press. Excerpt from a story in today's China View: "Cheng Jinpei said here Tuesday that the ministry isspeeding up a scientific data sharing project in an effort to reduce repeated research and money squandering....The Chinese government has already placed the scientific data sharing project as one important job for building the national scientific and technological research infrastructure, Cheng said, adding that his ministry will go all out to build up and improve the project. Experts said that scientific data are not only strategic resources for research community, but also key information for governmental decision making. Most of the scientific data in China are still not digitized and open access to those resources are limited, the experts said." [Open Access News] 7:41:05 AM      Google It!.

Transgaming releases "WineX" 4.0 "Cedega" [Slashdot] 7:39:11 AM      Google It!.

Australia picks open-source software for its institutional repositories. The Australian Research Repositories Online to the World (ARROW Project) has selected VITAL and FEDORA for its institutional repository program. Details are in the June 16 press release. [Open Access News] 7:35:50 AM      Google It!.