Phil Wolff's klogging 101 slides.

[High Context]

The Chronicle of Higher Education: 'Superarchives' Could Hold All Scholarly Output. Several colleges are now looking to share more of that work by building "institutional repositories" online and inviting their professors to upload copies of their research papers, data sets, and other work. The idea is to gather as much of the intellectual output of an institution as possible in an easy-to-search online collection. [Tomalak's Realm]

» Interesting article.  Here's a taster:

Several colleges are now looking to share more of that work by building "institutional repositories" online and inviting their professors to upload copies of their research papers, data sets, and other work.

Some imagine a day when every research university gives its research away through the Web, allowing scholars and nonacademics to mine it for ideas and information.

Institutional repositories could create an alternative to journals, fans of the archives say.

Journal publishers, meanwhile, say that such repositories are unlikely to supplant their publications.

Journals, they argue, are still the best means of distributing and preserving research.

And even some of those supporting the new archives recognize the difficulty of getting professors to change their habits.

"We've had pretty serious interest in the system from about 30 major institutions," Ms.

What: Massachusetts Institute of Technology's project to develop a superarchive, as well as software tools for creating and maintaining the repository.

The tools will be offered to other colleges that want to use them.

When: DSpace has been under development for two years.

The university is testing it this summer, and plans to make the software available free to anyone in the fall, when the university will invite all professors at MIT to contribute to its archive.

What: Free software developed at the University of Southampton, in Britain, to help individual scholars, departments, or universities create archives of research papers online.

An updated version was released this year.

What: A series of "metadata" codes that librarians or others can attach to research papers to help search engines pull out desired information.

Universities are funded out of taxation.  The fruits of their research should be made available to all, for the benefit of all.

 

Palladium: Disturbing.  Highly Disturbing.

If you don't understand Palladium, you should.  Excellent FAQ here: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

Dave, thanks for the link!

British ID cards to revolutionise crime. But not in the way the gov wants... [The Register]

» Once again the government I voted for is doing the Orwellian thing.

Some highlights (courtesy of Copernic Summarizer)

• Home Secretary David Blunkett announced the start of a six month consultation in Parliament today on plans by the government to introduce "entitlement cards" (that's ID cards to you and me).
• Lobby group Privacy International reckons the proposal for a national identity card has little to do with the government's stated objectives of reducing the threat of crime, terrorism and illegal immigration.
• Its real purpose is part of a broader objective outlined in the Cabinet Office report "Privacy & Data Sharing" to create a new administrative basis for the linkage of government databases and information systems.
• But worse, the government's ID card plan could backfire and become a tool for criminal syndicates, according to Privacy International which argues that a national ID card- whether voluntary or mandatory - will compound problems of illegal immigration, fraud and identity theft.
• According to Simon Davies, Privacy International's Director, criminals now have access to technology almost as sophisticated at that used by governments so that "even the most highly secure cards are available as blanks weeks after their introduction.

Some more of our freedoms to be sold in the name of fighting crime.  Are they just tilting at windmills or is this really sinister?

We can fight this!