Minow, Mary. "Library Digitization Projects and Copyright"  LLRX.com  (28 June 2002)(http://www.llrx.com/features/digitization.htm). - If you feel you are tiptoeing through a legal minefield while trying to digitize library materials, this article can provide some quick guidance on how to get to the other side in one piece. Minow, an attorney who is a former librarian, provides a short, breezy, illustrated introduction to the arcane topic of copyright law as it relates to digitization projects. After reading it, who can forget "Sail the ocean blue through 1922" as a rule of thumb for safely converting published and registered works? The document is in six parts. You may find (as I did) that it's easier to print them out, read them, then go back to the Web site and explore the links. Want more in-depth advice? Try The Public Domain: How to Find Copyright-Free Writings, Music, Art & More, which was reviewed in the April 2001 issue. - CB

Soehner, Catherine, Catherine  Steeves, and Jennifer  Ward. E-Science and Data Support Services: A Study of ARL Member Institutions  Washington, DC: Association of Research Libraries, 2010.(http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/escience_report2010.pdf). - This report presents results from an August 2009 survey of 57 of 123 ARL member libraries (46% response rate). Overall, respondents' institutions were making significant progress in supporting e-science: 21 respondents reported that infrastructure or support services were in place, 23 were planning e-science support, and only 13 did not support e-science. E-science was defined "broadly not only as big computational science, but also team science and networked science. It includes all scientific domains, as well as biomedicine and social sciences that share research approaches with the sciences." Four e-science strategies were identified: 1. institution-wide or centralized response, 2. unit-by-unit or decentralized approach, 3. hybrid of both decentralized and centralized efforts, and 4. multi-institutional collaborations. About 73% of respondents said that the library played a role in e-science support, and 45% said that there were designated units for data curation and research data support at their institution. The report also includes six case studies based on interviews (Purdue University; the University of California, San Diego; Cornell University; Johns Hopkins University; the University of Illinois at Chicago; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), a bibliography, and e-science-related position descriptions. - CB

Metz, Rosalyn. "Cloud Computing Explained"  EDUCAUSE Quarterly  33(2)(2010)(http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/EDUCAUSEQuarterlyMagazineVolum/CloudComputingExplained/206526). - What is cloud computing? In this article, Metz provides a concise answer to this question using the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) definition and illustrating her points with embedded digital videos. In the NIST definition, cloud computing has five characteristics (broad network access, measured service, on-demand self-service, rapid elasticity, and resource pooling), three service models (cloud infrastructure as a service, cloud platform as a service, and cloud software as a service), and four deployment models (community cloud, hybrid cloud, private cloud, and public cloud). This article is part of a special issue on cloud computing. - CB

Jottkandt, Sigi. "The Accessibility of Open Access Materials in Libraries"  E-LIS  (2010)(http://eprints.rclis.org/18766/). - In this Master's thesis, Jottkandt investigated the prevalence of journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals in the WorldCat holdings of U.S. academic libraries. Fifty-four percent of the libraries (2,053 libraries) held at least one open access journal listed in the DOAJ. The median number of open access journals held was 8 and the mean number held was 434. The five libraries with the highest number of holdings were: 1. University of Oklahoma, 3,270 journals; 2. Occidental College, 2,850 journals; 3. Florida Atlantic University, 2,832 journals; 4. University of New Hampshire, 2,691 journals; and 5. University of South Florida, 2,688 journals. Jottkandt also sent a survey to the top 100 libraries with DOAJ journal holdings to determine their attitudes towards these journals and their practices regarding them. Seventeen libraries responded to the survey. - CB

Ball, Alex. Review of the State of the Art of the Digital Curation of Research Data  Bath, UK: University of Bath, 2010.(http://opus.bath.ac.uk/18774/2/erim1rep091103ab11.pdf). - As e-science gains traction, the research data it generates becomes increasingly important. One consequence of the increasing importance of research data is a growing call for open access to it. This is often called "open data." However, unlike research articles and other conventional research materials, research datasets present special challenges, such as their potentially massive size, the frequency with which they are generated, and their data formats, which may be instrument specific. Metadata issues can be especially thorny. These challenges make it harder to archive and preserve research data in digital repositories. Such issues make research data a good candidate for emerging digital curation strategies, which deal with the entire lifecycle of curated materials. This report provides a timely, and at 57 pages, a reasonably concise introduction to digital data curation. In addition to general information, it provides specific information about practices in the UK, which make interesting reading for residents of other countries as examples of current activities. While research data curation issues may seem esoteric, it is likely that academic libraries, especially research libraries, will find themselves increasingly providing such services in the future. See Anna K. Gold's eprint, "Data Curation and Libraries: Short-Term Developments, Long-Term Prospects" for an overview of the role libraries are playing in data curation. - CB

Gold, Anna. "Data Curation and Libraries: Short-Term Developments, Long-Term Prospects"  DigitalCommons@Cal Poly  ()(2010): . (http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/lib_dean/27/). - In this eprint, Gold, Associate Dean for Public Services at Cal Poly State University's Robert E. Kennedy Library, overviews the increasingly important topic of library data curation services in the emerging cyberinfrastructure/e-science environment. A particularly interesting feature of this paper is the inclusion of a chronology of library data curation milestones from the end of 2006 through early 2010, which aptly illustrates how quickly the field is developing in the areas of education, policy, and research. Gold's narrative descriptions of library data curation efforts at Cornell University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Minnesota, and Purdue University are also quite interesting. Beyond these particulars, Gold provides a useful conceptual framework for understanding key aspects and developments of library data curation, while still keeping the paper's length down to 33 pages. This paper is a good starting point for quickly understanding library data curation services. - CB

Connaway, Lynn Silipigni, and Timothy J.  Dickey. Digital Information Seekers: How Academic Libraries Can Support the Use of Digital Resources; Briefing Paper  London: JISC, 2010.(http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/briefingpaper/2010/bpdigitalinfoseekerv1.pdf). - This JISC Briefing Paper summarizes key findings from The Digital Information Seeker: Report of the Findings from Selected OCLC, RIN and JISC User Behaviour Projects. The longer 61-page report is a meta-analysis of 12 significant UK/US studies conducted during the last five years that examine users' evolving information needs and investigate how libraries can best provide digital materials and services, such as e-books, e-journals, online catalogs, and virtual reference services. The findings of this meta-analysis are not unexpected; however, they validate the need to continue to aggressively move forward with strategic digital initiatives in an increasingly constrained fiscal environment. Another study by the authors, Towards a Profile of the Researcher of Today: What Can We Learn from JISC Projects? Common Themes Identified in an Analysis of JISC Virtual Research Environment and Digital Repository Projects, may also be of interest. - CB

Adema, Janneke. Overview of Open Access Models for eBooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences  Amsterdam: Open Access Publishing in European Networks, 2010.(http://www.oapen.org/images/OpenAccessModels.pdf). - With existing humanities and social sciences print book publishing efforts on the verge of collapse, there is a critical need to examine new models that will allow the continued publication of specialized, low-sales-volume books in these areas of study. This report uses case studies to examine eight emerging models for open access publishing of e-books that show promise for the humanities and social sciences. The open access models are: commercial publishers (e.g., Bloomsbury Academic), presses established by academies and research councils (e.g., The National Academies Press), presses established by libraries (e.g., Sydney University Press), library-press partnerships (e.g., University of Michigan Press), university presses (e.g., Rice University Press), presses established by academics (e.g., Open Humanities Press), press-commercial publisher partnerships (e.g., TU Ilmenau Press), and other publishing models and experiments (e.g., MediaCommons Press). In the conclusion, the author states: "In general, although there are many experiments going on at this time, it is still too early to say which publishing and business models will emerge in the Open Access book-publishing world as the most viable. Perhaps a combination of funding and subsidies, resource sharing, efficiencies through economies of scale and collaboration, print sales and services along with free content, will prove to be the most successful. In this respect, publishers may eventually become 'producers,' combining different sources of revenue and funding into a break-even model. But, just as monograph publishing has generally become unsustainable in a print world without some form of subsidies, it seems that Open Access monographs will also require additional funding." - CB

Swan, Alma. Modelling Scholarly Communication Options: Costs and Benefits for Universities  London: JISC, 2010.(http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/442/). - Could switching to open access publishing models save universities money? This study says "yes" and it details some significant potential cost savings for UK universities. How much? "If universities switch from the current subscription-based system to publishing all their articles in Open Access journals that charge an article-processing fee, there would be savings for all universities when the article-processing fee is 700 GBP per article or less. Where article-processing fees (APCs) are 500 GBP per article, even the largest university would save, in this case around 1.53 million GBP per annum. The maximum savings found in our modelling, accruing to a medium-sized university, were 1.7 million GBP per annum when the article-processing fee is 500 GBP per article." Also see two related documents How to Build a Case for University Policies and Practices in Support of Open Access and Publishing Research Papers Which Policy Will Deliver Best Value for Your University?. - CB

Edgar, Brian D., and John  Willinsky. "A Survey of the Scholarly Journals Using Open Journal Systems"  Public Knowledge Project  (2010)(http://pkp.sfu.ca/files/OJS%20Journal%20Survey.pdf). - In this eprint, the authors present the results of a survey of 998 scholarly journals that use the Open Journal Systems software, an open source system that is freely available from the Public Knowledge Project. This is a particularly interesting study because it provides insight into the operations of open access journals that are not published by corporations, such as BioMed Central. There has been a long history of conflicting data about journal production costs, with conventional publishers and open access advocates often presenting significantly different figures. More often than not, this has been a "compare apples and oranges" problem, since the operations of journals that are similar to the majority of ones in this study are very different from those of commercial publishers. For example, here are the number of journals in the study that spent nothing on selected journal publishing functions: editorship, 522; management, 474; article layout, 454; proofreading, 504; website, 457; customization, 545; technical, 494; and promotion, 536. Regarding costs, the authors note: "The challenge posed by this set of journals becomes starkly apparent, whether the one compares the first copy costs from this journal sample of $188.39 per article, at roughly a tenth of the industry standard over the last decade. . ., or the annual budget for the majority of these journals, which stands at less than what are held to be the "fixed" costs ($3,800) of a single article . . ." - CB

Samuelson, Pamela. "Google Book Search and the Future of Books in Cyberspace"  Social Science Research Network  (13 January 2010)(http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1535067). - Pamela Samuelson, Richard M. Sherman Distinguished Professor of Law at the UC Berkeley School of Law, is a well-known critic of the highly controversial Google Book Settlement. In this preprint, Samuelson takes an in-depth look at the Google Book Settlement (GBS), including the Amended Settlement Agreement reached in November 2009. After an overview, Samuelson discusses the possible future impacts of the GBS if approved. A section on optimistic predictions is followed by a six-part section on pessimistic predictions, whose titles often include the word "nightmares." Of particular interest are the "Library and Academic Researcher Nightmares" and "Nightmares for Readers" subsections. A summary is followed by a new section on "Other Possible Futures for Books in Cyberspace," which includes subsections on what could happen if the GBS is rejected and on a proposed alternative publicly funded book mass digitization project. For another important recent critical perspective on the GBS, see Lawrence Lessig's The New Republic article "For the Love of Culture: Google, Copyright, and Our Future." - CB

Hadro, Josh. "White House Signals Interest in Open Access with Public Call for Comments"  Library Journal  (17 December 2009)(http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6712223.html). - It's big news when the White House shows interest in open access, so the Office of Science and Technology Policy's call in the Federal Register for "input from the community regarding enhancing public access to archived publications resulting from research funded by Federal science and technology agencies" raised the hopes of U.S. open access advocates. Subsequently, OSTP began to post discussion items on its blog for comment. The first post was "Policy Forum on Public Access to Federally Funded Research: Implementation," the current post is "Policy Forum on Public Access to Federally Funded Research: Features and Technology," and the third, which will be about management, will be posted on January 1. The "Archive for the 'Public Access Policy' Category" page provides access to all the posts and comments. You must register and login to post comments. (Comments can also be e-mailed to publicaccess@ostp.gov.) Initially, OSTP said that all comments must be received by January 7, 2010; however, that deadline has been extended to January 21, 2010, with a more detailed discussion of the three topics occurring between January 7, 2010 and that date. - CB

Suber, Peter. "Knowledge as a Public Good"  SPARC Open Access Newsletter  (139)(2009)(http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/11-02-09.htm#publicgood). - A key argument for open access is that knowledge is a "public good." But what is a public good? Suber identifies two primary features of a public good: (1) it is "non-rivalrous," and (2) it is "non-excludable." A good is non-rivalrous when users can consume it "without depleting it or becoming 'rivals'." A good is "non-excludable" when "consumption is available to all, and attempts to prevent consumption are generally ineffective." Suber then argues that knowledge inherently has these characteristics and that scholarly digital texts that embody knowledge could have them: "With the right equipment we can all have copies of the same digital text without having to take turns, block one another, multiply our costs, or deplete our resources. . . . For the first time in the history of writing, we can record our non-rivalrous knowledge without turning it into a rivalrous material object." However, copyright law and copyright-holder access restrictions limit the promise of digital texts as public goods unless there is copyright-holder consent to make them freely available. Retention of copyright and self-archiving by scholarly authors as well as funder and institutional open access mandates help achieve this promise. A restructuring of scholarly publishing to a model where publishers provide open access based remuneration that covers their costs plus a reasonable profit margin also helps achieve this promise: "As the PLoS [Public Library of Science] analogy of publishers as midwives always suggested, the idea is to stop the midwife from keeping the baby, not to avoid paying for services rendered." - CB

Samuelson, Pamela. "New Google Book Settlement Aims Only to Placate Governments"  The Huffington Post  (17 November 2009)(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pamela-samuelson/new-google-book-settlemen_b_358544.html). - The amended Google Book Search settlement (Zip file) has hardly silenced the deal's critics. In this article, Samuelson, who is a Professor at the University of California at Berkeley's Law School and its School of Information, outlines and critiques the major changes in the settlement, which she says "were overwhelmingly made to placate the governments of France and Germany, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)." Whether these parties are placated or not, Samuelson still has significant objections to the settlement. For example, she says that: "Google will still get a de facto monopoly right to commercialize all out-of-print books, including the orphans, through the class action settlement process. No one else can get a comparable license, and hence no one else can offer a comprehensive database of books to allow competition in the market for institutional subscriptions." For further analysis of the amended settlement, see Jonathan Band's A Guide for the Perplexed Part III: The Amended Settlement Agreement, Larry Downes' upbeat "Two Cheers for Google Books," and Fred von Lohmann's series of posts on the DeepLinks blog (1, 2, 3, and 4). - CB

Jaschik, Scott. "Breakthrough on Open Access"  Inside Higher Ed  ( 15 September 2009)(http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/09/15/open). - On September 14, 2009, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California, Berkeley announced the compact for open-access publishing equity. In the compact, each participating university "commits to the timely establishment of durable mechanisms for underwriting reasonable publication charges for articles written by its faculty and published in fee-based open-access journals and for which other institutions would not be expected to provide funds." Also, the initial compact members "encourage other universities and research funding agencies to join us in this commitment, to provide a sufficient and sustainable funding basis for open-access publication of the scholarly literature." The compact has a Web site. In addition to Jaschik's article, see the Harvard press release, the FAQ, and Robin Peek's article "A Compact for Open Access Publication Announced." - CB

Crow, Raym. Income Models for Open Access: An Overview of Current Practice  Washington, DC: SPARC, 2009.(http://www.arl.org/sparc/bm~doc/incomemodels_v1.pdf). - The Gordian knot of "gold" open access is how to fund free publications. In this 56-page report, Crow offers and discusses a range of solutions: advertising, article processing fees, contextual e-commerce, convenience-format license, demand-side models and free ridership, donations and fund raising, endowments, external subsidies, in-kind support, internal subsidies, partnerships, sponsorships, use-triggered fees, and value added fee-based services. - CB

Suber, Peter. "Ten Challenges for Open-Access Journals"  SPARC Open Access Newsletter  (138)(2009)(http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/10-02-09.htm#challenges). - Scholarly authors typically want to publish in well-established high-prestige, high-impact journals. This is especially true of junior faculty members, whose work will be closely scrutinized by tenure committees making up-or-out decisions. On the other hand, open access journals are typically relatively new journals, and, while some have achieved high impact scores and prestige within a few years, many face an uphill slog in these areas. This is not surprising. New print journals face these issues as well, and open access journals also have unconventional characteristics that result from their "born digital" nature that add to doubts about them. Suber identifies the ten most pressing issues that open access journals face and provides helpful advice about how they can be faced. The issues he deals with are: "the gap between journal performance and what prevailing metrics say about journal performance (#1); the gap between the vision of OA embodied in the Budapest, Bethesda, and Berlin statements and the access policies at 85% of OA journals (#2); and the gap between a journal's quality and its prestige, even when the quality is high (#3). . . . doubts about quality (#4), preservation (#5), honesty (#6), publication fees (#7), sustainability (#8), redirection (#9), and strategy (#10)." - CB

EDUCAUSE, . 7 Things You Should Know about Cloud Computing  Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE, 3 August 2009.(http://www.educause.edu/Resources/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAboutCloud/176856). - "Cloud computing" is the buzzword du jour, but what is it really? This succinct overview says: "In its broadest usage, the term cloud computing refers to the delivery of scalable IT resources over the Internet, as opposed to hosting and operating those resources locally, such as on a college or university network. Those resources can include applications and services, as well as the infrastructure on which they operate. By deploying IT infrastructure and services over the network, an organization can purchase these resources on an as-needed basis and avoid the capital costs of software and hardware." This two-page overview quickly gives you the basics without requiring a Ph.D. in computer science to understand it. - CB

Llewellyn, Richard D., Lorraine J.  Pellack, and Diana D.  Shonrock. "The Use of Electronic-Only Journals in Scientific Research"  Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship  (35)(Summer 2002)(http://www.istl.org/02-summer/refereed.html). - In this interesting study, the authors determine the number of peer-reviewed, electronic-only scientific e-journals that are being published and investigate whether they are being indexed, cataloged, and cited. The results are encouraging: there are 144 e-journals that meet the selection criteria (85% are free). Of these 144 e-journals, 67% have been indexed, 97% have been cataloged in OCLC, and 75% have been cited. See the article for more detailed results, including specific information about each e-journal and a subject breakdown. - CB

Hadro, Josh. "Michigan Deal a New Twist on Access to Scanned Book Content"  Library Journal  (23 July 2009)(http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6672693.html). - The University of Michigan will offer print-on-demand paperback editions of over 400,000 digitized books in over 200 languages via BookSurge and Amazon for between $10 to about $45. According to Michigan's press release, the service offers books digitized by Michigan's partnership with Google as well as books digitized solely by Michigan. University Librarian and Dean of Libraries Paul N. Courant said: "This agreement means that titles that have been generally unavailable for a century or more will be able to go back into print, one copy at a time." - CB

Fischer, Karen. Author Addenda, SPEC Kit 310  Washington, DC: Association of Research Libraries, 2009.(http://www.arl.org/news/pr/spec310-1july09.shtml). - This survey provides a rare glimpse into author rights in practice. Fischer got 70 responses from ARL libraries to her author addenda survey (57% of ARL member libraries). Fifty percent of respondents reported that authors at their institutions were using author addenda, and 52% said that "an author addendum had been endorsed by administrators or a governing body at their institution or by their consortia" (institutional endorsement was under consideration by another 12%). The SPEC Kit's table of contents and executive summary are freely available. - CB

Hadro, Josh. "Cornell Library Lifts Restrictions on Public Domain Works"  Library Journal Academic Newswire  (14 May 2009)(http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6658219.html). - The Cornell University Library has eliminated license requirements for reproductions of digitized public domain works, including over 70,000 e-books donated to the Internet Archive. In a May 11, 2009 press release, Oya Y. Rieger, Associate University Librarian for Information Technologies, said: "Imposing legally binding restrictions on these digital files would have been very difficult and in a way contrary to our broad support of open access principles. It seemed better just to acknowledge their public domain status and make them freely usable for any purpose. And since it doesn't make sense to have different rules for material that is reproduced at the request of patrons, we have removed permission obligations from public domain works." The press release also said: "Institutional restrictions on the use of public domain work, sometimes labeled 'copyfraud,' have been the subject of much scholarly criticism. The Cornell initiative goes further than many other recent attempts to open access to public domain material by removing restrictions on both commercial and non-commercial use." - CB

Suber, Peter. "An OA Mandate for U of Oregon Library Faculty"  Open Access News  (7 May 2009)(http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/05/oa-mandate-for-u-of-oregon-library.html). - On May 7, 2009, the University of Oregon Library Faculty unanimously adopted a strong open access mandate that included putting its scholarly articles under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States license. The mandate states that: "To facilitate distribution of the scholarly articles, as of the date of publication, each faculty member will make available an electronic copy of the author's final version of the article and full citation at no charge to a designated representative of the Libraries in appropriate formats (such as PDF) specified by the Libraries. After publication, the University of Oregon Libraries will make the scholarly article available to the public in the UO's institutional repository." The mandate provides for a waiver that can be granted by the Dean of the Libraries. The mandate follows one by the Oregon State University Libraries faculty on March 6, 2009 and a mandate by the Academic Council of Libraries and Cultural Resources at the University of Calgary on May 1, 2009. It was followed by an open access pledge by the Gustavus Adolphus College library faculty on May 14, 2009. In an interesting related development, the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Oregon adopted a mandate on May 14, 2009 that also included a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States license requirement. - CB

"Special Issue on Institutional Repositories"  Library Trends  57(2)(2008)(http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/library_trends/toc/lib.57.2.html). - This special issue on institutional repositories contains the following articles (links are to article preprints): "Introduction: Institutional Repositories: Current State and Future," "Innkeeper at the Roach Motel," "Institutional Repositories in the UK: The JISC Approach," "Strategies for Institutional Repository Development: A Case Study of Three Evolving Initiatives," "Perceptions and Experiences of Staff in the Planning and Implementation of Institutional Repositories," "Institutional Repositories and Research Data Curation in a Distributed Environment," "At the Watershed: Preparing for Research Data Management and Stewardship at the University of Minnesota Libraries," "Case Study in Data Curation at Johns Hopkins University," "Describing Scholarly Works with Dublin Core: A Functional Approach," "The 'Wealth of Networks' and Institutional Repositories: MIT, DSpace, and the Future of the Scholarly Commons," "Leveraging Short-term Opportunities to Address Long-term Obligations: A Perspective on Institutional Repositories and Digital Preservation Programs," and "Shedding Light on the Dark Data in the Long Tail of Science." - CB

Willinsky, John. "Toward the Design of an Open Monograph Press"  Journal of Electronic Publishing  12(1)(2009)(http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0012.103). - The Public Knowledge Project's open source Open Journal Systems software has become the platform of choice for many scholarly electronic journals published by universities, libraries, and other noncommercial organizations. Consequently, its Open Monograph Press, which is under development, is of keen interest to the academic community, especially in a time when university presses are struggling to survive and a major press (the University of Michigan Press) has announced that it will emphasize digital monographs in the future. This paper overviews the sorry state of scholarly monograph publishing and provides the first detailed look into the innovative architecture of the Open Monograph Press. - CB

Willinsky, John. "Toward the Design of an Open Monograph Press"  Journal of Electronic Publishing  12(1)(http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0012.103). - The Public Knowledge Project's open source Open Journal Systems software has become the platform of choice for many scholarly electronic journals published by universities, libraries, and other noncommercial organizations. Consequently, it's Open Monograph Press, which is under development, is of keen interest to the academic community, especially in a time when university presses are struggling to survive and a major press (the University of Michigan Press) has announced that it will emphasize digital monographs in the future. This paper overviews the sorry state of scholarly monograph publishing and provides the first detailed look into the innovative architecture of the Open Monograph Press. - CB

Albanese, Andrew. "In a First, Oregon State University Library Faculty Adopts Strong OA Policy"  Library Journal  (25 March 2009)(http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6646361.html?nid=2673&source=title&rid=1427993535). - Adding to the flurry of U.S. open access mandates this year at the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government, the Harvard Law School, MIT, and the Stanford University School of Education, the library faculty at Oregon State University have adopted an open access policy (see also the Guidelines for LFA Open Access Mandate). This appears to be the first such open access mandate adopted by a U.S. academic library. The policy applies to certain types of scholarly works (e.g., articles) created by library faculty during the course of their employment after March 2009, and it grants the library "a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to our scholarly work, in any medium, and to authorize others to do the same, provided that the works are properly attributed to the authors and not sold for a profit." By the time of a work's publication or distribution, library faculty are to deposit a digital copy of the published version of the work in ScholarsArchive@OSU or submit a copy to have it deposited for them. - CB

Albanese, Andrew. "In New Letter, Library Associations Voice Strong Opposition to Anti-NIH Bill "  Library Journal Academic Newswire  (17 February 2009)(http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6638106.html?nid=2673&rid=reg_visitor_id&source=title). - The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act (H.R. 801), re-introduced in the House by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), would repeal the NIH Public Access Policy and prevent other federal agencies from enacting similar open access policies. Ten associations and advocacy groups, including the American Association of Law Libraries, the American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries, the Greater Western Library Alliance, and the Special Libraries Association, have sent a letter to House Judiciary Committee members opposing the bill. Here's an excerpt: "The NIH Public Access Policy advances science, improves access by the public to federally funded research, provides for effective archiving strategies for these resources, and ensures accountability of our federal investment. Given the proven success of the revised NIH Public Access Policy and the promise of public access to federally funded research, we firmly oppose H.R. 801 and ask that you do the same." Both the Alliance for Taxpayer Access and ALA have issued calls to action, with the ALA call including a Web form where citizens whose Representatives serve on the Judiciary Committee can contact those House members by e-mail about the bill. - CB

ARL Digital Repository Issues Task Force, . The Research Library's Role in Digital Repository Services: Final Report of the ARL Digital Repository Issues Task Force  Washington, DC: Association of Research Libraries, January 2009.(http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/repository-services-report.pdf). - In this report, the Association of Research Libraries Digital Repository Issues Task Force takes an in-depth look at institutional repositories (IRs) and the roles that research libraries should play in them. It's a big picture analysis that focuses on major IR issues, and it includes a horizon analysis that envisions what the IR environment will look like in 2015. It suggests a half-dozen areas of focus for research libraries' IR efforts, and includes with a call to action that recommends five major actions for them to take regarding IRs. In conclusion, the report states: "Some may wonder if libraries can afford to develop repository services, especially in a time when research institutions face shrinking resource bases. The Task Force members believe that neither research libraries, nor the institutions they serve, can afford to do without repository services. Such services have a powerful potential to enable key work and enhance the effectiveness of a wide range of functions across research institutions. Researchers and scholars with access to a spectrum of repository services will possess a substantial advantage in conducting cutting edge research, delivering high quality teaching, and contributing valuable services to society." - CB

Houghton, John, Bruce  Rasmussen, and Peter  Sheehan, et. al.Economic Implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models: Exploring the Costs and Benefits  London: JISC, 2009.(http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/rpteconomicoapublishing.pdf). - This important report examines the costs and benefits of traditional subscription publishing, open access publishing, and self-archiving for UK higher education. It finds that: "open access publishing for journal articles [i.e., Gold OA] might bring system savings of around £215 million per annum nationally in the UK (at 2007 prices and levels of publishing activity), of which around £165 million would accrue in higher education.. . . a repositories and overlay services model may well produce greater cost savings than open access publishing--with our estimates suggesting system savings of perhaps £260 million nationally, of which around £205 might accrue in higher education." - CB

Boyle, James. The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind  New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.(http://www.thepublicdomain.org/). - James Boyle, William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law and co-founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University, is a well-known intellectual property expert. Like Lawrence Lessig, he has a talent for making arcane aspects of IP law clear, and he is a critic of ever more restrictive copyright and other IP laws. Here's a brief excerpt that describes The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind: "This book is an attempt to tell the story of the battles over intellectual property, the range wars of the information age. . . . I try to show that current intellectual property policy is overwhelmingly and tragically bad in ways that everyone, and not just lawyers or economists, should care about. We are making bad decisions that will have a negative effect on our culture, our kids' schools, and our communications networks; on free speech, medicine, and scientific research. We are wasting some of the promise of the Internet, running the risk of ruining an amazing system of scientific innovation, carving out an intellectual property exemption to the First Amendment." In addition to the print version, the book is freely available in PDF and CommentPress versions. - CB

Dietrich, Dianne, Jennifer  Doty, and Jen  Green, et. al."Reviving Digital Projects"  The Code4Lib Journal  (5)(2008)(http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/685). - Building new digital applications is often exciting and fulfilling, but grinding out voluminous documentation for them is not. The only thing that is worse is trying to maintain or migrate an old system only to find that the inner workings of said system are, in the words of Churchill, "a riddle wrapped in a mystery cloaked in an enigma." Of course, this isn't new: computer specialists have been wrestling with this problem since there were computer specialists. However, each new generation rediscovers this problem afresh, and it bears repeating. In this paper, the authors describe their travails reviving the University of Michigan Library's Online Atlas of Michigan Plants and offer cogent guidelines to consider when contemplating reviving other abandoned systems. - CB

Zuber, Peter A. "A Study of Institutional Repository Holdings by Academic Discipline"  D-Lib Magazine  14(11/12)(2008)(http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november08/zuber/11zuber.html). - Based on a sample of forty-one four-year U.S. institutions with over 15,000 students, Zuber found that institutional repositories haven't yet attracted documents from a wide range of disciplines, that disciplines with a history of preprint/e-print use are the main repository contributors, and that most repositories are not using incentives for deposit, such as a "most popular" feature. Eighteen of the 41 institutions had institutional repositories, with nine evaluating or launching one. - CB

Samuelson, Pamela. "The Audacity of the Google Book Search Settlement"  The Huffington Post  (10 August 2009)(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pamela-samuelson/the-audacity-of-the-googl_b_255490.html). - As the official September 4, 2009 deadline has approached for filing an objection to the Google Book Search Copyright Class Action Settlement, there has been a frenzy of commentary about it. Pamela Samuelson's post is a good place to start to understand the controversy and how it could affect about 22 million authors who have published books in the U.S. since 1923. Also see her follow-up post, "Why Is the Antitrust Division Investigating the Google Book Search Settlement?" - CB

Band, Jonathan. A Guide for the Perplexed: Libraries & the Google Library Project Settlement  Washington, DC: Association of Research Libraries and the American Library Association, 2008.(http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/google-settlement-13nov08.pdf). - Few copyright cases are as important as the lawsuit brought against Google by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers (The Authors Guild, Inc., et al. v. Google Inc.) over Google Book Search. There is a tentative joint settlement for this lawsuit; however the document is over 200 pages long and it is complex. Needless to say, you are unlikely to want to try to decipher the whole thing yourself. Fortunately, Band, a noted intellectual property expert, has done that for you in a svelte, comprehensible 23-page document. - CB

Salaway, Gail, Judith B.  Caruso, and Mark R.  Nelson. The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2008  Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2008.(http://connect.educause.edu/Library/ECAR/TheECARStudyofUndergradua/47485). - This study presents the results of a 2008 survey of information technology use by selected categories of U.S. higher education students (i.e., freshmen, seniors, and community college students) as well as focus group findings from that population. The sample included 27,317 students from 98 institutions. Although we tend to think of today's students as the "Net Generation," 46% of respondents did not own a desktop computer and 20% did not own a laptop (all figures rounded). Nonetheless, students averaged 20 hours a week online. The library Web site (93%), social network sites (85%), text messaging (84%), course management systems (82%), downloading music and videos (77%), and instant messaging (74%) were popular online destinations and activities. Online content creation was a much less frequent activity, ranging from 47% who put up content on photo and video sites to 17% engaged in social bookmarking. - CB

Zorich, Diane M., Gunter  Waibel, and Ricky  Erway. Beyond the Silos of the LAMs: Collaboration among Libraries, Archives and Museums  Dublin, OH: OCLC Programs and Research, 2008.(http://www.oclc.org/programs/publications/reports/2008-05.pdf). - Collaboration between libraries, archives, and museums. It sounds like a good idea, but how to make it work? To find out, RLG Programs held one-day workshops at the University of Edinburgh, Princeton University, the Smithsonian Institution, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and Yale University. It also had phone conversations and meetings with thought leaders and representatives of other RLG Programs partners. This report summarizes its findings, and offers guidance about how to effectively collaborate - CB

Albanese, Andrew. "Senate Passes Orphan Works Bill; 'PRO IP' Bill Headed to President's Desk"  Library Journal  (30 September 2008)(http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6600674.html?nid=2673&rid=reg_visitor_id&source=title). - Two very important copyright bills have been acted on by Congress recently. The Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008 has been passed by the House. Both the House and the Senate have passed the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act (PRO-IP Act), which is being sent for the President's signature. ALA has issued a call to action about the Orphan Works Act. Albanese's article provides a quick summary of the bills, then discusses the Orphan Works Act in more detail. - CB

Council on Library and Information Resources, . No Brief Candle: Reconceiving Research Libraries for the 21st Century  Washington, DC: Council on Library and Information Resources, 2008.(http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub142/pub142.pdf). - This report deals with the challenging question of how research libraries should reinvent themselves to deal with rapidly developing digital technologies and other thorny 21st century issues. The first part of the report presents proceedings from a February 2008 symposium held by the Council on Library and Information Resources to explore this topic. It also contains recommendations derived from that symposium and from the second part of the report, which contains essays by Paul N. Courant, Andrew Dillon, Richard E. Luce, Stephen G. Nichols, Daphnee Rentfrow, Abby Smith, Kate Wittenberg, and Lee L. Zia. CLIR President Charles Henry sums it up this way: "This report demands change. Common themes include collaboration between librarians, faculty, and information technology experts to articulate strategies and tactical approaches to a rapidly changing environment. This represents a broad research agenda that cannot be executed by a single profession. We are asked collectively to rethink current hiring practices, to provide for new career paths and opportunities for professional development, and to consider redefining libraries as multi-institutional entities. The latter entails a mandate to eliminate redundancy by calibrating resources, staff, and infrastructure functions to the collective enterprise of the federated institutions. This transcends the traditional concept of a library (and by extension a university or college) while preserving the programmatic strengths and mission of the individual schools, and in fact should enhance intellectual productivity in a far more cost-effective fashion." - CB

Wilbanks, John. "Public Domain, Copyright Licenses and the Freedom to Integrate Science"  Journal of Science Communication  7(2)(2008)(http://jcom.sissa.it/archive/07/02/Jcom0702(2008)C04/). - In this article, John Wilbanks, Vice President of the Science Commons, makes a passionate plea for putting scientific databases in the public domain. He strongly argues against the use of Creative Commons licenses (or other "Free/Libre/Open" licenses) for this purpose. For example, he explains the problem with licenses that require attribution in the context of database integration and federation, which he calls the "cascading attribution" problem: "Would a scientist need to attribute 40,000 data depositors in the event of a query across 40,000 data sets? How does this relate to the evolved norms of citation within a discipline, and does the attribution requirement indeed conflict with accepted norms in some disciplines? Indeed, failing to give attribution to all 40,000 sources could be the basis for a copyright infringement suit at worst, and at best, imposes a significant transaction cost on the scientist using the data." As "open data" moves front and center, these are issues worth carefully thinking about. - CB

Fisher, Julian H. "Scholarly Publishing Re-invented: Real Costs and Real Freedoms"  Journal of Electronic Publishing  11(2)(2008)(http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3336451.0011.204). - In discussions of the "gold road" to open access (open access journals), the focus is often on major open access publishers (e.g., BioMed Central) or "hybrid" publishers (e.g., Springer Open Choice), which offer per-article open access for a fee. Since both types of publishers rely heavily on publication fees to support open access, the analysis of the gold road option inevitably focuses on those fees and how they can be paid. However, for about two decades there has been another open access journal option that, while it has flourished, is often overlooked: what Tom Wilson calls the "Platinum Route." This strategy offers low-cost open access journal publishing without author fees, utilizing open source journal publishing systems and subsidized or low-cost technical infrastructure. Fisher's article makes the case for this type of open access journal publishing, often using the Scholarly Exchange, an open access journal publishing service, as an example (Fisher is one of its founders). How cheap can it be to publish such an e-journal? Fisher says: "My estimate is that a journal with 50 articles in a year could be published for under $4,000; double the number of articles, and the cost goes up to just over $7,000. At 250 articles a year, the cost is under $17,000. If the journal chose not to provide copy editing or XML conversion and tagging--two of the larger costs--the totals would be $1,200, $1,650, and $3,000 respectively." - CB

Jelinkova, Klara, Terezsa  Carvalho, and Dorette  Kerian, et. al."Creating a Five-Minute Conversation about Cyberinfrastructure"  EDUCAUSE Quarterly  31(2)(2008): 78-82. (http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/EQM08211.pdf). - This article provides a very concise summary of why cyberinfrastructure is important in higher education. It also offers a strategy for promoting cyberinfrastructure on campus. While it's intended to "to help you compose a five-minute conversation on cyberinfrastructure appropriate for various audiences," it also serves as a useful primer for readers who may be a little fuzzy on the potentials of cyberinfrastructure. A helpful list of EDUCAUSE cyberinfrastructure resources is included in the article. - CB

Harnad, Stevan. "The Two Forms of OA Have Been Defined: They Now Need Value-Neutral Names"  Open Access Archivangelism  (3 May 2008)(http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/400-The-Two-Forms-of-OA-Have-Been-Defined-They-Now-Need-Value-Neutral-Names.html). - One of the key problems of the open access movement has been to define what "open access" really means. Various manifestos have put forward varying definitions (e.g., the Budapest, Bethesda, and Berlin declarations) and Stevan Harnad has put forth his own definition at various times (e,g., see "Re: Free Access vs. Open Access"). Now, Stevan Harnad and Peter Suber are working together to disambiguate the term. In short, they identify two types of open access: (1) free of "price barriers" (i.e., available at no charge), and (2) free of both "price" and "permission barriers" (i.e., no unnecessary copyright and licensing restrictions that inhibit re-use). Initially, the terms "weak OA" and "strong OA" seemed suitable, but, on further reflection, the term "weak" seemed to have "pejorative connotations." New terminology is being considered, such as "basic OA" and "full OA." While this may seem like an abstract exercise, their work will have important real-world impacts, and it will help diminish confusion about the goals of the movement among its advocates, its opponents, and the scholarly community. - CB

Nadella, Satya . "Book Search Winding Down"  Live Search  (23 May 2008)(http://blogs.msdn.com/livesearch/archive/2008/05/23/book-search-winding-down.aspx). - Microsoft has announced that it will end its Live Book Search and Live Search Academic projects and focus instead on indexing library and publisher book content in those organizations' digital repositories. Since Microsoft has been a significant funding source for the digitization efforts of the Open Content Alliance, this was bad news for the Internet Archive and the research libraries participating in that group; however, Microsoft said that it was "removing our contractual restrictions placed on the digitized library content and making the scanning equipment available to our digitization partners and libraries to continue digitization programs." About 750,000 books were digitized as a result of Microsoft's projects. Read more about it at "Microsoft Abandons Book Scan Plan," "Microsoft Abandons Digitization," and "Why Killing Live Book Search Is Good for the Future of Books." - CB

Nguyen, Thinh. Open Doors and Open Minds: What Faculty Authors Can Do to Ensure Open Access to Their Work through Their Institution  Cambridge, MA and Washington, DC: SPARC and Science Commons, 2008.(http://www.arl.org/sparc/bm~doc/opendoors_v1.pdf). - Building on the momentum created by Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences open access mandate, this white paper outlines how faculty at other institutions can effectively enact similar mandates and establish appropriate university licenses to give their institutions the necessary rights to archive their scholarly works in institutional repositories. - CB

"Georgia State University Sued over E-Reserves "  Library Journal Academic Newswire  ( 17 April 2008)(http://www.libraryjournal.com/info/CA6552504.html?nid=2673#news1). - Backed by the Association of American Publishers, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and SAGE Publications have sued Georgia State University alleging "systematic, widespread and unauthorized copying and distribution of a vast amount of copyrighted works" via GSU's e-reserves, course management, and other systems. The defendants named in the suit are the GSU President, Provost, Dean of Libraries, and Associate Provost for Information Systems and Technology. The suit has sparked controversy about digital copyright issues, sovereign immunity protection for state employees from such suits, and the role of university presses in the scholarly communication system. Here are some postings and articles about the reaction to the suit: "Further Coverage about and Commentary on the Georgia State Digital Copyright Lawsuit," "Georgia State Copyright Infringement Suit Coverage and Commentary," "GSU E-Reserves Suit Moves E-Reserves Discussion into the Light," and "Will the Average University Press Benefit from GSU E-Reserve Suit?." - CB

Gantz, John F., Christopher  Chute, and Alex  Manfrediz, et. al.The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe: An Updated Forecast of Worldwide Information Growth through 2011  Framingham, MA: International Data Corp, 2008.(http://www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-reports/diverse-exploding-digital-universe.pdf). - In 2007, the digital universe held 281 billion gigabytes (281 exabytes), which is about 45 gigabytes of digital information for every person on the planet. By 2011, the digital universe is projected to grow ten-fold to 1.8 zettabytes (1,800 exabytes). According to the report: "the number of digital 'atoms' in the digital universe is already bigger than the number of stars in the universe. And, because the digital universe is expanding by a factor of 10 every five years, in 15 years it will surpass Avogadro's number." (Avogadro's number is 602,200,000,000,000,000,000,000.) - CB

Gillesse, Robert, Judith  Rog, and Astrid  Verheusen. Alternative File Formats for Storing Master Images of Digitisation Projects  Hague: Netherlands: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 2008.(http://www.kb.nl/hrd/dd/dd_links_en_publicaties/publicaties/Alternative%20File%20Formats%20for%20Storing%20Masters%202%201.pdf). - This in-depth study by the Research and Development Department of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (National Library of the Netherlands) found that the best alternatives for master digital images to uncompressed TIF files were JPEG 2000 lossless (53% storage savings) and PNG (40% storage savings). When the master digital image is also the distribution file, JPEG 2000 lossy and JPEG with greater compression were the best formats. - CB

Rieger, Oya Y. Preservation in the Age of Large-Scale Digitization: A White Paper  Washington, DC: Council on Library and Information Resources, 2008.(http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub141/pub141.pdf). - In this white paper, Oya Y. Rieger, Interim Assistant University Librarian for Digital Library and Information Technologies at the Cornell University Library, takes a look at four mass digitization projects (Google Book Search, Microsoft Live Search Books, Open Content Alliance, and the Million Book Project) with particular attention to the long-term access and preservation issues that they raise. She investigates the impact that mass digitization programs will have on library book collections, and she offers 13 recommendations for libraries engaged in such programs to consider. In the recommendation section, she says: "Formulating a joint action plan by the cultural institutions is desirable and will help clarify commonly debated aspects of LSDIs [Large-Scale Digitization Initiatives]. It will be important to bring Google and Microsoft, as well as other commercial leaders, into this conversation. Participating libraries should take advantage of the partners' meetings organized by Google and Microsoft to present and discuss the community's digital preservation concerns and plans. However, it is important to acknowledge that there are institutional differences in opinion, digital library infrastructures, funding models, and strategic goals." - CB

Guterman, Lila. "Celebrations and Tough Questions Follow Harvard's Move to Open Access"  The Chronicle of Higher Education   (21 February 2008) - The adoption of an open access mandate by Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences has received worldwide notice, but it is likely to have an especially strong impact in the U.S. Here's an excerpt from the mandate: "The Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University is committed to disseminating the fruits of its research and scholarship as widely as possible. In keeping with that commitment, the Faculty adopts the following policy: Each Faculty member grants to the President and Fellows of Harvard College permission to make available his or her scholarly articles and to exercise the copyright in those articles. In legal terms, the permission granted by each Faculty member is a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of his or her scholarly articles, in any medium, and to authorize others to do the same, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit. The policy will apply to all scholarly articles written while the person is a member of the Faculty except for any articles completed before the adoption of this policy and any articles for which the Faculty member entered into an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement before the adoption of this policy. The Dean or the Dean's designate will waive application of the policy for a particular article upon written request by a Faculty member explaining the need." Guterman reports on reactions to the mandate, noting that publishers' criticisms have been "muted." As you would expect, Open Access News has extensively covered this development, and it is the best place to get further information (especially see the February 10, 2008 and February 17, 2008 OAN archives). - CB

Borgman, Christine L. Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet    Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. - In this book, Christine L. Borgman, Professor in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA's Graduate School of Education and Information Science, provides a detailed and up-to-date analysis of the scholarly communication system and the issues that it faces. It is a masterful work of scholarship that is unique in its clarity, coherence, and breath and depth of treatment of this important topic. As a scholarly treatise, it is not a book for the casual reader; however, it offers rich rewards. Borgman pays particular attention to data, and, with the emergence of e-science and other e-disciplines and the massive datasets that they can generate, this is a challenging area that will only grow in importance. Inside Higher Education has published an interview with Borgman, where she discusses her book. Highly recommended. - CB

Weiss, Rick. "Measure Would Require Free Access to Results of NIH-Funded Research"  Washington Post  (21 December 2007): A33. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/20/AR2007122002115.html). - Open access advocates got an early Christmas present this year as the U.S. Congress passed the "Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008" with the provision for an NIH open access mandate intact. The mandate states: "The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided, That the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law." President Bush is expected to sign the bill shortly. - CB

Johnson, Richard K., and Judy  Luther. The E-only Tipping Point for Journals: What's Ahead in the Print-to-Electronic Transition Zone  Washington, DC: Association of Research Libraries, 2007.(http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/Electronic_Transition.pdf). - Based on interviews with librarians at research libraries and representatives of various publishing industry sectors (excluding commercial publishers), a literature review, and their own extensive experience, the well-known authors of this report predict that the end is near for the print journal: "The role of the printed journal in the institutional marketplace faces a steep decline in the coming 5 to 10 years. Print journals will exist mainly to address specialized needs, users, or business opportunities. Financial imperatives will draw libraries first--and ultimately publishers also--toward a tipping point where it no longer makes sense to subscribe to or publish printed versions of most journals." - CB

Patry, William. "What Does It Mean to Be Pro-IP?"  The Patry Copyright Blog  (10 December 2007)(http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2007/12/what-does-it-mean-to-be-pro-ip.html). - In the U.S. House of Representatives, Reps. John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), Lamar Smith (R-TX), Howard Berman (D-CA), and nine other House members have introduced the "Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2007" (PRO IP). In this lengthy posting on the PRO IP bill, noted copyright lawyer William Patry provides a trenchant analysis of its main provisions. Examining the proposed statutory damages changes in Sec. 104, Patry says: "Under this approach, for one CD the minimum award for non-innocent infringement must be $18,750, for a CD that sells in some stores at an inflated price of $18.99 and may be had for much less from amazon.com or iTunes. The maximum amount of $150,000 then becomes three million, seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars per CD. Now multiple that times a mere ten albums, and one gets a glimpse at the staggering amount that will be routinely sought, not just in suits filed, but more importantly in thousands for cease and desist letters, where grandmothers and parents are shaken down for the acts of their wayward offspring." - CB

"After Years of Effort, Mandatory NIH Public Access Policy Passes Congress"  Library Journal Academic Newswire  (25 October 2007)(http://www.libraryjournal.com/info/CA6494533.html#news1). - Open access advocates got good news in October when the U.S. Senate passed the FY 2008 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations bill with the NIH open access mandate intact. Given that publishers opposed to the mandate lobbied strongly against it and two last minute amendments to the bill that would have weakened or killed the mandate were introduced then withdrawn by Sen. James Inhofe, its intact passage was hardly certain. Nonetheless, the mandate survived, and it reads as follows: "The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided, That the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law." It is likely that publisher resistance will continue during the reconciliation process, and President Bush may veto the bill for reasons unrelated to the mandate. However, OA advocates are optimistic that, given the mandates' show of strength so far, it will become law in the future. - CB

Howard, Jennifer. "Publishers' PR Tactic Angers University Presses and Open-Access Advocates"  The Chronicle of Higher Education  ( 21 September 2007): A13. - As part of its campaign against legislation that would mandate that "all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication," the Association of American Publishers started an initiative called the "Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine" (otherwise known as PRISM). Although it may have been still smarting from January's negative publicity caused by its hiring of public relations specialist Eric Dezenhall (whose proposal has recently been made public), the AAP must have thought it was now safe to move ahead with a new anti-open-access campaign. Unfortunately, the result was a firestorm of criticism over assertions made on the PRISM website, with OA advocate Peter Suber providing one of the most incisive rebuttals. Some AAP members (such as Rockefeller University Press) balked at PRISM's statements, and, subsequently, PRISM reworded some of the more inflammatory rhetoric on the PRISM site. After being approved by the House, the NIH OA mandate fight has shifted to the Senate, with both sides ramping up their PR efforts. - CB

Mort, David. "Online Information Drives Growth"  Research Information  (August/September 2007)(http://www.researchinformation.info/features/feature.php?feature_id=141). - How's the European online STM publishing business doing? Looks like it's doing really well: sales increased by by 10.5% in 2006 to reach a bit over 1.3 billion euros, and that was after 15% and 16% increases in 2005 and 2004 respectively. Factor in print sales and the European STM publishing industry generated about 2.1 billion euros in sales in 2006. But print is of declining importance, only 38% of sales in 2006 vs. 47% in 2004. You can learn more about related European STM publishing topics, such as recent financial results for major publishers and recent merger activity, in this revealing article. - CB

van der Graaf, Maurits. "DRIVER: Seven Items on a European Agenda for Digital Repositories"  Ariadne  (52)(2007)(http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue52/vandergraf/). - During the last few years, there have been growing number of surveys about digital repositories that have helped to clarify the activities of these important new systems (ARL, CNI, CNI/SURF, DSpace, and MIRACLE Project). Now, the DRIVER Project has added to that knowledgebase with a survey of repository activity in 27 European Union countries. In 15 countries, a "sizeable proportion" of research universities have a repository, in 5 "a few institutions" have repositories, and in 7 there is no known repository activity. The average repository has about 9,000 records. Ninety percent of these records are for textual materials, and 61% are metadata-only records. GNU Eprints is the most commonly used software, followed by DSpace. Check out the article for more details. - CB

Swan, Alma. "What a Difference a Publisher Makes"  OptimalScholarship  (7 July 2007)(http://optimalscholarship.blogspot.com/2007/07/what-difference-publisher-makes.html). - In this posting to her new OptimalScholarship weblog, scholarly communication consultant Alma Swan examines the copy editing of journal articles. Does it add value, subtract value, or both? What are the typical differences between the author's final draft and the copy-edited paper? Are these differences significant? As digital repositories containing e-prints multiply, these issues are increasingly important. Swan discusses pertinent research studies that address these issues, and she discusses the VALREC project, which is developing a tool to alert readers to the differences between article versions. - CB

Brown, Laura, Rebecca  Griffiths, and Matthew  Rascoff, et. al.University Publishing in a Digital Age  New York: Ithaka, 2007.(http://www.ithaka.org/strategic-services/university-publishing). - While the journal publishing activities of university presses are important, the key role that they have played in the scholarly publishing ecology has been book publishing. Scholarly books often have very limited sales, but they are critical to faculty in some disciplines, especially those in the humanities. These disciplines value books highly, and without publishing one or more scholarly books faculty in them cannot get tenure. Unfortunately, the long-term trend has been for universities to require that university presses be increasingly self-sustaining, and this, combined with the very corrosive effect of the serials crisis on academic libraries' monograph budgets, has resulted in presses seeking more profitable sources of income than obscure monographs. By publishing more popular books, they can subsidize the continued publication of scholarly monographs, but not at a level that scholars in book-heavy disciplines would desire, creating a scholarly monograph crisis. Of late, university presses have increasingly been put under the administrative control of academic libraries, new digital/print-on-demand university presses have begun to be established, and there has been increased interest in reexamining the role of traditional university presses. The 69-page Ithaka report is one of the most detailed investigations of how university publishing could evolve. It advocates a stronger role for universities in scholarly publishing; a strategic evaluation of what local scholarly publishing activities should be; a cohesive university-wide approach to publishing activities; the development of scalable, collaborative, cross-institutional publishing infrastructure; the full utilization of online publishing capabilities; strategic capital investment; and vigorous leadership by university administrators, libraries, and presses. It's a provocative, important report that deserves to be widely read; however, while it advocates using a range of economic publishing models tailored to local needs, most discussion is focused on traditional fee-based approaches. - CB

"Who Needs Google? Emory U. Libraries to Scan, Sell Books"  Library Journal Academic Newswire  (7 June 2007)(http://www.libraryjournal.com/info/CA6450053.html#news2). - First the Million Book Project, then the Google Books Library Project, then the Open Content Alliance, and now the Emory University, Kirtas Technologies, and BookSurge partnership. Mass digitization has become the name of the game, and Emory's Woodruff Library has come up with a new spin: digitize books in conjunction with Kirtas, partially funding the effort by selling low-cost print-on-demand copies via BookSurge (see the Emory and BookSurge press releases for additional details). Hard on the heels of the Emory announcement, the University of Maine, the Toronto Public Library, and the Cincinnati Public Library announced that they would follow Emory's lead. If Emory's detailed 2008-2012 strategic plan is any guide, expect more bold moves in the future under the leadership of Vice Provost and Director of Libraries Richard E. Luce. - CB

Australasian Digital Theses Program, . Australasian Digital Theses Program: Membership Survey 2006  Canberra, Australia: Council of Australian University Librarians, 2007.(http://www.caul.edu.au/surveys/adt2006.doc). - This report presents the results of a 2006 survey of Council of Australian University Librarians and Council of New Zealand University Librarians member libraries about their digital theses archiving activities. It contains a number of interesting findings, especially regarding submission rates. It found that when digital theses submission was voluntary, only 17% of theses were deposited; however, when it was mandatory, the rate rose to 95%. Twenty-two universities had a mandatory submission policy in place when the survey was conducted, with another five planning to do so in 2007, which means that 59% of respondents will have a mandate in 2007. More that 90% of respondents offer mediated deposit, with 63% offering mediated deposit only, 7% offering self-deposit only, and 30% offering both options. Three key reasons for the high level of mediated deposit support were conversion, copyright, and software issues. Half of the respondents have completely or partially digitized their print theses, and slightly over half have an institutional repository, with only four of IRs not being used for digital theses support. - CB

Van Orsdel, Lee C., and Kathleen  Born. "Serial Wars"  Library Journal  (15 April 2007)(http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6431958.html). - Library Journal has published its annual review of serials prices. The bottom line: "In 2007, academic libraries saw overall journal price increases just under eight percent for the second year in a row. U.S. titles rose nine percent on average; non-U.S., 7.3 percent." STM journals continued to be quite expensive, with average 2007 prices for the top three disciplines being: $3,429 for Chemistry, $2,865 for Physics, and $2,071 for Engineering. The country with the highest average price per title ($3,362) was the Netherlands. There is considerable discussion of open access issues in this article, and Peter Suber has commented: "This is an excellent picture of where OA stands today. If you have colleagues who want to know what's been happening and only have time for one article, give them this URL." - CB

Baish, Mary Alice. "Librarians as Change Agents: How You Can Help Influence Public Policy in the 110th Congress"  Searcher  15(3)(2007)(http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/mar07/Baish.shtml). - Although it's easy to lose sight of it in the press of day-to-day concerns, this is a very important juncture for US legislation related to to the sweeping changes that digital technology has wrought in the copyright and media/publishing arenas. This article introduces you to the new leadership in the House and the Senate, and it overviews selected legislative issues that are on the table in the 110th Congress. Those issues include circumvention, fair use, net neutrality, open access to government sponsored research, and orphan works (among others). - CB

Suber, Peter. "The Ides of February in Europe: The European Commission Plan for Open Access"  SPARC Open Access Newsletter,  (107)(2007)(http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/03-02-07.htm#ec). - The Ides of February turned out much better for the open access movement in the European Union than the Ides of March did for Caesar, but, while it made significant gains, it did not get an OA mandate from the European Commission. Rather, the European Commission said that it will: "issue specific guidelines on the publication of articles in open repositories after an embargo period." As you may have noticed, publishers of late have become increasingly vocal in their opposition to OA mandates, and different publisher groups have issued a spate of declarations to that effect (e.g., the "Brussels Declaration on STM Publishing"). On the OA side of the equation, a petition supporting an EU OA mandate now has over 24,000 signatures (more still welcome). Suber notes: "The two EC Directorates General most involved in OA policy-making -- Information Society and Media, headed by Vivian Reding, and Research, headed by Janez Potocnik -- are trying to find a diplomatic trail through a minefield. They are eager to show support for the concerns on each side and postpone the day when they will have to alienate one of them." Still, the European Commission made some important commitments to OA, including allocating about 50 million Euros for OA digital repository support and making contributions towards the payment of OA journal publication fees. - CB

Suber, Peter. "Predictions for 2007"  SPARC Open Access Newsletter  (104)(2006)(http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/12-02-06.htm#predictions). - Peter Suber has issued his 2007 open access predictions, and, as usual, they are well worth a read. Among his predictions: OA archiving policies by funding agencies and universities as well as institutional repositories will be unstoppable trends, reluctant publishers will be pushed to allow self-archiving at the same time that publishers who already permit it may try to dampen self-archiving activity with fees and/or embargoes, and new copyright problems will emerge (e.g., "Do machine-generated paraphrases of copyrighted texts infringe copyright?"). - CB

Edwards, Cliff , and Moon  Ihlwan. "Upward Mobility"  BusinessWeek  (4 December 2006): 68-82. (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_49/b4012071.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_technology). - If you think that the US is full of mobile communications junkies now, just wait. South Korea and Japan are leading the way to a new level of mobile service, and Motorola Chief Executive Ed Zander has taken to calling handsets "the device formerly known as the cell phone." The technological keys to this new kingdom will be WiMAX, fuel cell batteries, OLED screens, and near-field communications. Say what? Read the article to find out what these terms mean. - CB

Sale, Arthur. "The Patchwork Mandate"  UTas ePrints  (2006)(http://eprints.utas.edu.au/410/). - You can't get your university administration to mandate deposit of e-prints in your institutional repository. There are voluntary deposit strategies, but Sale notes: "The 'everything else' policies are not worth talking about for long. In the absence of mandates, every encouragement policy known to Man fails to convince more than 15% to 20% of researchers to invest the 5 minutes of time needed to deposit their publications. The percentage does not grow with time." What to do? The answer: work to get departmental mandates. - CB

McDonald, Robert H., and Chuck  Thomas. "Disconnects between Library Culture and Millennial Generation Values"  EDUCAUSE Quarterly  29(4)(2006): 4-6. (http://www.educause.edu/apps/eq/eqm06/eqm0640.asp?bhcp=1). - Are research libraries reaching Millennials? The authors don't think so, and they examine how current library cultural values, technologies, and policies are barriers to libraries seizing new opportunities to serve this important user group. For example, they note: "Dogmatic library protection of privacy inhibits library support for file-sharing, work-sharing, and online trust-based transactions that are increasingly common in online environments, thus limiting seamless integration of Web-based services." Whether you agree or not, this article is worth a read. - CB

Suber, Peter. "Open Access and Quality"  SPARC Open Access Newsletter  (102)(2006)(http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/10-02-06.htm#quality). - Are online open access journals of lower quality than "toll-access" journals? Peter Suber methodically examines this question, mustering and refuting the arguments that support the notion that OA journals are inferior to TA journals. Along the way, the reader learns interesting facts, such as "the Kaufman-Wills report showed that more subscription journals charge author-side fees than OA journals." In his conclusion, he notes: "If the same squeamishness about online dissemination had infected print dissemination in the age of Gutenberg, on the ground that real scholarship was inscribed by hand on goatskin, then every kind of knowledge would have been held back." - CB

Carnevale, Dan. "E-Mail Is for Old People"  The Chronicle of Higher Education  (6 October 2006): A27. (http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i07/07a02701.htm). - OMG, old people still use e-mail! Not teens. According to this article: "A 2005 report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project called 'Teens and Technology' found that teenagers preferred new technology, like instant messaging or text messaging, for talking to friends and use e-mail to communicate with 'old people.' Along the same lines, students interviewed for this article say they still depend on e-mail to communicate with their professors. But many of the students say they would rather send text messages to friends, to reach them wherever they are, than send e-mail messages that might not be seen until hours later." Chat, Facebook, MySpace, podcasts, RSS feeds, and vodcasts are also popular ways to reach the younger crowd, and colleges and universities are trying to adopt to changing communication preferences. - CB

Fisher, William W. , and William  McGeveran. "The Digital Learning Challenge: Obstacles to Educational Uses of Copyrighted Material in the Digital Age"  Social Science Research Network  (2006)(http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=923465). - This report from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School takes an in-depth look at the impact of copyright laws, copyright clearance procedures, DRM technologies, and overly cautious gatekeepers (e.g., universities) on digital learning. It uses four case studies as a starting point for this investigation (e.g., "The need of film studies professors to bypass encryption on DVDs--likely in violation of federal law--in order to show selected film clips to their students"). The authors provide an extensive discussion of potential reforms that may remove the many obstacles to digital learning put in place by these above factors. The authors conclude: "Without question, digital technology provides new opportunities for rich reuses of content in many educational contexts, from the traditional classroom to the cutting-edge openness of Wikipedia. That progress will continue. But significant obstacles also confront educational uses of content. The law itself is often unclear or unfavorable. Pervasive use of DRM and the permissions maze created by the present licensing regime further impede such uses. And educators and intermediaries have too often responded to these problems with inertia or fear rather than action." - CB

Sale, Arthur. "The Acquisition of Open Access Research Articles"  University of Tasmania EPrints Repository  (2006)(http://eprints.comp.utas.edu.au:81/archive/00000375/). - In this e-print, Sale examines what happened when the Department of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, the Queensland University of Technology, and the School of Computing at the University of Tasmania mandated the deposit of article e-prints. Based on an analysis of the deposit data at these academic units, Sale concludes: "What can be estimated is that a university-wide mandatory deposit policy takes at least three years to be (say) 80% effective, if it is the authors themselves who provide their documents. If the repository managers adopt a proactive policy of actively uploading missing documents on behalf of the authors, as at CERN http://public.web.cern.ch/ then the apparent transition will be faster, but the rise of self-archiving might be slowed due to lack of direct author incentive and involvement. Repository managerial promotion and assistance, such as that undertaken by the Library in QUT, matters very significantly under a mandatory policy, although under voluntary policies it seems to be largely a waste of money. . ." - CB

Peterson, Elaine. "Librarian Publishing Preferences and Open-Access Electronic Journals"  E-JASL: The Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship  7(2)(2006)(http://southernlibrarianship.icaap.org/content/v07n02/peterson_e01.htm). - The sample for this study was 100 authors who had published papers "within the last year in an established library journal still available in print format." There was a 60% response rate. What Peterson found with her six-question survey was that, while 80% of authors had considered publishing in an open access journal and 42% had actually done so, only 48% said the following statement was false: "Usually I do not publish in free electronic journals because they are viewed by myself or by my institution as 'lesser' than established journals titles." Moreover, when asked to "rate each of these items when selecting a journal to publish your article," only 7% said that "Free/Open-Access on the Internet" was very important and only 28% said it was important. In her conclusion, Peterson notes: "The written comments indicate that OA titles are not yet on par with their paper/electronic subscription based counterparts. OA editors need to ensure that their journals are peer reviewed, indexed, and of general high quality. Permanence in and of itself can also lend credibility to the title. It also appears that librarians think that even if the journal is indexed and peer reviewed, the editors can do a better job of marketing the title so that more librarians are aware of this new venue for publishing." - CB

Crawford, Walt. "Open Access Perspective Part I: Pioneer Journals: The Arc of Enthusiasm, Five Years Later"  Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large  6(12)(2006)(http://citesandinsights.info/v6i12a.htm). - In this article, Walt Crawford follows up on an earlier study about the long-term survival of free e-journals (see "Getting Past the Arc of Enthusiasm" and "Feedback and Following Up: Getting Past the Arc of Enthusiasm." Five years have passed since his last examination of this topic, and some free e-journals have bit the dust or stopped being freely available; however, he was able to identify 40 free e-journals that "began no later than 1995 and have content as recently as 2004" (including New Horizons in Adult Education and Human Resource Development, which started in 1987). In part two of this article, Crawford conducts a preliminary investigation of 189 more e-journals, which were identified using the Directory of Open Access Journals. - CB

Bakkalbasi, Nisa, Kathleen  Bauer, and Janis  Glover, et. al."Three Options for Citation Tracking: Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science"  Biomedical Digital Libraries  3(7)(2006)(http://www.bio-diglib.com/content/3/1/7). - You want a citation database that gives you the highest number of citations possible for articles. Should you use Google Scholar, Scopus, or Web of Science? This article is "an observational study examining these three databases; comparing citation counts for articles from two disciplines (oncology and condensed matter physics) and two years (1993 and 2003)." Its findings: which database is best depends upon the discipline and the year of publication. - CB

Jacobs, Neil, ed.. Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects  Oxford: Chandos, 2006.(http://www.chandospublishing.com/catalogue/record_detail.php?recordID=103). - If you want to know about open access, look no further. Editor Neil Jacobs has assembled a stellar group of OA experts to write chapters on pertinent OA topics that are organized into five major sections: "Open Access -- History, Definitions and Rationale"; "Open Access and Researchers"; "Open Access and Other Participants"; "The Position Around the World"; and "The Future." The book itself isn't OA, but Peter Suber has identified links to self-archived chapters in his "Self-Archived Chapters in the Neil Jacobs Anthology on OA" Open Access News posting. - CB

Lombardi, Candace. "U.C. System Signs on to Microsoft Book-Scan Project"  CNET News.com  ( 9 June 2006)(http://news.com.com/U.C.+system+signs+on+to+Microsoft+book-scan+project/2100-1025_3-6082258.html). - Microsoft's Windows Live Book Search got a big boost this month when the University of California System and the University of Toronto Libraries agreed to allow it to digitize out-of-copyright books and other material from their collections. UC has over 34 million volumes in its libraries, while Toronto has more than 15 million volumes. In contrast to Google Book Search, Windows Live Book Search takes an "opt-in" approach to digitizing works still under copyright through its Windows Live Books Publisher Program. Because it scans in-copyright books without permission, Google has been sued for copyright infringement by both authors and publishers, including a French publisher. However, Google asserts that its program is justified under fair use provisions since it shows only brief excerpts from books. Moreover, Google will remove books at the request of publishers. More details on the Windows Live Book Search deal can be found in Microsoft's press release. - CB

"Nature Peer Review Trial and Debate"  Nature  (2006)(http://www.nature.com/nature/peerreview/index.html). - Nature is offering another of its stimulating Web debates, this time dealing with the important issue of peer review. Like other Web debates Nature has offered, this one is a series of short position papers that express a wide range of views. However, this time, Nature is trying something new as well: an optional open peer review process for its authors on a trial basis. Of particular note in the debate section are: "Certification in a Digital Era"; "Evolving Peer Review for the Internet"; "An Open, Two-Stage Peer-Review Journal"; "Opening Up the Process"; "Reviving a Culture of Scientific Debate"; and "Wisdom of the Crowds." - CB

Vogele, Colette, Mia  Garlick, and  The Berkman Center Clinical Program in Cyberlaw. Podcasting Legal Guide: Rules for the Revolution  San Francisco: Creative Commons, 2006.(http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/Podcasting_Legal_Guide.pdf). - You've got all the neat gadgets you need to podcast and lined up your distribution service. Ready to rock and roll, right? Wrong. Why? Because, as Lawrence Lessig says in this work's introduction: "Federal law regulates creativity. That regulation is insanely complex. Indeed, the law is more complex today than at any point in our history. It seems the more the lawyers work on the law, the less useable the law becomes." As a podcaster, you are a multimedia publisher. This involves some legal complexities that go beyond textual blogging, which are explained in the first 27 pages of this work. The rest of it is a handy guide to podcasting itself, resources related to podcasting, and relevant legal resources. This work belongs on your virtual bookshelf with the EFF: Legal Guide for Bloggers. - CB

McCullagh, Declan, and Anne  Broache. "House Panel Votes for Net Neutrality"  CNET News.com  (25 May 2006)(http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6077007.html?part=rss&tag=6077007&subj=news). - Could there actually be good news regarding the Net neutrality fight? Well, yes and no. The House Judiciary Committee has approved the Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006, but, according to this article, it was approved because Committee members "were worried that a competing proposal already approved by a different committee last month would diminish their own influence in the future." C'est la guerre. There are at least 6 bills dealing with the Net neutrality issue being considered in Congress (see "Net Neutrality Field in Congress Gets Crowded"), with a wide range of approaches to the issue. Libraries have a lot at stake in the Net neutrality battle, which is why ALA and ARL joined the SavetheInternet.com Coalition. To find out why it's so important, check out "Talking Points on the Importance of 'Net Neutrality,'" "The Net Neutrality Debate: The Basics," "Strong Copyright + DRM + Weak Net Neutrality = Digital Dystopia?," and Why Consumers Demand Internet Freedom--Net Neutrality: Fact vs. Fiction. - CB

Quint, Barbara. "Windows Live Academic Search: The Details"  NewsBreaks & the Weekly News Digest  (17 April 2006)(http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb060417-2.shtml). - There's a new scholarly search engine in town: Windows Live Academic Search (beta version), and, in this article, Quint delves into its specifics (see "Microsoft Offers Alternative to Google Scholar: Windows Live Academic Search" for a quick overview). Microsoft sought the advice of librarians, information school faculty, publishers, and others during the development of Windows Live Academic Search, and it shows. Search results appear on the left-hand side of the screen, and an optional "preview pane" on the right-hand side can display a selected work's fielded abstract, BibTex formatted abstract, or EndNote formatted abstract. Search results can be sorted by relevance, date (oldest), date (newest), author, journal, and conference. A slider bar above the search results can expand or contract the amount of information that's shown for each hit. Another slider bar to the right of the search results can be used to easily scroll through them. And, of course, there are a number of other features. For now, the beta search engine is limited to about six million records for Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Physics journals and conferences. It includes e-prints (see my "A Simple Search Hit Comparison for Google Scholar, OAIster, and Windows Live Academic Search" DigitalKoans posting for a preliminary assessment of its coverage). As you would expect, the release of Windows Live Academic Search created quite a buzz in the blogosphere, and, shortly after its release, Google announced enhancements to Google Scholar. - CB

von Lohmann, Fred. "The Season of Bad Laws, Part 2: Criminal Copyright Infringement, Drug War Style"  DeepLinks  (25 April 2006)(http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004586.php). - A draft copyright bill making the rounds in Congress is causing concern. Under the bill, an attempt to infringe copyright would be a criminal offense as would conspiracy to commit infringement. Law enforcement officials would have the "same criminal and civil forfeiture powers used in drug prosecutions," and wiretapping would be permitted in criminal infringement investigations. Prison terms would be significantly increased for criminal infringement. Works would no longer have to be registered prior to a criminal infringement investigation. Fred von Lohmann says about the bill: "Before they throw people in jail for copyright infringement (especially where the infringement does not involve a commercial motive), the feds should have to prove their case, just like copyright owners in civil cases. They should have to prove, among other things, that infringement took place, that it took place within the applicable statute of limitations, and that the work was properly registered." Also of interest, a short article about the new PERFORM Act (The Season of Bad Laws, Part 3: Banning MP3 Streaming), which "would effectively require music webcasters to use DRM-laden streaming formats." - CB

Harnad, Stevan. "Maximizing Research Impact through Institutional and National Open-Access Self-Archiving Mandates"    (2006)(http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12093/). - A recent study by Tom Wilson ("Institutional Open Archives: Where Are We Now?") investigates item deposit rates at most UK institutional repositories (excluding ETDs where possible). After reviewing his findings, Wilson states: "By any measure it can hardly be claimed that the concept of open archiving has taken off in British universities and I don't think that any of its protagonists would claim otherwise. The movement is at an early stage, with something in the order of 12 per cent of UK universities involved and with a minuscule proportion of the total research output covered by the IOA [Institutional Open Archives]." Little wonder then that open access proponent Stevan Harnad has come to advocate mandatory self-archiving at the institutional and national levels as a solution to low institutional repository deposit rates. (Harnad suggests that there is "a spontaneous 15% baseline rate" for institutional repository deposits.) One might imagine that researchers would resist mandatory deposit; however, Harnad notes that a 2005 study by Alma Swan and Sheridan Brown found that only 5% of researchers would refuse to do so. He further notes that in the three institutions and one department (CERN, Queensland University of Technology, the University of Minho, and the University of Southampton's Department of Electronics and Computer Science) that have mandated deposit, the strategy appears to be working. Will publishers allow self-archiving? Harnad indicates that only 7% of publishers do not allow self-archiving. Why do it? Harnad deftly recaps the open access research impact argument. With possible national-level deposit mandates in the works, such as the American Center for CURES Act of 2005 and the Research Councils UK's Position Statement on Access to Research Outputs, mandatory deposit is a hot topic, and Harnad's heavily linked paper provides a good summary of the pro-mandate position. - CB

Suber, Peter. "Three Gathering Storms That Could Cause Collateral Damage for Open Access"  SPARC Open Access Newsletter  (95)(2006)(http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/03-02-06.htm#collateral). - The Internet is a-changin', and those changes may make old timers long for the days when it was an obscure, purely noncommercial enterprise. In this paper, noted open acces advocate Peter Suber previews three potential changes that you should be aware of: (1) the WIPO "Treaty on the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations," (2) threats to Net neutrality, and (3) fees for bulk e-mailers to circumvent major e-mail services' spam filters. These potential changes may not sound alarming, but they are harbingers of deeper changes in the fundamental nature of the Internet that may have significant long-term implications. Let's take one of them as an example: AOL and Yahoo want to charge bulk e-mailers to avoid spam filters. The implications? Here's what Suber says: "The program is insidious and would lead almost everyone to pay the fees if they could--account holders at Yahoo and AOL and the bulk mailers who send to Yahoo and AOL addresses. It would also lead other email providers to adopt similar policies or fear that they were leaving money on the table. This would harm everyone who sends or receives non-spam mass mailings. This newsletter is an example but only one of many. The program would harm every form of OA content delivered by email, from emailed eprints and listserv postings to journal current-awareness messages like tables of contents and the results of stored searches. It would hurt non-profit groups and informal communities that network by email, including academic and political groups. Cash-strapped operations relying on email for distribution would either be forced to shut down or face higher costs that threaten their stability." - CB

Rehmann, Ulf. "Documenta Mathematica: A Community-Driven Scientific Journal"  High Energy Physics Libraries Webzine  (October 2003)(http://library.cern.ch/HEPLW/8/papers/3/). - This article provides a brief overview of Documenta Mathematica, a free peer-reviewed mathematics e-journal (founded in 1996) that also has a low-cost annual print-on-demand edition. What did it cost to produce the e-version of this journal in 1999? The author, who is the journal's Technical Managing Editor, estimates it cost approximately 200 euros. Of course, the authors, editors, and referees were not paid; however, the author notes that this is typical for mathematics journals, which also usually require authors to submit TeX typeset files for their manuscripts. Assuming a modest 400 libraries worldwide accessed the journal, the author estimates that they saved 128,800 euros compared to what it would have cost if the journal were priced like the typical mathematics journal. (The author does not attempt to calculate the costs of readers printing e-journal articles.) The author also provides production cost information for the proceedings of the 1998 International Congress of Mathematicians. - CB

OCLC Online Computer Library Center, . Libraries: How They Stack Up  Dublin, OH: OCLC Online Computer Library Center, 2003.(http://www5.oclc.org/downloads/community/librariesstackup.pdf). - How much do you think that U.S. libraries spend each year? If you said $14 billion dollars, you're right according to an estimate in this new OCLC document. That's about half of the $31 billion that libraries spend worldwide. How many people worldwide are registered library users? One out of every six. Think that libraries are irrelevant in the age of Amazon.com? U.S. libraries circulate almost four times as many items each day as Amazon handles, and that's nearly as many items as FedEx ships each day. If you find such statistics about the economic aspects of libraries intriguing, this 6-page compilation of facts from diverse sources is for you. - CB

Jacobs, Neil. "Digital Repositories in UK Universities and Colleges"  FreePint  (200)(2006)(http://www.freepint.com/issues/160206.htm#feature). - In 1993, the UK did a smart thing: it established the UK Joint Information Systems Committee (or JISC for short). Since then, JISC-funded technology projects have kept UK academic libraries on the cutting edge of innovative networked services and technologies. Little wonder then that UK libraries have been leaders in the rapidly evolving movement to develop institutional repositories and other types of digital archives. As the manager the JISC Digital Repositories development programme, Neil Jacobs knows this important work well, and, in this article, he provides a link-packed, amazingly compact bird's-eye view of it that is authoritative and highly readable. Don't just zip through the short text. Rather, take the time to explore the numerous project links. You'll be glad that you did. - CB

Susman, Thomas M., David J.  Carter, and  Ropes & Gray LLP, et. al.Publisher Mergers: A Consumer-Based Approach to Antitrust Analysis  Washington, DC: Information Access Alliance, 2003.(http://www.informationaccess.org/WhitePaperV2Final.pdf). - This report discusses the critical importance of the wide dissemination of legal and research information, analyzes the skyrocketing cost of scholarly journals and its effect on libraries' ability to purchase these journals, examines the roles of publisher mergers in such price increases, and proposes new criteria for antitrust regulators to use in evaluating publisher mergers that are based on how libraries make collection development decisions. The focus is on two sectors of the scholarly publishing marketplace that have been most heavily impacted by cost increases: legal and STM (scientific, technical, and medical) information. A key argument of the report is that the scholarly publishing marketplace has exceptional characteristics: journals on the same topic provide unique content and they do not substitute for each other. Consequently, demand is often "inelastic": driven by researchers' needs for a journal's specific content, libraries are often reluctant to cancel its subscription, even in the face of significant cost increases. However, given budget constraints and constantly rising costs, libraries are forced to make decisions about what journals to cut, and, when they do so, they frequently group journals into broad academic fields, analyzing relative price and usage factors. This analysis results in journals in different sub-disciplines being in competition with each other for library funding despite the fact that their content may have little overlap. Antitrust regulators may not be aware of this collection development strategy and believe that journals in different sub-disciplines do not compete with each other. This new view of the dynamics of the library marketplace has profound implications for how antitrust analysis should be conducted: "Market definition would be based on broad portfolios of journals consistent with the portfolios that libraries construct when selecting journals, rather than on narrow content-based comparisons that fail to take account of the competition for library dollars between journals with little content overlap." - CB

Sohn, Gigi. "Don't Blow It, Congress"  CNET News.com  (6 February 2006)(http://news.com.com/Dont+blow+it%2C+Congress/2010-1023_3-6035094.html?tag=fd_carsl). - "Net neutrality" isn't exactly a phrase that immediately stirs the blood. In fact, it might evoke a "so what?" mental yawn. But, a closer look suggests that the future of the Internet as a digital medium that supports vigorous innovation and free-flowing information may be at stake. Here's how EDUCAUSE defines the term in its useful Net Neutrality Web page: "'Net neutrality' is the term used to describe the concept of keeping the Internet open to all lawful content, information, applications, and equipment. There is increasing concern that the owners of the local broadband connections (usually either the cable or telephone company) may block or discriminate against certain Internet users or applications in order to give an advantage to their own services." In this article, Gigi Sohn, President of Public Knowledge, lays out the case for Congress to enact legislation that will ensure Net neutrality in a rapidly changing telecommunications landscape. Will Congress enact such legislation? Maybe not, in spite of Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet, saying that without Net neutrality: "We risk losing the Internet as a catalyst for consumer choice, for economic growth, for technological innovation and for global competitiveness" (see "Politicos Divided on Need for 'Net Neutrality' Mandate"). Noted legal scholar Lawrence Lessig has also weighed in on the issue in his Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation testimony, which is also well worth reading. - CB

Kichuk, Diana. "Electronic Journal Supplementary Content, Browser Plug-ins, and the Transformation of Reading"  Serials Review  29(2)(2003): 103-116 . - In this article, the author examines the need for plug-ins and add-ons to fully access the content of scholarly journals in the electronic collection of the Canadian National Site Licensing Project. Primary content access requires support for the ASCII, BibTeX, DVI, HTML, LaTeX, PDF, PostScript, and TeX file formats. Supplementary content requires support for numerous file formats (listed in a table in the printed version of the article that takes up most of a page). Discussing the impact of this support requirement on her library (the University of Saskatchewan Library), the author says that: "An ever-expanding list of plug-in and add-on viewers and players is required to access this new content: word-processing files, 3D images, animations, video clips, virtual reality, and chemical-structure data, audio files, and interactive applications. Anecdotal evidence indicates a wide range of patron response, from bewilderment and avoidance to full acceptance and excitement." While this supplemental content is not yet prevalent, it raises immediate support issues--if libraries want to provide users with access to the entire article, they must install and maintain a growing collection of plug-ins and add-ons, some of which do not have MIME types and may conflict with plug-ins and add-ons that do. Moreover, free plug-ins and add-ons may have limited functionality; the full version may need to be licensed to provide adequate access. Plug-ins and add-ons constantly change, and staff must track these changes and install updates. If plug-in and add-on support is difficult for technical staff in the library, how easy will it be for users to perform similar tasks on their home and office computers? I'll add that what is supplemental content multimedia use today may be primary content multimedia use tomorrow as e-journals move beyond mimicking print journals and evolve into new forms that more fully exploit their unique capabilities. Then the fun really begins. - CB

Samuelson, Pamela. "Mapping the Digital Public Domain: Threats and Opportunities"  Law and Contemporary Problems   66(1 and 2)(Winter/Spring 2003): 147-171. (http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?66+Law+&+Contemp.+Probs.+147+(WinterSpring+2003)). - In this article, noted legal scholar Pamela Samuelson presents a "map" of the public domain, provides an in-depth examination of threats to it in the digital environment (e.g., the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, the Collections of Information Anti-Piracy Act, the Copyright Term Extension Act, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act), and discusses ways to foster the "digital commons." The analysis of threats is the largest and most interesting section of the article, and it weighs the relative threat level of the laws and bills and points out that the they do not stand alone--there are "potential synergies" between them that further endanger the public domain. In the paper's conclusion, the author highlights the importance of appropriate action by Congress, state legislatures, and the courts to preserve the public domain; indicates that the public can always "just say no to licensing and to technically protected content"; and emphasizes that public domain and fair use advocates need a "positive agenda" that "should be grounded on the realization that information is not only or mainly a commodity; it is also a critically important resource and input to learning, culture, competition, innovation, and democratic discourse." (This article is part of a special issue on the public domain that includes twelve other articles.) - CB

Crawford, Walt. "Library 2.0 and 'Library 2.0'"  Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large  6(2)(2006): 1-32. (http://cites.boisestate.edu/civ6i2.pdf). - Library 2.0 is all the buzz, but what is it really? That's the question that Walt Crawford set out to answer. The result is a 32-page essay that includes 62 views, 7 definitions, many perspectives by library bloggers and others, and, of course, Crawford's incisive analysis of it all. By far, this is the definitive piece on this rather amorphous topic. Crawford draws a distinction between Library 2.0, the conceptual aggregate that embodies a variety of software and service innovations, and "Library 2.0," the "bandwagon." He favors the former, but feels the latter "carries too much baggage." This is Crawford at his best, and, love it or hate it, it's a stimulating article that informs and provokes serious thought. (See also his follow-up article.) - CB

McDonald, John. "'No One Uses Them So Why Should We Keep Them?'--Scenarios for Print Issue Retention"  Against the Grain  15(2)(2003): 22, 24. - Dump print? A decade ago it would have been inconceivable, now there is a special issue of Against the Grain that has a series of articles on this crucial topic. In his thought provoking contribution to the issue, McDonald overviews the key questions related to the print retention controversy, examines the pros and cons, and provides four possible scenarios for dealing with it: provide access to both formats, offer limited print access, provide electronic access with print being purchased for archival use only, and offer electronic access only. Other articles of note in the special issue include "Collaborative Print Retention Pilot Projects," "The Future of the Hardcopy Journal," "The Hybrid Environment: Electronic-Only Versus Print Retention," and "Libraries in Transition: Impact of Print and Electronic Journal Access." Print retention is one of the most significant long-term decisions that any library can make. It is especially critical for academic and research libraries. McDonald's article and the other articles in this special issue help initiate what I hope will be a long, careful, and thoughtful debate on a topic of considerable social significance. - CB

OCLC Library & Information Center, . Five-Year Information Format Trends  Dublin, OH: OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc., 2003.(http://www5.oclc.org/downloads/community/informationtrends.pdf). - This eight-page report, which was distributed at the February 2003 OCLC Members Council meeting, discusses information format trends during the next five years in four areas: traditional materials (audiovisual media, books, electronic books, journals and newspapers, and print-on-demand works), scholarly materials (articles, books, electronic course management materials, e-print archives, journals, and theses and dissertations), digitization projects (commercial, national, and state and local projects), and Web resources. It organizes and briefly analyzes a wide range of facts and predictions, which are drawn from diverse sources that range from traditional library serials to Weblogs, in order to give the reader a concise overview of key trends in each area. One significant finding is that "the universe of materials that a library must assess, manage and disseminate is not simply shifting to a new set or type of materials, but rather building into a much more complex universe of new and old, commodity and unique, published and unpublished, physical and virtual." - CB

"Google Free to Cache: Court"  Red Herring  (26 January 2006)(http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=15493&hed=Google+Free+to+Cache%3A+Court&sector=Industries&subsector=InternetAndServices#). - Guess what? It's not the end of the world as we know it. A federal district court in Nevada has ruled in Field v. Google that Google's Website indexing practices don't violate copyright law. Just imagine if the ruling had gone the other way. Time to get permission from billions of Websites' owners (and any other copyright owners with material on those Websites) before indexing them. Ouch! In a related press release from EFF, Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney, says: "The ruling should also help Google in defending against the lawsuit brought by book publishers over its Google Library Project, as well as assisting organizations like the Internet Archive that rely on caching." I don't know about you, but I feel fine about this copyright ruling (for a change). - CB

Fitzgerald, Brian F., Jessica M.  Coates, and Suzanne M.  Lewis, eds. Open Content Licensing: Cultivating the Creative Commons  Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2007.(http://eprints.qut.edu.au/archive/00006677/). - This freely available e-book presents papers from the 2005 Open Content Licensing: Cultivating the Creative Commons conference in Brisbane, Australia. It includes two papers by Lawrence Lessig: "Does Copyright Have Limits? Eldred v. Ashcroft and Its Aftermath" and "The Vision for the Creative Commons: What Are We and Where Are We Headed? Free Culture." While much of the book has an Australian slant, the underlying issues raised about open content licenses, such as Creative Commons licenses, in areas such as computer games, creative industries, and government resonate worldwide. - CB

Lynch, Clifford A. "Institutional Repositories: Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship in the Digital Age"  ARL: A Bimonthly Report on Research Library Issues and Actions from ARL, CNI, and SPARC  (February 2003): 1-7. (http://www.arl.org/newsltr/226/ir.html). - In this article, Clifford A. Lynch, with his usual clarity and insight, overviews institutional repositories, discusses their strategic importance, examines key issues, considers how they may promote infrastructure standards, and speculates on possible future developments. He defines an institutional repository as "a set of services that a university offers to the members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and its community members." A repository could contain research materials (including data files), teaching materials, and documentation about the institution. A critical function of a repository is the long-term preservation of this information. Lynch voices three concerns about repositories. First, they should not become a tool for enforcing administrative control over faculty works. Second, they should not be unduly constrained by policies designed to promote other agendas such as creating virtual e-journals (although they may contribute to this effort by providing essential infrastructure that supports it). Third, they should not be established without institutions making well-considered, long-term commitments to their operation. On this point, he notes that: "Stewardship is easy and inexpensive to claim; it is expensive and difficult to honor, and perhaps it will prove to be all too easy to later abdicate." Lynch feels that repositories will promote progress in the areas of preservation formats, identifiers, and digital rights management. Over time, most higher education institutions will have repositories, and other types of institutions may as well. The "federation" of repositories will become an increasingly important area for experimentation. - CB

Crow, Raym. SPARC Institutional Repository Checklist and Resource Guide  Washington, DC: The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, 2002.(http://www.arl.org/sparc/IR/IR_Guide_v1.pdf). - If you are thinking about establishing an institutional repository, this SPARC publication is an excellent place to start. After a short introduction, the author immediately tackles the critical issue of how to persuade university administrators and faculty to support and participate in an institutional repository, and he briefly examines the role of librarians in the repository. He next examines management and policy issues related to different types of content (such as published material, preprints, and electronic theses and dissertations), user communities, and distribution licenses. Last, he examines technical and system issues, such as costs, migration, document formats, preservation, scalability, handles, interoperability, OAI and searching, and rights management. In many sections of the document, there are short lists of relevant publications and resources. A bibliography and an institutional repository list completes the document. Highly recommended. - CB

Suber, Peter. "The U.S. CURES Act Would Mandate OA"  SPARC Open Access Newsletter  (93)(2006)(http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/01-02-06.htm#cures). - In this article, Suber overviews and analyzes the American Center for CURES Act of 2005 (S.2104). This important bill would mandate open access to all research funded in whole or part by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which is roughly half of all non-classified federally funded research. Deposit of the final, peer-reviewed versions of articles would be required when they were accepted, and any access embargo periods could only last six months. Non-compliance by grantees could result in the denial of future funding. Government employees' articles would also covered by the bill. - CB

Sale, Arthur. "Comparison of IR Content Policies in Australia"    (2005)(http://eprints.comp.utas.edu.au:81/archive/00000230/). - In this e-print, Arthur Sale, Professor of Computing at the University of Tasmania, analyzes e-print deposit activity at seven Australian universities for 2004 and 2005 publications (there is partial 2005 data through early December). In brief, he found that mandating deposit resulted in much higher levels of activity than either voluntary deposit without special support for authors by repository staff or with such support. The one university with mandated deposit (Queensland University of Technology) had four times the deposit rate of the closest voluntary deposit university for 2005 publications. No voluntary deposit university had a rate higher than 10% for 2005 publications; QUT's rate is about 40%, and it is projected to be near 60% by the end of 2005. The author concludes: "It is well overdue for DEST to rule that postprints of all research that Australian universities report to DEST must be deposited in an institutional repository, to take effect say for 2007. The costs to the universities are ridiculously small; the benefits from increased global research impact, and enabling Australians to access the research they fund through the public purse, are enormous." (DEST is the Australian Department of Science Education and Technology.) - CB

IEEE Technical Committee on Digital Libraries Bulletin  2(1)(2005) - This special issue of the IEEE TCDL Bulletin presents brief summaries of poster sessions and demos from the Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL 2005). Example articles include "aDORe, A Modular and Standards-Based Digital Object Repository at the Los Alamos National Laboratory," "If You Harvest arXiv.org, Will They Come?," "Metadata for Phonograph Records: Facilitating New Forms of Use and Access to Analog Sound Recordings," "The Musica Colonial Project," and "Video Recommendations for the Open Video Project." This issue is a good way to get a quick look at current developments in the digital library field. - CB

Surratt, Brian E.. "ETD Release Policies in American ARL Institutions: A Preliminary Study"    (2005)(http://txspace.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/2483). - This interesting eprint of a paper presented at the ETD2005 Conference at the University of New South Wales examines the policies at US ARL institutions that govern the accessibility of electronic theses and dissertations. Surratt looks at 28 such policies that are Web accessible, and he groups them into six categories based on whether ETDs are available through either open access or restricted access or they are withheld. In addition to his paper, Surratt makes available the Powerpoint of his presentation and both an Excel spreadsheet and an Access database with his data. This is a unique, valuable resource that will be of special interest to those engaged in developing ETD policies and procedures. - CB

Geist, Michael. "Sony's Long-Term Rootkit CD Woes"  BBC News  (21 November 2005)(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4456970.stm). - In this article, Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, overviews the Sony BMG "rootkit" fiasco. In this sad tale, one of the planet's largest entertainment companies deploys digital rights protection software from First4Internet on some of its music CDs. Noted computer security expert Mark Russinovich discovers this, is alarmed about the risks involved, and posts "Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far," which triggers a firestorm of subsequent criticism against Sony. The rootkit, which has no uninstaller, proves very difficult to remove, and it has security holes that hackers start to exploit (e.g., see "First Trojan Using Sony DRM Spotted"). Making matters worse, the EFF posts an analysis of the 3,000+ word license that governs use of the protected CDs, which has novel provisions such as: "If you file for bankruptcy, you have to delete all the music on your computer" (EFF's wording). Then came the lawsuits (e.g., see "Sony Sued For Rootkit Copy Protection" and "SonyBMG Litigation and Rootkit Info"). Sony BMG stopped production (see "Sony Halts Production of 'Rootkit' CDs"); however, it planned to continue using a second DRM software package from SunnComm on CDs that some analysts feel is spyware (yes, they were using two: see "Sony Shipping Spyware from SunnComm, Too"). The IT industry ramped up efforts to eradicate the rootkit (e.g., see "Microsoft Will Wipe Sony's 'Rootkit'"), and Sony BMG offered a First4Internet uninstaller. Unfortunately, the Sony BMG uninstaller created new security holes (see "Sony's Web-Based Uninstaller Opens a Big Security Hole; Sony to Recall Discs"). And the uninstaller for the SunnComm MediaMax RRM system also opened security holes (see "Not Again! Uninstaller for Other Sony DRM Also Opens Huge Security Hole"). To top it off, Sony BMG's rootkit may be violating some copyrights (see "Does Sony's Copy Protection Infringe Copyrights?"), and Sony BMG may have known about security issues before in advance of the Russinovich disclosure (see "Sony BMG's Costly Silence"). Believe it or not, there's more to the story. Geist's recap is the best I've seen so far. While the focus has been on the inadequacies of the DRM technologies Sony BMG deployed, don't lose sight of this: music CDs are now being licensed by major companies. Bye bye first sale rights. Bye bye fair use rights. The license rules. (If you want to see if you have bought a rootkit CD, check out the Sony BMG list.) - CB

Mugridge, Rebecca L.. Managing Digitization Activities. SPEC Kit 294  Washington, DC: Association of Research Libraries, 2006.(http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/spec294web.pdf). - With a response rate of 55% (68 libraries out of 123), this survey provides a snapshot of ARL libraries digitization efforts as of early 2006. Here is a quick summary of the survey's scope from the introduction: "This SPEC survey was designed to identify the purposes of ARL member libraries' digitization efforts, the organizational structures these libraries use to manage digital initiatives, whether and how staff have been reassigned to support digitization activities, where funding to sustain digital activities originated and how that funding is allocated, how priorities are determined, whether libraries are outsourcing any digitization work, and how the success of libraries' digital activities has been assessed. The focus of the survey was on the digitization of existing library materials, rather than the creation of born-digital objects." Overall, the survey suggests that digitization is still a fledgeling activity at many ARL libraries: only 19 respondents (30%) had a dedicated budget for both start-up and ongoing operations and only 6 (9.5%) had a dedicated start-up budget, but no dedicated ongoing budget. Only 28 of a total of 188 librarians from 48 reporting libraries who did digitization work did so full-time, with the rest dedicating "only a small portion of their time on this activity." The few reported budgets had wide ranges, resulting in means of $97,027 for start-up budgets and $303,916 for ongoing budgets. - CB

Plutchak, T. Scott. "The Impact of Open Access"  Journal of the Medical Library Association  93(4)(2005): 419-421. (http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1250314). - Plutchak, editor of the Journal of the Medical Library Association, was "astonished" when he looked at this open access journal's 6/04-5/05 use statistics: it had had over 20,000 unique users visit the journal even though the Medical Library Association, which publishes the journal, only has around 4,500 members. Thinking that the number was inflated because of technical reasons, he contacted PubMed Central, who hosts the journal, and was told if anything the number was low: 30,000 was more likely. Plutchak credits the journal's over four-year-old open access policy with raising JMLA's visibility, and he recounts other interesting facts that demonstrate it. He then discusses the impact of open access on subscriptions and MLA membership (including some interesting data about ad trends), then summarizes an informal online member survey probing attitudes towards free access and membership renewal and a survey of MLA Board members about publication options if open access ceases to be viable. This is a fascinating look at one professional society editor's view of the real-world impact of open access on his journal. - CB

Suber, Peter. "Does Google Library Violate Copyright?"  SPARC Open Access Newsletter  (90)(2005)(http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/newsletter/10-02-05.htm#google). - After drawing the distinction between the two components of Google Print (Google Library and Google Publisher), Suber proceeds to clearly analyze the case both for and against the Authors Guild's lawsuit against Google Library. Weighing four arguments for copyright violation and six against it, he concludes: "The authors—and the publishers who share the same grievance—are getting far too much mileage from the claim that Google's opt-out policy turns the usual copyright rule on its head. This claim has a deceptive strength. It's strong because it would be valid for most full-text copying. It's deceptive because it assumes without proof that the Google copying is not fair use. Hence it begs the question at the heart of the lawsuit. If the Google copying is fair use, then no prior permission is needed and the opt-out policy is justified. Moreover, Google has several good arguments that its copying really is fair use, most notably its argument that its indexing will enhance rather than diminish book sales and its analogy to long-accepted opt-out policies for search-engine indexing of other copyrighted content." For those readers who really want to dig into the Google Library controversy, my recent bibliography on this subject may also be of interest. - CB

Band, Jonathan. "The Google Print Library Project: A Copyright Analysis"  E-Commerce Law & Policy  7(8)(2005)(http://www.policybandwidth.com/doc/googleprint.pdf). - This analysis by a noted copyright lawyer examines how the Google Print program works and dissects its copyright implications. It concludes: "By limiting the search results to a few sentences before and after the search term, the program will not conflict with the normal exploitation of works nor unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of rightsholders. To the contrary, it often will often increase demand for copyrighted works." (The article link is to a preprint.) - CB

Farkas, Meredith. "Survey of the Biblioblogosphere: Results"  Information Wants to Be Free  (12 September 2005)(http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/index.php/2005/09/12/survey-of-the-biblioblogosphere-results/). - Who are the library bloggers? If you think they are mainly under 30, the results of this survey may surprise you. For example, 16.4% were 41 to 50, 8.5% were 51 to 60, and 3% were over 60. OK, the research design may not pass JASIST standards, but this is a fascinating glimpse into what is going on in the biblioblogosphere in terms of blogger demographics, attitudes, behaviors, and motivations. - CB

Gardner, Susannah. "Time to Check: Are You Using the Right Blogging Tool?"  Online Journalism Review  (14 July 2005)(http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050714gardner/). - Blog we must, but how? And what's a trackback, anyway? Try this handy analysis of major blogging software, complete with a blogging terminology guide. Not to be missed is the link to the detailed "Blog software comparison chart." Before you know it you'll be moblogging and using bookmarklets. - CB

Mills, Elinor. "In Canada: Cache a Page, Go to Jail?"  CNET News.com  (19 July 2005)(http://news.com.com/In+Canada+Cache+a+page%2C+go+to+jail/2100-1028_3-5793659.html?tag=cd.top). - Is it the beginning of the end for search engines? In Canada, a bill under consideration (Bill C-60) appears to make the storage and provision of crawled Web pages illegal. According to copyright attorney Howard Knopf: "The way it reads, arguably what they're saying is that the very act of making a reproduction by way of caching is illegal." Search engines could face a legal environment where they could be much more easily sued unless Web pages were removed whenever copyright holders requested it. Of course, this potential law has generated quite a buzz. A posting on Traffick takes a calmer view and provides a link to an analysis of the situation by Eric Goldman. It's worth a look. - CB

Electronic Frontier Foundation, . Legal Guide for Bloggers  San Francisco: Electronic Frontier Foundation, 2005.(http://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/). - Your're a blogger, not a journalist or publisher, right? Guess what? You have the same legal obligations as the big guys, but without the specialized training and the troop of lawyers to back you up. Bonne chance! If you live in the US, you need the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Legal Guide for Bloggers. Of course it "isn't a substitute for, nor does it constitute, legal advice," but are you really going to hire a lawyer to vet your blog? Bloglines recently announced that it indexes over 500 million blog entries. That's a lot of billable hours. So, here's what the EFF guide offers instead: "The Bloggers' FAQ on Election Law," "The Bloggers' FAQ on Intellectual Property," "The Bloggers' FAQ on Labor Law," "The Bloggers' FAQ on Online Defamation Law," "Overview of Legal Liability Issues," "The Bloggers' FAQ on Media Access," "The Bloggers' FAQ on Privacy," "The Bloggers' FAQ on the Reporter's Privilege," and "The Bloggers' FAQ on Section 230 Protections." Since it's free, it's way cheaper than getting a J.D., and it's in plain English. Sure, it looks a bit overwhelming; however, as the EFF says: "But here's the important part: None of this should stop you from blogging. Freedom of speech is the foundation of a functioning democracy, and Internet bullies shouldn't use the law to stifle legitimate free expression." - CB

LITA Blog  (http://litablog.org/). - LITA's new weblog has blasted off in a big way with extensive coverage of the American Library Association's recent annual conference. Even the French blog BiblioAcid took notice. Here are some sample postings from the 80+ postings that currently available: "Eric Lease Morgan's Top Technology Trends, 2005"; "Giving Them 'Google-Like' Searching"; "Greenstone Digital Libraries: Installation to Production"; "Karen's Uber-Trend"; "Leo Klein's Top Technology Trends"; "LITA President's Program (Take Dos)"; "Marshall Breeding's Top Technology Trends"; "Radio Frequency Identification Technology in Libraries: Meeting with the RFID Experts"; "Tennant's Top Tech Trend Tidbit"; "Thomas Dowling's Non-Trends from the Trailing Edge"; and "Using Usage Data." - CB

Poynder, Richard. "The Role of Digital Rights Management in Open Access "  INDICARE Monitor  2(2)(2005)(http://www.indicare.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=93). - This is a very important paper for librarians and open access advocates to read. The negative view of Digital Rights Management (DRM), which I confess to holding, is that it is like a silent, deadly cancer that one discovers too late. We are largely unaware of it because publishers have not widely chosen to utilize it to actively control scholarly articles yet. But, once DRM is put in place, it allows publishers to control how article files are used in fine-grained ways, regardless of whether they are on the publisher's server, the user's PC, or in an archive or institutional repository. Poynder suggests that DRM is like "a two-layered cake. . . . the first layer consists of metadata that define the usage rules (rights) associated with the content. Then on top of this can be placed an (optional) second layer of software-imposed limitations on copying, printing, viewing etc. (i.e. technical measures) in order to enforce the usage rules." To control self-archived articles, publishers would ask authors to archive DRM-protected copies, which "would potentially become a Trojan horse capable of transforming OA articles into 'pay-per-view objects'." Think this is unlikely? According to Poynder, Springer Science+Business Media currently "invites" authors to purchase the PDFs of their articles, which have been protected by DocuRights. Poynder does not say that Springer has activated particular restrictions, but they could at some future point. As long as a publisher controls the copyright to the article, not the author, the publisher can mandate that its DRM-protected copy of the article be the self-archived final copy, and it can choose what restrictions are activated. What if publishers could remotely turn on restrictions at will? SoftVault Systems holds patents that "specifically claim technology that enables the remote activation and disablement of digital content, such as audio, video, text, data and image files." So what to do? The SPARC Author's Addendum modifies "the publisher's agreement to make explicit the fact that the author is retaining sufficient rights to self-archive, and to also require that the publisher provides a free PDF version of the article--moreover, with no DRM functionality incorporated into it." Of course, authors can also attempt to retain copyright. But either strategy may imperil the publication of the author's paper. OK, enough gloom. Poynder also points out that DRM can be used for the author's benefit "to ensure correct author attribution, to certify document integrity and provenance, to prevent plagiarism, and indeed to enable creators assert their rights in ways that encourage--rather than restrict--access." (This issue also contains several other articles about DRM issues that will be of interest.) - CB

Suber, Peter. "Getting to 100%"  SPARC Open Access Newsletter  (84)(2005)(http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/04-02-05.htm#100). - In this article, Suber considers the obstacles that slow the continued growth of open access journals and self archiving, and he provides "a short progress report on where we stand in removing them." First, there are disciplinary differences that affect OA journal economics and other key factors. One major difference is the level of research funding that the disciplines have: less funding, more difficulty in paying author fees. This can be overcome by universities paying membership fees to OA publishers that eliminate or reduce direct fee payment by authors; however, their willingness to do so is likely tied to an assessment of how membership costs stack up against traditional subscription costs. A widely heralded study by Cornell seemed to sink hopes that OA journals would be cheaper, but this study was found to have made questionable assumptions. Second, there are diverse OA journal business models, and the models of journals that do not use author fees are poorly understood (according to a recent study only 47% of OA journals have processing fees). On the other hand, self archiving faces two major problems: scholars need disciplinary archives or institutional repositories (IRs) to deposit articles in and, given how busy they are, they need to find the time to do so. (I would add that they need to be convinced to do so as well.) Progress is being made in automatic metadata generation upon deposit, and a recent study suggests that an active scholar may spend as little as 40 minutes per year self archiving. Universities should establish IRs, but what should scholars without access to disciplinary archives or IRs do in the meantime? Here's the big news: Suber is working with the Internet Archive to establish "an OAI-compliant 'universal repository' that will accept eprints from any scholar in any discipline." - CB

Serials: The Journal for the Serials Community  18(1)(2005) - This issue of Serials has a number of interesting papers on open access. In "A Mandate to Self Archive? The Role of Open Access Institutional Repositories," Stephen Pinfield, tackles the controversial issue of mandating the deposit of articles in institutional repositories. In "Open Access: Evidence-Based Policy or Policy-Based Evidence? The University Press Perspective," Martin Richardson describes experiments at Oxford University Press with different OA journal publishing models. In "Open Access: Principle, Practice, Progress," Jan Velterop argues that the open access battle for hearts and minds is gaining ground, but implementation issues remain and misconceptions about OA persist. In "Open Access: Reflections from the United States," Ann Okerson weighs the pros and cons of OA for US research libraries, noting that institutional repositories are likely to be expensive, and their focus in the U.S. is likely to be on locally produced scholarly materials other than articles. Consequently: "It is unlikely that under this kind of scenario in the US, scattered local versions of STM articles would compete effectively with the completeness or the value that the publishing community adds." She also suggests that library cost savings resulting from OA journals are "unlikely, unless substantial production cost reductions can be realised by many categories of publisher." In "Open Access to the Medical Literature: How Much Content Is Available in Published Journals?," Marie E. McVeigh and James K. Pringle report that for the research and clinical medicine journals that they studied "26% of the journals made their most recent issues open access, and 21% of articles since 1992 were available as open access." In "Overview of the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee Inquiry into Scientific Publications," Ian Gibson discusses the important activities of the Select Committee that he chaired. Finally, in "Scientific Publications: Free for All? The Academic Library Viewpoint," Tom Graham examines the key findings of the Select Committee's influential report and criticizes the U.K. Government's response to it. - CB

Tonkin, Emma. "Making the Case for a Wiki"  Ariadne  (42)(2005)(http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue42/tonkin/). - Wiki: "the simplest online database that could possibly work." Anyone can create Wiki pages and edit them, so a Wiki is by nature a collaborative tool (and one designed to drive control freaks off the deep end). The Wikipedia is probably the most famous Wiki. Tonkin gives the reader a brief overview of Wikis, suggests various uses, provides comparative information about major Wiki software, discusses deployment issues, and speculates about the future of Wikis. - CB

Suber, Peter. "Comments on the Weakening of the NIH Public-Access Policy"  SPARC Open Access Newsletter  (82)(2005)(http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/02-02-05.htm#nih). - Since the National Institutes of Health (NIH) sponsors megabucks worth of research, it would be a big deal if all of the articles resulting from that research would be made freely available. Last July, the U.S. House Appropriations Committee made recommendations that made this a possibility (see "NIH Public-Access Policy: Frequently Asked Questions" for details). Now, after events I won't describe here (see "Congress Approves the NIH Plan"), the NIH has issued its "Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded Research," and the news for open access advocates is mixed at best. Deposit of articles in PubMed Central is voluntary (not mandatory), and it is "strongly encouraged as soon as possible (and within twelve months of the publisher's official date of final publication)." Suber dissects the NIH plan with his usual clarity and precision, and he provides interesting background information about it, including how it compares to an earlier draft. One key point that he makes is that the policy "invites publishers who dislike the policy to voice a preference contrary to the NIH's preference," which "creates an untenable, high-risk dilemma for authors." In spite of the NIH plan's perceived downsides, Suber notes in his postscript that: "Even the watered down version of the policy will be an advance over the status quo, though a smaller advance than we had been led to expect. . . . Since the body of NIH-funded research is very large and very high in quality, even delayed free access to a subset is better than toll access to the totality." - CB

Quint, Barbara. "Google's Library Project: Questions, Questions, Questions"  Information Today NewsBreaks and the Weekly News Digest  (27 December 2004)(http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb041227-2.shtml). - Here's an article that you may have missed in the post-Christmas afterglow. Barbara Quint asks a number of questions about Google's gargantuan cooperative digitization project with selected research libraries, and she gets answers from diverse individuals. Some of the most interesting responses are to the question: "What impact could this project have on current digitization projects?" The manager of a digital library project that provides access to over 10 million images says that his and all other digitization projects have suddenly become "small-scale." A research library consortium spokesperson "predicted that the new project could table or even kill current digitization projects at libraries, while the librarians waited to see if their planned projects were necessary or, assuming their content was unique, if Google might someday digitize that content for free." (An unexplored issue is the impact of the Google project on funding agencies' interest in future digitization projects by non-participating libraries.) Can you say paradigm shift? John Berry thinks it's one. If you're feeling a bit queasy from that shift, don't forget that the Internet Archive and ten libraries from around the globe announced shortly after the Google revelation that they would digitize over one million books. - CB

van der Kuil, Annemiek, and Martin  Feijen. "The Dawning of the Dutch Network of Digital Academic REpositories (DARE): A Shared Experience"  Ariadne  (41)(2004)(http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue41/vanderkuil/). - Funded by a government grant, the SURF Programme Digital Academic Repositories (DARE) is establishing institutional repositories at Dutch universities and harvesting metadata from them using the OAI-PMH protocol to create a demonstrator portal called DAREnet. Participating universities are utilizing diverse software, including ARNO, DSpace, i-Tor, and proprietary software. The project uses Dublin Core metadata (version 1.0). The Koninklijke Bibliotheek (Royal Library) will preserve data from the participating institutional repositories. The project has dealt with a variety of issues, such as how can digital objects (vs. metadata) be harvested, what should the dc:identifier link to (e.g., the digital object or the repository record for the object), how should objects be identified (OpenURL, the CNRI handle, or DOI), and other issues. - CB

Sosteric, Michael. "The International Consortium for the Advancement of Academic Publication--An Idea Whose Time Has Come (Finally!)"  Learned Publishing  17(4)(2004): 319-325. - In this article, Sosteric, founder of the International Consortium for the Advancement of Academic Publication (as well as of the Electronic Journal of Sociology), describes how this not-for-profit organization fosters the publication of scholarly e-journals with low production and operation costs. How low? How about as low as $3,000 for a new quarterly journal that's up in less than a month? But even with this cost structure, the ICAAP faces challenges since it "targets low-circulation and niche journals that cannot survive in an environment where first-tier journals suck all the finances from general library subscriptions." Scholars who want to publish these journals may have difficulty paying the ICAAP's modest fees without external support. In Canada, social science and humanities journals can receive up to CAD$90,000 over three years from a special funding program; however, the gotcha is that, to qualify, journals must have at least 200 paid subscribers, and, in the small Canadian market, publishers are afraid that switching from print to electronic might cause a subscription drop below this level. One can't help but wonder what could be accomplished with relatively modest subsidies from some other source, perhaps combined with the idea of open access. - CB

Poynder, Richard. "Ten Years After"  Information Today  21(9)(2004)(http://www.infotoday.com/it/oct04/poynder.shtml). - No, this article is not about the famous rock band that shook Woodstock with "I'm Going Home." Rather, it's about how Stevan Harnad shook-up the scholarly publishing world in the ten years after his famous "subversive proposal." Poynder says that ". . . while Harnad cannot claim to have invented the OA movement, his phenomenal energy and determination, coupled with a highly focused view of what is needed, undoubtedly earns him the title of chief architect of open access." But this article is a not just a paean to Harnad's many notable accomplishments, it is also an interesting, very concise history of the open access movement that touches on its struggles as well as its triumphs. - CB

Cole, Timothy W., and Sarah L.  Shreeves. "The IMLS NLG Program: Fostering Collaboration"  Library Hi Tech  22(3)(2004): 246-248. (http://lysander.emeraldinsight.com/vl=885645/cl=77/nw=1/rpsv/cgi-bin/linker?ini=emerald&reqidx=/cw/mcb/07378831/v22n3/s1/p246). - If you are interested in the important work of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), check out a new special issue of Library Hi Tech that provides descriptions of seven projects funded by IMLS' National Leadership Grant program. Issue guest editors Timothy W. Cole and Sarah Shreeves overview the contents of the special issue in this article. They have selected articles that represent three categories of grant activity: (1) "state-wide and regional collaborations between multiple types of organizations" (3 articles), (2) "communities of interest that have coalesced to spawn successful and wide-ranging collaborations between information specialists (librarians, curators, and information technologists) and subject specialist end-users (students, teachers, and scholars)" (2 articles), and (3) "ongoing research into and demonstrations of key infrastructure components that take advantage of the opportunities afforded by new technologies to facilitate and enable collaboration in digital library building at a high level between experts with diverse skills and backgrounds and widely dispersed geographically" (2 articles). The issue also includes an article by Joyce Ray, the IMLS Associate Deputy Director for Library Services, that overviews IMLS activities. Access to this issue is currently free. - CB

Rowlands, Ian, Dave  Nicholas, and Paul  Huntingdon. "Journal Publishing: What Do Authors Want?"  Nature Web Focus: Access to the Literature: The Debate Continues  (13 September 2004)(http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/31.html). - In the final analysis, scholarly journal publishing should be designed to satisfy the needs of scholars. So what do they want anyway? The authors conducted a large-scale international survey to find the answer, ending up with 3,787 fully completed questionnaires from 97 countries. Not surprisingly, they found that authors continue to want traditional journal benefits: "They want the imprimatur of quality and integrity that a peer-reviewed, high-impact title can offer, together with reasonable levels of publisher service. Above all, they want to narrowcast their ideas to a close community of like-minded researchers. . ." The majority of authors (61%) indicate that they have access to needed articles, and 77% say that access is better than five years ago. Not many have heard of open access (82% say that they know little or nothing about it), and they are not willing to pay much to publish articles (only 16% would pay more than $500). Rowlands et al. estimate that the average that authors would be willing to pay may be about $400, which is below the fees typically charged by open access publishers. Clearly, publishing reform advocates still have much work to do in educating authors about the economics of scholarly publishing and academic library finances. - CB

Greenstein, Daniel. "Research Libraries' Costs of Doing Business (and Strategies for Avoiding Them)"  EDUCAUSE Review  39(5)(2004): 72-73. (http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm04510.asp). - Materials costs continue to spiral upward. Shaped by Google and similar systems, users' expectations rise as well, and they demand that libraries provide increasingly sophisticated, easy-to-use systems. Digital formats proliferate. What's a research library to do? Based on the collaborative experiences of the University of California System, Greenstein has some suggestions for research libraries in similar situations. Rely mainly on electronic journals, but preserve at least one archival print copy of each one. Closely coordinate collection development to eliminate duplicate materials costs, and develop new bibliographic systems to support this. Centralize system support functions, such as digital preservation and tool building (e.g., online portals). Using these strategies, UC believes it can save $30-$50 million dollars a year. Sounds like big money. Will it solve the problem? The author says: "If the money is simply eaten away by unmitigated steep increases in the price of library materials, the answer is no. Changing the unsustainable economics of scholarly publishing remains a key to the future of research libraries — indeed, to the continued ability of colleges and universities to provide faculty and researchers with the access they need to the world's scholarly knowledge." - CB

Suber, Peter. "NIH Open-Access Plan: Frequently Asked Questions"    (2004)(http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/nihfaq.htm). - Peter Suber has written a helpful FAQ about the U.S. House Appropriations Committee's recommendation regarding open access to journal articles that result from NIH grant-funded research. To recap the main points of the recommendation, such articles would be deposited in PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication. If NIH funds were used to support any publication costs, the articles would be made immediately available. Otherwise, they would be made available six months after publication. NIH would develop a plan by 12/1/04 to implement the recommendation in FY 2005. The FAQ clarifies the fine points of the recommendation (e.g., it's up to the researcher, not the publisher, to deposit the article), addresses the main issues that it raises (e.g., would journals lose subscribers as a result of the plan?), compares it to the Public Access to Science Act, discusses the future of the recommendation, and provides action steps for supporters (e.g., use the Public Knowledge Web form to send a fax to your Congressional delegation endorsing the recommendation). He also mentions the Alliance for Taxpayer Access , which the American Association of Law Libraries, the American Library Association, the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries, the Association of College & Research Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries, and many other organizations have recently formed to support the recommendation. - CB

Case, Mary M. "A Snapshot in Time: ARL Libraries and Electronic Journal Resources"  ARL: A Bimonthly Report on Research Library Issues and Actions from ARL, CNI, and SPARC  (235)(August 2004): 1-10. (http://www.arl.org/newsltr/235/snapshot.html). - E-journals are definitely a hit at ARL libraries: expenditures have skyrocketed 712% between 1994/95 and 2001/02. In 2001/02, e-serials required a whopping 26% of ARL libraries' serials budgets (versus 5% in 1994/95). To get a more in-depth picture of the issues related to e-serials, ARL conducted two surveys of its members (one in 2002 and one in 2003). This interesting article presents the results of these surveys, which dealt with a wide variety of issues such as "big deals," nondisclosure clauses, pricing models, print cancellations, subscription costs, subscription terms, and usage terms (among others). Of particular note were the findings about print cancellations: "In the fall 2002 survey, only a few libraries indicated that they had moved to electronic-only versions of the titles offered by these 14 publishers. In the more general survey conducted in 2003, many more libraries indicated they were making the switch." Of course, this raises the difficult issue of the long-term preservation of electronic-only journals. I'd also suggest that, as this trend accelerates, it may erode access to scholarly journals by non-affiliated users, who are typically dependent on the availability of a limited number of "public" workstations, and deepen what Peter Suber calls the "permission crisis." - CB

McCook, Alison. "Open Access to US Govt Work Urged"  The Scientist   (21 July 2004)(http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20040721/01/). - Open access has been on the agenda of legislative committees in both the US and the UK of late. In the US, the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee recommended that NIH-funded research be made freely available on PubMed Central six months after it is published. If NIH funds were used to pay for publication fees, immediate availability would be required. Meanwhile in the UK, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee wrapped up lengthy hearings into scientific publishing and issued a report that recommended funding institutional repositories and mandating that funded research be put in them (more on this development in "UK Committee Backs Open Access"). (If this wasn't enough to delight OA advocates, the European Commission has started its own investigation into scientific publishing.) - CB

Suber, Peter. "The Primacy of Authors in Achieving Open Access"  Nature Web Focus: Access to the Literature: The Debate Continues  (10 June 2004)(http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/24.html). - In this article, Peter Suber, author of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter and editor of the Open Access News Web log, underscores the critical role that authors play in facilitating open access, and he suggests that open access advocates "can guide, help or nudge authors" to become active participants in the open access movement. He emphasizes the importance of peer communication in this process: scholars are most likely to be persuaded by colleagues who have experienced the personal benefits of open access, such as higher citation rates for their papers. However, librarians can also be effective change agents by assisting scholars in depositing their works in institutional repositories, providing workshops on copyright issues, and through other strategies. Suber also discusses how the "Ingelfinger Rule" continues to concern scholars, who are hesitant to put preprints online because journals may view this as prior publication and refuse to consider them. He suggests that universities and funding agencies could require scholars to make their work available through open access arrangements, and he cites a study that offers preliminary evidence that they may welcome this. He concludes by discussing the importance of journal prestige factors in scholars' choices of what journals to publish in, and he suggests ways to enhance the prestige of open access journals. - CB

Swan, Alma, and Sheridan  Brown. "Authors and Open Access Publishing"  Learned Publishing  17(3)(2004): 219-224. - In this survey research study, Swan and Brown assessed the attitudes of authors who had published in open access journals and those who had not. An interesting finding was that both groups had a relatively low awareness of e-print archives (fewer than 30% of each group), while 62% of the "non-OA" authors were aware of open access journals. Why do authors publish in OA journals? Ninety-two percent said free access, 87% said faster publication times, 71% said OA journals had larger readerships, 64% said higher citation rates, and 56% said concerns over the expense of conventional journals. The reluctance of non-OA authors to publish in OA journals was attributed to unfamiliarity with OA journals in their fields (70%), low impact or prestige of these journals (69%), smaller readerships of OA journals (64%), or an inability to find a relevant OA journal to publish in (56%). For other interesting findings, see the article (or the complete study, which is available at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/JISCOAreport1.pdf). - CB

Mackie, Morag. "Filling Institutional Repositories: Practical Strategies from the DAEDALUS Project"  Ariadne  (39)(2004)(http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue39/mackie/). - Filling an institutional repository with scholarly articles can be a tough job. This article discusses a variety of innovative strategies used by the DAEDALUS Project at the University of Glasgow to encourage faculty to contribute articles and to support the effort to do so. Initially, the project built support by giving presentations, offering a conference on open access, and including key faculty members on an advisory board. When this did not result in the desired contribution levels, project staff focused on contacting faculty who had personal publication Web sites or who had published articles in either open access journals or journals that clearly permitted archiving. Inevitably, it was unclear whether a subset of articles that faculty wanted to contribute could be legally stored, and project staff needed to contact publishers for clarification in these cases. Unfortunately, the project has been given "significant amounts of content that cannot be added because of restrictive publisher copyright agreements." - CB

Guterman, Lila. "Scientific Societies' Publishing Arms Unite Against Open-Access Movement"  The Chronicle of Higher Education  50(29)(26 March 2004): A20. (http://chronicle.com/cgi2-bin/printable.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v50/i29/29a02001.htm). - Reacting to the growing influence of the open access movement, a group of scholarly not-for-profit publishers has issued the "Washington D.C. Principles for Free Access to Science." This document supports free access to selected important articles, to all articles either immediately or after an embargo period as determined by publisher policy, to scientists in developing nations, to reference linking systems, and to search engines for indexing. However, it does not support financing journals solely through author fees, and it does not address the issue of the relatively unfettered use of scholarly literature that the "Budapest Open Access Initiative" strongly advocates: "By 'open access' to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited." In addition to discussing the DC Principles, the article also briefly examines the new BioMed Central variable institutional fee structure (it was previously a flat fee determined by the size of the institution), which has its own controversial elements. - CB

Nature Web Focus: Access to the Literature: The Debate Continues  (2004) - Nature is offering a new series of freely available commissioned papers by noted authors on open access and other innovative publishing business models. Current contributions include "Open Access and Learned Societies"; "Open Access and Not-for-Profit Publishers"; "Open Access: Yes, No, Maybe"; "Universities' Own Electronic Repositories Yet to Impact on Open Access"; "Why Electronic Publishing Means People Will Pay Different Prices"; and other papers. There are also useful links to related articles and resources. Like prior Nature debates on electronic publishing issues, this one is lively and very interesting. - CB

Suber, Peter. "Open Access Builds Momentum"  ARL: A Bimonthly Report on Research Library Issues and Actions from ARL, CNI, and SPARC  (232)(February 2004)(http://www.arl.org/newsltr/232/openaccess.html). - The Open Access movement had a big year in 2003, and, in this article, Peter Suber, author of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter, provides a concise overview of the highlights, including the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing, the Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action by the U.N. World Summit on the Information Society, the Directory of Open Access Journals, PLoS Biology (published by the Public Library of Science), Scientific Publishing: A Position Statement by the Wellcome Trust in Support of Open Access Publishing, and more. Miss any of that? This is a good way to quickly catch up on major events related to this rapidly changing and increasingly important movement. - CB

Crow, Raym. A Guide to Institutional Repository Software. 2nd ed  New York: Open Society Institute, 2004.(http://www.soros.org/openaccess/pdf/OSI_Guide_to_Institutional_Repository_Software_v2.pdf). - If you need a quick overview of institutional repository software options, try this brief guide from the Open Society Institute. It describes software that: (1) is open source, (2) conforms to the latest version of the OAI metadata harvesting protocols, and (3) is currently available for use. This includes ARNO, CDSware, DSpace, Eprints, Fedora, i-Tor, and MyCoRe. Each system is overviewed in a separate section, and then the features of all systems are compared in a detailed, lengthy table. - CB

Barton, Mary R., and Julie Harford  Walker. "Building a Business Plan for DSpace, MIT Libraries' Digital Institutional Repository"  Journal of Digital Information  4(2)(2003)(http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v04/i02/Barton/). - Currently, there is a great deal of interest in institutional repositories, but little is known about their costs. This article outlines MIT's business plan for its well-known DSpace repository. Not considering software development and system implementation costs, the authors conservatively estimate a budget of $285,000 for FY 2003. The bulk of the costs are for staff ($225,000), with smaller allocations for operating expenses ($25,000) and system hardware expansion ($35,000). MIT's DSpace service offerings have two components: core services (basic repository functions) and premium services (e.g., digitization and e-format conversion, metadata support, expanded user storage space, and user alerts and reports). While core services are free, MIT reserves the right to potentially charge for premium services. For further information see: MIT Libraries' DSpace Business Plan Project--Final Report to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (http://libraries.mit.edu/dspace-fed-test/implement/mellon.pdf),which indicates that system development costs "included $1.8 million for development as well as 3 FTE HP staff and approximately $400,000 in system equipment." - CB

Applying Fair Use in the Development of Electronic Reserves Systems  Washington, DC: Association of Research Libraries, 2003.(http://www.arl.org/access/eres/eresfinalstmt.shtml). - This document, which was drafted by noted copyright experts Georgia Harper (Manager, Intellectual Property Section, University of Texas System Office of General Counsel) and Peggy Hoon (Scholarly Communication Librarian, North Carolina State University Libraries) provides U.S. academic libraries with guidance about how to provide electronic reserve systems that both maximize access to needed materials and comply with copyright law. Given the failure of the CONFU talks to develop electronic reserves guidelines, academic libraries must directly interpret the fair use provisions of Section 107 of the Copyright Act to support electronic reserves use. The authors believe that this section provides strong support for electronic reserves if it is properly applied, and they note that under Section 504(c)(2) when academic libraries "act in good faith, reasonably believing that our actions are fair use, in the unlikely event we are actually sued over a use, we will not have to pay statutory damages even if a court finds that we were wrong." This document was endorsed by the ARL Intellectual Property and Copyright Committee and by ALA, AALL, MLA, and SLA. - CB

Greenstein, Daniel, and Suzanne E.  Thorin. The Digital Library: A Biography  (2002) - This fascinating report initially examines the three phases of digital library evolution: (1) the young digital library that relies on a "skunk works" approach; (2) the maturing digital library that moves beyond experimental projects to operational collections and services; and (3) the adult digital library that fully integrates with the conventional library. The description of these phases includes examples from existing digital library programs. Six in-depth case studies are presented in the next section of the report: California Digital Library, Harvard University, Indiana University, New York University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Virginia. Survey data from 21 institutions concludes the report. This report is essential reading for anyone interested in digital libraries. - CB

Frankel, Simon J., and Shannon M.  Nestor. Opening the Door: How Faculty Authors Can Implement an Open Access Policy at Their Institutions  San Francisco: Science Commons, 2010.(http://sciencecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/Opening-the-Door.pdf). - In this 18-page report, the authors examine the legal issues surrounding open access policies. They cover relevant copyright basics, nonexclusive licenses, copyright transfers, the "work for hire" doctrine, and conclude with five criteria for an effective license. On the last point, the authors state: "For the licensing portion of an open-access policy, it is recommended that an institution adopt a license, in writing and signed by each faculty author, that contains the following five criteria: (1) nonexclusive, (2) irrevocable, (3) worldwide, (4) perpetual, and (5) non-commercial." This concise overview should be of considerable interest to anyone trying to advance an open access policy at his or her institution. See also the related 2008 report Open Doors and Open Minds: What Faculty Authors Can Do to Ensure Open Access to Their Work through Their Institution. - CB