E-Lert # 320 / Cyberavis no. 320
Friday April 3, 2009 / le vendredi
3 avril 2009
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NEWS / NOUVELLES
EU Council may pass ACTA silently during parliamentary recess
April 2, 2009
The EU Council leaves the possibility open to pass the Anti-Counterfeiting
Trade Agreement (ACTA) silently during parliamentary vacation. Behind closed
doors, the EU, U.S., Japan and other governments are negotiating ACTA. No
drafts are published. ACTA will contain a new international benchmark for
legal frameworks on the enforcement of copyrights, trademark rights, patents
and other intellectual property rights. Public interest organizations are
concerned ACTA may limit access to medicines, limit access to the internet,
give patent trolls free reign and harm the most innovative sectors of the
economy.*
http://press.ffii.org/Press_releases/EU_Council_may_pass_ACTA_silently_during_parliamentary_recess
Long-term preservation of Open Access Journals secured
April 1, 2009
Lund University Libraries and the e-Depot of the National Library of the
Netherlands (KB) announced the start of a cooperation to secure long-term
preservation of open access journals. The Swedish Library Association is
acting as sponsor. The DOAJ collection (currently 4000 journals) comprises
a large number of publishers (2.000+), each publishing a small number of
journals on different platforms, in different formats and in over 50 languages.
Many of these publishers are – with some exceptions – financially
and technically fragile.*
http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=loadTempl&templ=090401
Dramatic Growth of Open Access
Heather Morrison
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, March 31, 2009
The open access movement, this quarter, has seen dramatic growth in open
access journals, open access archives, and, most notably, open access policies.
The Directory of Open Access Journals
(DOAJ) has reached an important milestone - over 4,000 fully open access,
peer-reviewed journals, twice the number of the largest commercial publisher.*
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2009/03/dramatic-growth-of-open-access-march-31.html
A made-in-Canada digital strategy
Andrea Wood et al
Financial Post, March 30, 2009
Federal Heritage Minister James Moore’s recent announcement of the
creation of the Canada Media Fund (CMF) is a welcome sign that the government
recognizes the need to address the protection of Canadian culture in the
Internet age. Much more will be required, however, if Canada is to hold
its ground as a leading player in digitization over the coming years. A
comprehensive strategy is necessary to enhance Canadian competitiveness
in the digital economy, a strategy that includes but extends beyond a consideration
of the federal government’s role in promoting and sustaining Canadian
culture.*
http://www.financialpost.com/scripts/story.html?id=1443199
Publishers Face Pressure From Libraries to Freeze Prices and Cut
Deals
Jennifer Howard
The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 27, 2009
The publishers' hall at the recent Association of College and Research
Libraries conference was a study in give-and-take: how much publishers such
as Elsevier and Oxford University Press will give in this faltering economy,
and how much librarians, with their already strained budgets, can take.
Now more than ever, publishers feel they must walk a fine line.*
http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i29/29a01301.htm
Academic publishing house Springer put up for sale in teeth of recession
James Robinson
Guardian, March 26, 2009
The owners of the academic publisher Springer Science and Business
Media are believed to be preparing the business for sale. Candover and Cinven,
the private equity companies that own Springer, are believed to have appointed
UBS and Goldman Sachs to sound out potential bidders. If a sale goes ahead,
it will be one of the biggest transactions in any sector so far this year.*
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/mar/26/publisher-springer-put-up-for-sale
Les journaux cherchent le moyen de faire payer leur contenu sur
Internet
Xavier Ternisien
Les éditeurs de presse songent à revenir à une forme
de paiement pour les internautes. Début février, Bill
Keller, le directeur du quotidien américain New York
Times a déclaré qu'il y avait "une discussion animée
et très sérieuse au sein du Times sur la manière d'obliger
le consommateur à payer pour ce que nous produisons". C'est
un changement de cap pour le premier site d'information mondial (20 millions
de visiteurs uniques par mois). C'est un retour en arrière dans la
mesure où il avait renoncé, en septembre 2007, à faire
payer l'accès à une partie de ses contenus, comptant sur la
seule publicité pour se financer. Ce changement de pied de la part
des éditeurs est dû au fait que les recettes publicitaires
n'ont pas tenu leurs promesses.*
http://www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2009/03/24/les-journaux-cherchent-le-moyen-de-faire-payer-leur-contenu-sur-internet_1171946_651865.html#ens_id=1172015
ARTICLES
The Jigsaw Puzzle of Digital Preservation — an Overview
Barbara Siemens
LIBER Quarterly, Volume 19, Issue 1, 2009
Much effort has been devoted to raising awareness of the issue of digital
preservation, particularly amongst cultural heritage institutions. All the
many articles, presentations and discussions are beginning to pay off as
digital preservation is no longer a topic that needs to be explained. Yet
the ultimate goal, the picture on the lid of the box where all the different
pieces become a coherent entity, eludes practitioners engaged in digital
curation. Professionals in memory institutions have made great progress,
but their work is still fragmented. An out-of-the-box solution will require
greater integration of work carried out on the separate pieces of the preservation
puzzle.*
http://liber.library.uu.nl/publish/articles/000262/article.pdf
Goodbye, Encarta. A cautionary tale for newspapers?
John Yemma
The Christian Science Monitor, March 31, 2009
Encarta was an early digital encyclopedia. It began life as CD/ROM and
eventually went online. What it never did was truly embrace the power of
the Internet. What does that say about how we get information? And about
the future of newspapers? Every information provider is evolving. Encarta
eventually included some crowd sourcing, and newspapers have embraced the
Internet as never before. There is, however, a cautionary tale here for
newspapers mulling the idea of all banding together and putting their journalistic
expertise behind a pay wall.*
http://features.csmonitor.com/connectingthedots/2009/03/31/goodbye-encarta-a-cautionary-tale-for-newspapers/
Enter Britannica
Hiawatha Bray
The Boston Globe, March 31, 2009
The venerable Encyclopaedia Britannica is preparing for the most radical
overhaul in its 241-year history, and it's recruiting its readers to do
much of the work in a bid to remain relevant at a time when the world's
most popular encyclopedia, the eight-year-old Wikipedia, is written entirely
by amateur experts. The new version of Britannica Online, will emulate the
Wikipedia concept by letting subscribers revise any article. These changes
could range from minor edits to near-total rewrites.*
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2009/03/31/enter_britannica/?page=1
The degradation of knowledge
Justyn Dillingham
Arizona Daily Wildcat, March 26, 2009
The news that Google will begin making university libraries' collections
available for free online ought to send twin chills down the spine according
to Dillingham. A chill of delight at the prospect of having all that information
a couple of mouse clicks away, and a chill of apprehension at the thought
of what might ensue. After all, once all books are safely stored in the
digital realm, it's only a matter of time until some bureaucrats wonder
why we really need to fill library buildings with “dusty old books.”
*
http://www.tk421.net/librarylink/2009/03/31.html
Poor data, weak agencies hamstring U.N. environmental oversight
Nathanial Gronewold
The New York Times, March 26, 2009
The global environmental management system is in disarray. According to U.N. insiders and independent auditors, little is known about basic indicators about the health of ecosystems because of a lack of standardized environmental statistics and incomplete information. Even if its statistics were solid, they say, the United Nations' ability to act on them is not. The crux of the problem is a lack of a standardized set of environmental statistics that would allow governments to follow trends and make cross-border comparisons of conditions. But the problem is not limited to the developing world. Canadian officials recently admitted their own struggles with environmental statistics.* HTML
RESOURCES / RESSOURCES
Paying for open access publication charges
Universities UK and the Research Information Network, March 2009
Open access publications have become an increasingly significant part of
the scholarly communications landscape over the last few years. New and
well-established publishers are finding new ways of publishing fully peer
reviewed articles and making them available free of charge to all readers
immediately upon publication. Immediate and widespread access potentially
brings numerous benefits by ensuring that the results of research are freely
available to all who have an interest in them. In order to retain a revenue
stream to support their activities, however, many open access publishers
charge a publication fee for authors instead of a subscription fee for readers.
This turns the traditional publishing business model on its head, and poses
challenges for publishers but also for researchers and the institutions
that employ them.*
http://www.rin.ac.uk/files/Paying_open_access_charges_March_2009.pdf
Recherche et innovation. Vers un processus de priorisation systématique
et adapté pour le Québec
Conseil de la science et de la technologie, mars 2009
Pour répondre, entre autres, à la mondialisation accélérée
et à la croissance rapide du développement de la recherche
et de l’innovation, plusieurs pays ont transformé leurs processus
de priorisation en rendant ces derniers plus efficaces, plus performants
et surtout plus ouverts et participatifs. Le Québec, comme toute
autre société, doit relever ces défis. L’avis
incite le gouvernement à s’inscrire dans les plus récentes
tendances en renforçant ses capacités d’intelligence
stratégique et en se dotant d’un processus de priorisation
en recherche et innovation plus systématique, rigoureux et collectif.*
http://www.cst.gouv.qc.ca/IMG/pdf/Priorisation_VF-Internet.pdf
Copyright and Related Issues Relevant to Digital Preservation and
Dissemination of Unpublished Pre-1972 Sound Recordings by Libraries and
Archives
June M. Besek
CLIR Reports, March 2009
Unpublished sound recordings are those created for private use, or even
for broadcast, but that have not been distributed to the public in copies
with the right holder's consent. Tapes of live musical performances or of
interviews conducted as part of field research or news gathering are some
examples of such recordings. They may find their way into library and archive
collections through donations or purchase. Some may be the only record of
a particular performance or event, and therefore may have considerable cultural
and historical significance. Besek’s study describes the different
bodies of law that protect pre-1972 sound recordings, explains the difficulty
in defining the precise contours of the law, and provides guidance for libraries
evaluating their activities with respect to unpublished pre-1972 sound recordings.
*
http://www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/pub144abst.html
PARSE.Insight INSIGHT into Issues of Permanent Access to the Records
of Science in Europe
[EU] Seventh Framework Programme and PARSE insight
This document provides an overview and initial details of a number of specific
components, both technical and non-technical, required to supplement existing
and already planned infrastructures for science data. The infrastructure
components presented are meant to bridge the gaps between islands of functionality,
developed for particular purposes, often by other European projects, and
separated by discipline or time. Infrastructure components will play a general,
unifying role in science data. While developed in the context of a European
wide infrastructure, there are potentially great advantages if these types
of infrastructure components are more widely available.*
http://www.parse-insight.eu/downloads/Parseinsight_draft_roadmap_20090327.pdf
Repositories Support Project (RSP)
Joint Information Systems Committee, 2009
The Repositories Support Project (RSP)
is a major JISC initiative to support the development and growth of the
UK repositories network. The project website has, among other resources,
a series of podcasts about Institutional Repositories: EPrints:
repository software of the future or of the past?, DRIVER: promoting
digital repositories across Europe, Digital preservation: are repositories
doing enough for preservation?, and Fedora: optimum repository
software or overkill?*
http://www.rsp.ac.uk/podcasts/
The Survey of American College Students: Student Evaluation of
Information Literacy Instruction
Primary Research Group, 2009
The study of students who have received information literacy training includes
data on how they evaluate the effectiveness of that training, how they perceive
their need for additional training, whether they believe that an information
literacy course should be required, if they have ever used online tutorials
provided by the library, and how they evaluate their own information literacy
skills. The data in the report is based on a representative sample of more
than 400 full time college students in the United States. Data is broken
out by 16 criteria including gender, grade point average, major field of
study, income level of students and type, size of college, and mean SAT
acceptance score of colleges, among other variables.*
http://www.primaryresearch.com/200903301-The-Survey-of-American-College-Students.html
EVENTS / ÉVÉNEMENTS
ICSTI 2009 Conference: Managing Data for Science / Conférence
2009 ICSTI: La gestion de données pour la science
Ottawa, Ontario, June 9-10, 2009 / Ottawa (Ontario), les 9 et 10 juin 2009
This event is organized by the National Research Council Canada Institute
for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI). This conference will
be of interest to researchers, scientific, technical and medical (STM) publishers,
IM/IT professionals, chief information officers, and librarians in the academic,
public and private sectors. The ICSTI 2009 conference will examine how researchers,
librarians and publishers can work together to create structures for managing
and communicating scientific data.
/
La conférence est organisée par l'Institut canadien de l'information
scientifique et technique du Conseil national de recherches du Canada (CNRC-ICIST).
Cette conférence saura intéresser les chercheurs, les éditeurs
scientifiques, techniques et médicaux (STM), les professionnels de
la GI/TI, les dirigeants principaux de l'information et les bibliothécaires
des secteurs universitaire, public et privé. À la conférence
2009 de l’ICSTI, on examinera la façon dont les chercheurs,
les bibliothécaires et les éditeurs peuvent collaborer à
la création de structures permettant la gestion et la communication
des données scientifiques.*
http://www.icsti2009.org/
4th Annual Canadian Learning Commons Conference: Open Access Learning
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, June 11-13, 2009
Following on successful conferences in Guelph, Vancouver and Fredericton,
the 4th Canadian Learning Commons Conference brings together participants
involved in planning, creating, developing, and operating a Learning Commons.
The Learning Commons is central to enhancing the learning experience that
includes a place for learning, collaboration, research, technology, and
academic help. "Open Access Learning" is the theme of this year's
conference. There will also be a bonus lecture; the University of Saskatchewan
Library will host the University
Library Dean's Annual Research Lecture. This year’s lecture,
to be given by Dr. David Wiley,
Brigham Young University, is entitled The Disaggregated
Future of Higher Education or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the
Internet.*
http://www.usask.ca/learningcommons/conference.php
*Text adapted from source / Texte adapté de la source
