E-Lert # 339 / Cyberavis no. 339

Friday August 21, 2009 / le vendredi 21 août 2009

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CARL COMMUNIQUÉ / COMMUNIQUÉ DE L’ABRC

Karen Adams selected as CARL designate on AUCC Negotiation Committee

The Board of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries has appointed Karen Adams (University of Manitoba) as the CARL designate on the AUCC Negotiation Committee. This committee negotiates the license between the universities outside of Quebec with Access Copyright (in Quebec, it’s CREPUQ that negotiates with Copibec).

Karen Adams sélectionnée comme désignée de l’ABRC au Comité des négociations de l’AUCC

Karen Adams a été sélectionnée comme désignée de l’Association des bibliothèques de recherche du Canada (ABRC) au Comité des négociations de l’AUCC. Ce comité négocie la licence entre les universités hors du Québec avec Access Copyright (au Québec, c’est la CREPUQ qui négocie avec Copibec).

NEWS / NOUVELLES

Library brawl: Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon teaming up to oppose Google's digital book settlement
Michael Liedtke
San Francisco Examiner, August 20, 2009

The fight against a legal settlement that would give Google Inc. the digital rights to millions of copyrighted books is starting to resemble a heavyweight brawl in the library. Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. have joined a coalition that intends to rally opposition to Google's digital book ambitions and ultimately persuade a federal judge to block or revise the Internet search leader's plans. The Internet Archive, a longtime critic of the Google Books project, is putting the group known as the Open Book Alliance together.*
http://www.sfexaminer.com/economy/ap/53879567.html

UC Academics Raise Major Concerns About Google Settlement
Norman Oder
Library Journal, August 20, 2009

21 leading University of California faculty members wrote a letter to the court requesting supplementary provisions to address their concerns. The UC scholars speak on behalf of academic authors more concerned with the public interest than in supporting themselves from their book revenues. “We are concerned that the Authors Guild negotiators likely prioritized maximizing profits over maximizing public access to knowledge, while academic authors would have reversed those priorities,” the faculty members wrote. “We note that the scholarly books written by academic authors constitute a much more substantial part of the Book Search corpus than the Authors Guild members’ books.” *
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6678948.html?nid=2673&source=link&rid=490036441

PW Survey: Librarians On the Fence Regarding Google Settlement
Norman Oder
Library Journal, August 20, 2009

While library organizations have criticized the proposed Google Book Search settlement without formally opposing it, rank-and-file librarians appear to be on the fence about the settlement, according to a Publishers Weekly survey. PW surveyed some 225 librarians, among a larger sample the magazine drew mainly from the publishing industry. Regarding court approval of the settlement, 37% said they were unsure, while 29% supported the settlement and 21.5% said they opposed it.*
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6678927.html?nid=2673&source=link&rid=490036441

JISC funding Repositories InfoKit
August 20, 2009

JISC is funding a Repositories InfoKit to bring together best practices for current and future repository managers. It will be available in a few months. The team compiling the guide seeks real life examples of business cases, policies (copyright, submission, collection, preservation, notice-and-takedown etc), mandates (departmental, institutional), and advocacy materials (ppts, posters, postcards, leaflets). Selected document examples will be showcased as good practice and attributed to the submitting institutions. The URL, the name of the document or policy, and the senders’ email address should be submitted to support@rsp.ac.uk by Friday 11th September 2009. Further inquiries about the project can be sent to Dominic Tate at the Centre for Research Communications, University of Nottingham.

Google bruises Gallic pride as national library does deal with search giant
Charles Bremner
The Times, August 19, 2009

A four-year fight to keep the contents of the country’s national library in French hands apparently ended in defeat as it was announced that Google would take control of the digitization efforts. Denis Bruckmann, director of collections at the library, said the decision was purely financial. The Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF) will be joining 29 other leading libraries in opening its shelves to Google’s project, including Oxford’s Bodleian.*
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article6800864.ece

Google en négociation avec la Bibliothèque nationale de France
La Tribune, 19 août 2009

« Selon les informations de La Tribune, la Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF) discute avec Google : elle pourrait lui confier une partie de la numérisation de son fonds. En 2005 la BNF avait été le fer de lance de la résistance européenne au projet de bibliothèque numérique universelle de Google, Vingt-neuf grandes bibliothèques dans le monde, à l'instar de la Bodleian Library d'Oxford, se sont déjà laissé convaincre par le service rapide et gratuit de Google. » HTML

New Program Seeks to Make Alternative Textbooks for Visually Impaired Students Available Faster
Marc Beja
The Chronicle of Higher Education, August 19, 2009

Music-recording companies have been fighting people who illegally share songs, but book publishers are looking to expand file-sharing for college students with print-related disabilities. AccessText has created an online database that makes it easier for disability-student services at colleges to locate course materials in alternative formats from book publishers. When electronic versions don't exist for a particular book, colleges obtain permission to scan the pages so a student can either make the font larger, or use other text-to-speech or refreshable Braille reading devices.*
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/New-Program-Seeks-to-Make/7742/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Facebook s'entendrait avec le Commissariat à la protection de la vie privée
Le Devoir, 18 août 2009

« Le Commissariat à la protection de la vie privée du Canada affirme avoir des discussions positives avec le populaire site d'échange Facebook concernant l'utilisation de renseignements personnels. Hier était la date limite fixée à Facebook pour remettre à la commissaire Jennifer Stoddart un rapport sur ce que le site Web comptait faire pour se plier aux recommandations contenues dans un document qui le critiquait sévèrement le mois dernier. »
http://www.ledevoir.com/2009/08/18/263207.html

Facebook sued over privacy concerns
Alejandro Martinez-Cabrera
San Francisco Chronicle, August 18, 2009

So how does Facebook handle the information one posts on their Web site? One could read the terms of service or, even better, wait and see how the Orange County Superior Court rules on how the company should handle users’ private data. Five Facebook users have filed a lawsuit that claims the Palo Alto company has violated several state laws aimed to protect Californians' privacy.*
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=19&entry_id=45763

Gouvernance des universités - Les gens d'affaires n'ont pas leur place au conseil d'administration
Lisa-Marie Gervais
Le Devoir, 18 août 2009

« À l'occasion de la dernière journée, hier, du dépôt pour des mémoires dans le cadre de la commission parlementaire sur la gouvernance des universités et des cégeps, différents organismes, fédérations et associations en ont profité pour annoncer de nouveau leurs couleurs. Estimant que les nouveaux projets de loi 38 et 44 n'ont guère changé, ils promettent de reprendre les mêmes batailles, armés des mêmes revendications. En espérant cette fois toucher la ministre. »

New NIH Director Says He Worries About Federal Support and Encouraging Young Researchers
Paul Basken
The Chronicle of Higher Education, August 17, 2009

Francis S. Collins took the leadership of the National Institutes of Health on Monday, August 17, 2009, telling the NIH staff his biggest fear is the possibility of a renewed decline in federal support for scientific research. After giving the agency five years of stagnant budgets totaling just under $30-billion a year, Congress provided the NIH an additional $10.4-billion in this year's economic-stimulus measure. However, along with many others involved in university research, Dr. Collins reiterated his fear that a return to the budget levels of recent years could perpetuate a sense that medical research is not a reliable career path, especially for young college graduates.*
http://chronicle.com/article/New-NIH-Director-Worries-About/48020/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Writers Balk at Google’s Proposed Book Deal
David Moberg
In These Times, August 17, 2009

This fall a federal judge’s ruling on a lawsuit against Google has the potential to reshape the future of books and everyone associated with them – publishers, booksellers, libraries, readers and writers. One particular organization of writers, the National Writers Union, is worried about what that future could look like.*
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/4766/writers_balk_at_google_book_deal/

CIPPIC Launches DigitalAgenda.ca To Facilitate Grassroots Advocacy
August 16, 2009

The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) of the University of Ottawa has launched a new website aimed at facilitating digital advocacy. DigitalAgenda.ca is CIPPIC's response to the government's recent commitment to devise and implement a strategy for Canada to regain a position of leadership in the global digital economy. As different issues arise, the focus of DigitalAgenda.ca will shift. At this time, its primary initial focus will be the ongoing copyright consultation. "DigitalAgenda.ca will provide a venue for Canadians to learn about digital issues as they arise, to discuss them, and let their government know how they feel about these issues," says David Fewer, CIPPIC's Acting Director.*
http://www.mi2n.com/press.php3?press_nb=122345

Why don’t you Yaffle that?
Dialogue, Summer 2009

As manager of knowledge mobilization at the Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development at Memorial University of Newfoundland, David Yetman specializes in connecting researchers to the community in order to benefit society. Yaffle is one example of the results of his endeavours. The Centre created this unique search engine and online resource to enable users to search summaries written in lay terms of more than 1,000 Memorial research projects and profiles of over 400 researchers, categorized by expertise and geographic region. Yetman envisions a time when “Yaffling” will be as common as “Googling.”*
http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/newsletter/2009summer-ete/yetman-eng.aspx

NetCoalition supports [U.S.] Federal Research Public Access Act
Peter Suber
Open Access News, August 14, 2009

Executive Director and General Counsel of NetCoalition, Markham Erickson, issued an August 12 letter in support of FRPAA. The NetCoalition's members include Amazon.com, Ask.com, Bloomberg, eBay, Google, Yahoo!, and Wikipedia, state and local ISPs.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/08/google-yahoo-amazon-support-frpaa.html

La presse en ligne américaine se regroupe autour du modèle payant
La Tribune, 14 août 2009

« La première plateforme commune d'information payante de la presse en ligne pourrait voir le jour d'ici septembre. Le projet, lancé en avril par une entreprise américaine baptisée Journalism Online, a déjà rassemblé plus de 500 titres de presse publiés en Amérique et en Europe. Fondée par trois anciens patrons de presse américain, Journalism Online a reçu les lettres d'intention de "176 quotidiens, 330 autres publications et "de grands sites d'informations". » HTML

School kid Laptops: How Portugal's Doing It Right
Rob Salkowitz
internet evolution, August 12, 2009

Portugal has been out of the exploration business for nearly 500 years, but the Portuguese government is charting new territory in its bid to prepare its students for the global knowledge economy. In June, Portugal completed a major phase of the most ambitious deployment of computers for education in the world to date, equipping nearly a million secondary school students throughout the entire country with high-performance laptops and mobile Internet connectivity.*
http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=697&doc_id=180372

Call for Action on Current Copyright Consultation
Laura Murray
Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, August 4, 2009

The CFHSS, representing scholars who value and produce copyrighted works, supports efforts to reduce commercial-scale piracy. However, the Federation calls for a law that balances the economic rights of creators and/or owners with society’s right to gain access to knowledge. Access to knowledge is a crucial stage in the life cycle of new creativity and innovation.*
http://fedcan.ca/english/pdf/advocacy/CFHSSbriefingnotesaug09.pdf

ARTICLES

Open Access Practice in the National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Science
Li Lin et al
World Library and Information Congress: 75th IFLA General Conference and Council, 23-27 August, 2009, Milan, Italy

In 2004, Dr. LU Yongxiang, President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Dr. CHEN Yiyu, Director of the National Natural Science Foundation of China signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. Following that, CAS planed a series of activities to foster greater adoption open access activities in China. Li et al discuss four aspects of the NSL’s open access practices: institutional repositories, OA resource integration, international partnerships, and challenges.*
http://www.ifla.org/files/hq/papers/ifla75/142-lin-en.pdf

How Canada's new copyright law will affect you
Geof Glass
Georgia Straight, August 17, 2009

Pointing to impediments educators and students face when using copyrighted material on the internet for non-infringing educational purposes as well as to recent events in the U.S., namely the removal of a certain edition of George Orwell’s 1984 and a lawsuit in which a woman was fined 1.9 million for sharing 24 of her favourite songs over the Internet, Glass urges Canadians to get involved in the Government’s public copyright consultation which continues until September 13, 2009. He reminds readers that many of the harsh measures in the U.S. DMCA were also present in the now defunct Bill C-61 which the federal government introduced last summer. Arguing for a balanced approach to copyright reform, Glass, suggests “all the evidence from around the world is that draconian copyright laws do not work. They fail to stop freeloaders. But they are devastatingly effective at restricting artists and innovators—because they operate in the public eye.”*
http://www.straight.com/article-247860/geof-glass-how-canadas-new-copyright-law-will-affect-you

Designing a copyright bill that's built to last
Michael Geist
Toronto Star, August 17, 2009

The national copyright consultation launched earlier this summer has reached the midway point. After four weeks, there have already been more than a thousand submissions, one town hall meeting and five roundtable discussions, and many Canadians visit copyrightconsultation.ca to post their views on copyright reform. Expanded fair dealing, legal protection for digital locks, and new digital levies have emerged as the most-discussed issues. One of Industry Minister Tony Clement's core concerns, is an issue that many Canadians are still grappling with: in an era of rapidly changing technology, how does the government ensure a new copyright bill is built to last?*
http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/article/682006

Does the ‘‘open access’’ advantage exist? A librarian’s perspective
Nicholas Joint
Library Review, Volume 58, Number 7, 2009

Through a brief account of the evolving arguments for open access, and an analysis of some recent articles proposing arguments for and against, Joint discusses the evidence about the benefits of open access repositories. He attempts to refocus the discussion of open access repositories away from the more abstract analysis of their benefits, and emphasizes that open access repositories are straightforward information services like any other, and should be evaluated on the same terms.* HTML

It’s all about the learning
Steve Grundy
Dialogue, Summer 2009

Steve Grundy, Associate Vice-President and Chief Information Officer, Royal Roads University, Victoria, BC, offers six observations about the evolution of distance and online learning at RRU. Royal Roads University was founded in 1995 to facilitate access to applied and professional programs through distance and online delivery. Grundy concedes that online learning can be seen as a “disruptive technology”—in that it’s difficult to predict its influence on learning in general— but also asserts that it presents tremendous opportunity.*
http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/newsletter/2009summer-ete/notes-eng.aspx

Q & A with Tom Jenkins
Dialogue, Summer 2009

Tom Jenkins, executive chairman and chief strategy officer of Open Text Corporation, member of the Governing Council of SSHRC, and chair of the Federal Centre of Excellence Corridor for Advancing Canadian Digital Media (CACDM), discusses his Waterloo-based high tech company, the recent Canada 3.0 forum, and a general strategy to help develop a world leadership role in digital media. Also of particular interest to Jenkins is SSHRC’s leading role in cross-disciplinary, digital humanities.*
http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/newsletter/2009summer-ete/profile-eng.aspx

Great imaginings: how creative thinking may have come of age
Helen Ward
TES Connect, June 5, 2009

A decade ago, a landmark New Labour report called for securing Britain's future success by moving teaching beyond narrow academic parameters. The response may have been slow to date, but a number of initiatives reaching their stride might be about to change that. Helen Ward reports the benefits could be more far-reaching than originally predicted.*
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6014862

RESOURCES / RESSOURCES

eIFL-IP Draft Law on Copyright Including Model Exceptions and Limitations for Libraries and Consumers
August 16, 2009

Electronic Information for Libraries (eIFL.net) has drafted a model copyright law to assist librarians, as well as their legal advisors and policy makers, when national laws are being updated. The guide contains provisions that support access to knowledge and the public interest of libraries and consumers. The eIFL-IP Draft Law reflects contributions from international library and archive copyright experts, and amends and improves the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Draft Law On Copyright And Related Rights.*
http://www.eifl.net/cps/sections/docs/ip_docs/draft-law

Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies
Barbara Means et al
U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development, 2009

This report revisits the question of the relative efficacy of online and face-to-face instruction in light of today’s online learning applications, which can take advantage of a broad range of Web resources and new collaboration technologies which are a far cry from the televised broadcasts and videoconferencing that characterized earlier generations of distance education. Interest in blended approaches utilizing a mix of in-class and online learning activities is increasing. Policy-makers and practitioners need to know about the effectiveness of Internet-based, interactive online learning approaches, and about the conditions under which online learning is rendered most effective.*
http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf

EVENTS / ÉVÉNEMENTS

Active Solutions for Preserving Internet Content
San Francisco, California, October 7, 2009

Since 2003 , the international internet preservation consortium (IIPC), comprising the national libraries of Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, The British Library (UK), The Library of Congress (USA) and the Internet Archive (USA) and other libraries, archives, museums and cultural heritage institutions involved in Web archiving, has been working to preserve Internet content for future generations. The IIPC is sponsoring a free, one-day event, Active Solutions for Preserving Internet Content at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, California. This IIPC event immediately follows iPRES 2009, the 6th International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects, held at the Mission Bay Conference Center on October 5-6.*
http://netpreserve.org/events/about.php

emtacl10: Emerging Technologies in Academic Libraries
Trondheim, Norway, 26-28 April 2010

In order to help academic librarians successfully adapt to a constantly changing digital world, emtacl10 provides an opportunity to engage with like-minded professionals, and discuss the issues that are specifically relevant to the profession. The future success of academic libraries is dependent on in-depth knowledge of emerging technologies in terms of accessibility, interaction, intuitiveness, sharing, user-driven content and other web 2.0 challenges.*
http://www.ntnu.no/ub/emtacl/

Workshop on Instruction in Library Use (WILU)
Hamilton, Ontario, May 12-14, 2010

McMaster University is hosting the 39th Workshop on Instruction in Library Use (WILU). This annual conference offers sessions in both English and French and covers a wide variety of topics in library instruction, information literacy, and 21st century fluencies. This event draws participants and speakers from all over Canada, the United States and the world. 2010’s theme will explore best practices in instructional design, gaming, pedagogy and much more.*
http://wilu2010.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca/

CLA/ACB 2010 National Conference and Trade Show
Edmonton, Alberta, June 2-5, 2010 (Submission deadline is September 30, 2009.)

CLA invites members of the library community and other interested parties to propose program submissions for the 2010 CLA National Conference. Any topics relevant to the Canadian library and information professional community are welcome. Sessions may be conducted in many formats: panels of speakers, single speakers, round-table discussions, debates, unconference sessions, interviews, etc. Prospective presenters/panelists may request either a 60 or 90 minute slot. Proposals for poster presentations are also being solicited.*
http://www.cla.ca/conference/2010/

*Text adapted from source / Texte adapté de la source