LibrarianActivist.org

Lisa Spieker, a librarian at Rasmussen College, won a Pathfinder Award a couple of weeks ago for her work on the college’s Diversity Committe, and her work to educate staff and students on campus via panels and open discussions about diversity.

The local newspaper in Minnesota, where the award was presented, quoted Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Board members as saying that “Lisa sets an air and expectation of tolerance and respect from staff and students [....] (She) has created a culture where people can ask questions, respect and be respected, and learn from each other.”

Awarded in Mankato, Minnesota, the Pathfinder Awards are intended to recognise people who or organisations that “exemplify the ideas of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”

(Via).

A great story from Ars Technica looking at a new study out by the Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI) entitled: “Free to Invest: The Economic Benefits of Preserving Net Neutrality.” (pdf) The article summarizes IPI’s cost-benefit analysis this way:

Were the big ISPs allowed to offer priority access tiers, it would represent a siphoning of money from the Internet’s content sector to its infrastructure sector. Free to Invest’s cost-benefit analysis calls this transfer bad economics. Competition in the Internet content market is much stronger than it is in the market for broadband service, the report contends. (…) [A]bandoning net neutrality would transfer money from the most competitive parts of the Internet and actively reinvest it in the least competitive.

Every January 1st is Public Domain day, where copyright expires for thousands of works across the world — except in the United States, where decades of copyright extensions have eliminated public domain day for many years to come. Notable authors whose works will be in the public domain in Canada (where copyright is life + 50 years) and other countries (where copyright is life + 70 years) include author, singer, and songwriter Boris Vian, Canadian doctor Norman Bethune, Canadian inventor of basketball, James Naismith, and former Québec Premier Maurice Duplessis, one of Canada’s most repressive politicians, especially when it came to freedom of expression.

Connected to Public Domain day is a new celebration created, by Public Knowledge, called World’s Fair Use Day (WFUD). It will be a day of free talks in Washington, D.C. on such things as ACTA, emerging media, and participatory culture.