LibrarianActivist.org

Here’s an immediate action opportunity, and no you don’t have to be a Calgary resident to take part:

Cory Doctorow points to an event being organized on Facebook to meet with Industry Minister Jim Prentice at his open house in Calgary on Saturday. If you are in Calgary, the open house runs from 1:00 to 3:00 pm on Saturday, December 8th at 1318 Centre Street NE, Suite 105. If you can’t attend, Cory has a great idea:

Not in Calgary? NO PROBLEM! Plan on calling the Minister tomorrow or on dropping him an email, expressing your regrets that you can’t attend the open house, but letting him know how you feel. Here are the numbers:

Ottawa office - (613) 992-4275
Calgary office - (403) 216-7777
Minister office - (613) 995-9001

His email address is: Prentice.J@parl.gc.ca. Once you send an email, print it out and mail it (no stamp needed!) to:

Jim Prentice
House of Commons
Parliament Buildings
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6

After you send Jim a note, there’s also these sources from Geist’s blog:

Geist’s 30 things you can do blog post.

Geist’s 30 things you can do wiki.

and what would a social activism push be without a corresponding Facebook group?
Facebookers can look for the Fair Copyright for Canada group.

-PC-

Why would the copyright database in the US be copyrighted (and for sale for big bucks) if it contains public records? Some librarians didn’t agree with the “Library of Commerce’s” stance on the issue and took things into their own hands.

(via Boing Boing)

- JH

I’m seeing conflicting reports about the latest developments in the attempt to impose royalty payments on Internet radio stations. No less a mainstream media authority than the Washington Post makes it seem like the advocacy efforts failed and the new fee structure is a done deal:

“The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has refused to stop an increase in royalty and broadcasting fees, jeopardizing the future of some stations. As a result of the decision, handed down Wednesday, fee increases will take effect in two days.”

But then, a well-known but still relatively unknown blog like TinyMixTapes posts this:

“Despite many setbacks in the past months, as well as this week’s court denial of a “motion to stay” petition by webcasters, internet radio has been saved from the freakish royalty rate increases originally due to take effect this Sunday. “A commitment has been made to negotiate reasonable royalties, recognizing the industry’s long-term value and its still-developing revenue potential,” wrote SaveNetRadio on its website.”

SaveNetRadio, the coalition representing various online radio stations seems to confirm the second report:

“Congress and SoundExchange have heard loud and clear the amazing outpouring of support for Internet radio from webcasters, listeners and the thousands of artists they support. A commitment has been made to negotiate reasonable royalties, recognizing the industry’s long-term value and its still-developing revenue potential.

This development is due in great part to the millions of people who have let their Congressional representatives know about their support of Internet radio. Over 125 representatives have cosponsored the bill to this point. “

So it sounds like good news at this point but we’re not out of the woods either. Keep watching the blogs and sites I linked to above (especially the SaveNetRadio site) for further developments.

- JH

Anyone familiar with UofT’s flagship humanities and social sciences Robart’s library knows that it’s the target of a lot of well earned potshots. Here are a few of its better known claims to fame:

is it sinking?
‘Brutalist‘ architecture
it’s a peacock … !?

The ‘prison’ analogy is another fave, what with the books cloistered into a closed stack system far, far away from the scant selection of windows.

Since 2005 however, quietly in a room in the library at St. Michael’s college, UofT’s partnership with the Open Content Alliance has been digitizing public domain works (books and more) for the Internet Archive. Blackfly magazine published an article (which inspired the heading for this post) in which Carole Moore, head librarian at the St. George campus spoke to UofT’s foray into digitizing public domain works in its collection to make them more accessible and the library more democratic. Articles also appeared at the outset of the project in the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.

Owen Jarus at Blackfly spoke to how digitization can democratize and transform information through improved access, where WP and WSJ spoke to the business angle, mainly comparing the OCA’s initiative to the Google Books/copyright lawsuit situation. The subtext of course is ‘will we still need libraries’ if all the materials are online?

This week, I finished an intensive course on “Rethinking the Library” taught by guest instructor, Dr. Joseph Janes of the University of Washington’s iSchool. It gave a handful of lucky students the opportunity to have a forum to dialogue on where ‘the library’ is/can/should/isn’t going, and engage with the tough question of what was well coined by the University of Toronto Mississauga’s chief librarian, Mary Ann Mavrinac [a guest speaker] as defining our ‘core’. While this question is an ongoing subtext to librarianship, having a sit down in a course environment was a great move. So kudos to the Faculty of Information studies at UofT for offering a full course on this important subject.

The content for me is still percolating … more discussion on this later. In the meantime, if you have burning thoughts on the matter, please chime in!

-PC-

The Internet Library of Early Journals is a digitized collection of journals from the 18th and 19th centuries.

(via MetaFilter)

- JH