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Canadian Book Exchange Centre closure

Published March 4th, 2008 in book exchange, information commons | No Comments »

The Library of Canada sent out a message on a listserv concerning its closure of the Canadian Book Exchange Centre, with the following statement as their introduction:

The Government of Canada has introduced a new expenditure management system as part of an ongoing commitment to sound management of government spending. The new system is focused on managing results and on the ongoing assessment of all direct program spending, or strategic review, to ensure efficiency, effectiveness and value for money.

Library and Archives Canada’s (LAC) strategic review concluded that the Canadian Book Exchange Centre (CBEC) program was not appropriately aligned with the priorities of Canadians and with core federal responsibilities.

I suppose the Government of Canada could have asked whether the CBEC was aligned with the priorities of the Canadians working at the Woodland Cultural Centre on Six Nations land in Brantford, who have no library acquisitions budget and thus rely on the CBEC to receive things like government publications pertaining to First Nations. (story)

For those who don’t know, CBEC:

helps Canadian libraries help each other. A resource-sharing service provided by Library and Archives Canada, CBEC is a redistribution centre, a clearing house that arranges for the exchange of publications deemed surplus by one library but needed by another. The Centre ensures that the nation’s collective surplus holdings are accessible to all, keeps material in circulation and provides an efficient, practical method of using libraries’ excess materials to help fill each other’s collection requirements.

Sidestepping DRM with free software

Published February 20th, 2008 in Digital Rights Management, copyright, information commons | No Comments »

My draft post on why librarians should boycott DRM may already be outdated.

This tip on subverting the DRM posse is thanks to Scott Douglas at Speak Quietly and Dispatches from a Public Librarian (McSweeneys), which should be checked out, if only for this entry on one librarian’s journey to a library conference, and back.

Release your fear of being enslaved to your digital music players. A Norwegian chap once famous for decrypting DVDs has created free software to decrypt the DRM from your music files. Still using FB? (speaking as one who is weening myself off) DoubleTwist has a FB app that enables you to share audio and video from your desktop with your friends … given that FB does not permit the posting of copyrighted images to decorate user created groups, etc. I wonder how they will respond to this app.

As I have not tried it out I make no endorsements. Reportedly the quality is the same as burning a CD. I will say that as an mp3 player owner, iTunes should be thanking the Norwegian bloke (AKA “DVD Jon“) who threw this one together. But they’ll probably sue. Myself, I’ll be more likely to pay for iTunes or other music if I know I can have more control over what I do with it and not be tied to a device.

I love Scandinavia.

-PC-

Librarians, Open Access, and Student Engagement

Published February 9th, 2008 in Digital Rights Management, advocacy, copyright, information commons, open access, public domain | No Comments »

Library Journal interviews student advocate (and new contributor to Open Access News) Gavin Baker about SPARC’s student engagement Right to Research campaign.

-PC-

Friday Fun Link - Google Takes on Wikipedia (Dec 14, 2007)

Published December 14th, 2007 in Friday Fun Link, copyright, culture, information commons, open access, public domain | No Comments »

Google will soon be releasing their own take on a Wikipedia-style of information resource - Google Knols (screenshot).

Some of the significant differences will be: named authors (who can choose to receive a portion of ad revenue for the “knol” pages they write) instead of Wikipedia’s anonymous author model. The site will allow multiple “knols” on a single topic (each will be written by a single author) with the community voting for the best one and suggesting changes in a separate area instead of the collaborative style of composing articles used on Wikipedia.

(via MetaFilter)

On a completely unrelated note, this will be the last Friday Fun Link I post on LibrarianActivist. After some recent discussions with the other two librarians I took on this project with about the future of the site, it was felt that we need to re-focus on the serious side of activism. We also discussed some other potential changes and improvements to the site. Hopefully more details about these items will be forthcoming in the weeks and months to come.

I am happy to remain involved with LA as a contributor but for anyone who’s enjoyed this recurring feature, I will continue to post the Friday Fun Links on my personal blog.

- JH

Friday Late Link - Slam The Boards Librarian Challenge (September 7, 2007)

Published September 9th, 2007 in Community, Friday Fun Link, advocacy, information commons, public domain, public libraries | No Comments »

Sorry for being late again this week - same “real world must take precedence sometimes” excuse as last week.

That also means anybody reading this has a bit less notice that September 10 has been declared “Librarians Slam The Boards” day.

Jessamyn West over at librarian.net has more details but basically, the idea is that librarians show up on any of the dozen or so “answer sites” on the Internet and provide responses while indicating that the question has been answered by a librarian.

The idea is to promote the role that librarians fill in providing quality information for others.

“This means making it clear that this question was answered by a librarian/library professional/etc. End each answer with the mention your own library, your VR service, etc. Add the link. Mention that readers should consider their own libraries, too. Promote it to local media. Keep in mind how many people don’t even realize that libraries offer reference services. Let’s surprise and delight them with our quality.

I’d like hundreds of librarians to do this. Thousands? Why not?

I see this as an opportunity to make the reference librarian community more visible. I’d like to see a number of us remain engaged in the answer services, on the chance that the users will have us in the backs of their minds when they have questions they don’t want everyone to see. As such, I’m not expecting to see a huge “blip” in our reference/VR stats because of this. But who knows? The point is to meet some folks where they otherwise wouldn’t expect us.”

I love some of the taglines they’re proposing librarians use with their answers:

# Have a question you don’t want the whole world to see?
# Librarians—Ask Us, We Answer!
# If you need more help, just contact your local librarian.
# Librarians—We eat questions for breakfast!

- JH

Friday Fun Link - See Who’s Editing Wikipedia (August 17, 2007)

Published August 18th, 2007 in Friday Fun Link, information commons, open access, public domain | No Comments »

Wikipedia allows anonymous edits but it does track the IP of anyone who makes the edit. So a Cal-Tech computer grad student, inspired by news last year that Congress members’ offices had been editing their own entries, and curious whether other organizations were doing anything similar, developed a program to make it much easier to see the affiliation of anyone who made edits to any Wikipedia page.

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This has led to numerous revelations about corporations like Fox News, organizations like the CIA and individuals such as staffers for a current US Presidential candidate abusing the intent of Wikipedia

(via MetaFilter which has lots of other links I didn’t include in this post)

- JH

Internet Radio Temporarily Avoids Rate Hikes Again

Published July 14th, 2007 in advocacy, copyright, culture, information commons | No Comments »

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.

During negotiations SoundExchange committed temporarily not to enforce the new royalty rates so webcasters can stay online as new rates are agreed upon.

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

‘Rethinking the library’ and busting out of the “The Bunker”

Published July 12th, 2007 in alternative libraries, alternative media, copyright, information commons, open access, public domain | No Comments »

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-

Media diversity resource

Published July 4th, 2007 in advocacy, alternative media, information commons, open access, public libraries, social responsibilities | No Comments »

Here’s a quick redirect to a Library Juice post with a couple of nice resources.

First is this guide for collecting from diverse sources.
(or: outsourcing, how not to)

Fostering Media Diversity in Libraries: Strategies and Actions.

Second there’s a link to a note on the ALA’s opposition to media concentration in the US since June 2003.

Relevant Canadian stuff from libraryland (found by searching the CLA website) is largely falling under the information literacy umbrella:

School Libraries in Canada link.
Information Literacy in Canada blog post.

-PC-

CLA adopts Open Access

Published June 29th, 2007 in Community, information commons, open access | No Comments »

Kudos to the Canadian Library Association and its Open Access Task Force for adopting an Open Access policy for CLA publications.

Here are main recommendatins of the report:

CLA will provide for full and immediate open access for all CLA publications, with the exception of Feliciter and monographs The embargo period for Feliciter is one issue, and the embargo policy itself will be reviewed after one year. Monographs will be considered for open access publishing on a case-by-case basis.

CLA actively encourages its members to self-archive in institutional and/or disciplinary repositories and will investigate a partnership with E-LIS, the Open Archive for Library and Information Studies.

CLA will generally provide for the author’s retention of copyright by employing Creative Commons licensing or publisher-author agreements that promote open access.

CLA will continue its long-standing policy of accessibility to virtually all CLA information except for narrowly defined confidential matters (e.g. certain personnel or legal matters).

For the full report click here.

via the CLA digest

-PC-

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