I did an earlier post about the guy who designed a program to link IP addresses to Wikipedia edits. This has led to all kinds of discoveries of spin, manipulation and outright lies being planted by individuals and organizations who want to harm others or clean up their own image.
Now a blogger has compiled a list of the seven most scandalous edits that have been discovered…so far.
- JH
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
Access Copyright has partnered with Creative Commons and WikiMedia (the people behind Wikipedia) to create a ground-breaking public domain registry that they hope becomes a model for the rest of the world.
Here’s an announcement they recently sent out:
Name the Public Domain Registry!
A product is only as good as the name you give it.
As reported in our most recent newsletter (July 26, 2007), Access Copyright has been working with Creative Commons and the Wikimedia Foundation on a Canadian Public Domain Registry. The registry will be an online, globally searchable database of Canadian works in the public domain and it will allow users to search and edit records, similar to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. For more information on the registry, please click here.
While the new registry will be both comprehensive and accessible, it also requires an easily identifiable name, which is where you come in. The public domain project needs your creative input. And who better to ask than our affiliates - Canada’s greatest creative resource!
Our hope at Access Copyright is that the new online registry will be a model for similar systems from other parts of the globe. As such, the name should brief, catchy, and one which could work for other countries wishing to create a registry of its own public domain works. Other than that, the only limits are your imagination and originality.
This is your chance to be an integral part of this ground-breaking project. Please send any and all suggestions, whether a list of one or 100, via email to the Communications Department at editor@accesscopyright.ca. We will pare down the list and keep you posted on what the winning name is.
We appreciate your feedback as we move forward with this exciting project.
- JH
The author of the popular Freakonomics book looks at the question, “If public libraries didn’t exist, could you start one today?”
“But here’s the point I’m (finally) getting to: if there was no such thing today as the public library and someone like Bill Gates proposed to establish them in cities and towns across the U.S. (much like Andrew Carnegie once did), what would happen?
I am guessing there would be a huge pushback from book publishers. Given the current state of debate about intellectual property, can you imagine modern publishers being willing to sell one copy of a book and then have the owner let an unlimited number of strangers borrow it? I don’t think so.”
He doesn’t bring it up but I wonder if an analogy could be made to bit torrent sites today? One person buys a legitimate copy and then others are able to obtain a free copy. The only difference is that instead of dozens of uses as for popular library items, bit torrent allows thousands of copies to be downloaded. The other big difference is that bit torrent tends to focus on movies, music and TV shows that don’t have the history of “free” borrowing like books in a library do. And of course, you don’t have to “return” a digital copy.
It’s not a perfect analogy but the similarities are there.
(via Reddit)
Oh, and in a semi-related story, a PhD candidate in economics contends that the optimal length of copyright in today’s digital age is…fourteen years. (via Boing Boing)
- 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-
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-
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-
In keeping with the topic of the day, here’s a report on internet filtering from the National Coalition Against Censorship which is admittedly, a bit dated, having been produced in 2001. But it gives an excellent overview of many of the issues and problems being discussed in the wake of the LPL debate. And an update of the report in 2006 shows that the same concerns with internet filtering software remain to this day.
Here are some examples of what happens when you filter:
- JH
*Scroll down for news about the London Public Library’s decision to implement internet filtering*
Not that I want to interrupt the letter you’re writing to the LPL board of directors, but as luck would have it, this would be the week that Canadian representatives decided to make life difficult at the World Intellectual Property Organization Development Agenda meetings in Geneva.
Fortunately, Michael Geist reports a positive update today on his blog.
Update: Reports this morning indicate progress with inclusion of the access to knowledge language. A welcome development, though Canada should be leading on these issues, not aligning itself against the developing world.
Apparently the Harper government needs a wake up call. If the Access to Knowledge issue is new to you, have a look at the Wikipedia community’s summary of A2K/Access to Knowledge. It also includes a long list of organizations active in the A2K movement.
The CIPO mission statement is also worth a look. I’m not seeing anything about Canada’s role internationally.
Keep up to date on IP news through IP Watch and Sarah Bannerman
via the CLA discussion list a la Heather Morrison
-PC-
To add on to Sabina’s earlier post … now that Siobhan Stevenson’s call for keeping the public domain in public libraries has cracked into the public domain itself through First Monday, it’s time to talk turkey.
First, let me wax poetic for a moment and say that isn’t it great to be a part of a profession that shares information amongst each other, just because we want to? It will never cease to warm my heart. Second, our commitment to information sharing means that private interests from Gates and vendors alike, with their prepackaged sales pitches and honourary Harvard degrees, can’t measure up to the library community’s capacity to educate and inform the public, critically. It’s what we do.
That said, when terms such as Free and Open Source Software and Community Informatics arrive on the scene, they may not make the best first impression. FOSS and CI at first seem like brash guests at the party. They talk over your head, interrupt and confuse the humble and loyal guests, eat too much finger food and then question your menu choices, all while being nervy enough to recommend a better place for you to get your veggies.
Humph. So much for an invite back. However, if techie terms such as these crash the party again and continue to be so obtuse and unreachable, I urge you to see past their initial lack of manners and see them as the bold and renegade newcomers that they are, and simply in need of a guiding hand from some of the more experienced kids on the block. (And hey, they’ve got a solid point when it comes to buying more organic and locally grown food.)
If I were to have a standing list of block party invitees to mentor these newcomers into our midst, who would be on it? First, I’d make it a potluck. Second, I’d invite the ppl with whom FOSS and CI are already good friends and regularly exchange recipes.
The usual suspects are of course:
Jessamyn West. Pimp your Firefox. Watch a video on installing Ubuntu. Make friends with Wikipedia.
Sarah Houghton-Jan. Too many ideas to mention.
Aaron Schmidt . Great blog title, appreciated the Gmail Greasemonkey tip.
Erica Olson. Another great blog title, probably helped me stay in library school at a moment of weakness. Includes some in your face techie goodness.
The Team at Lifehacker. (Still getting acquainted).
Casey Bisson. From whom there is recommended reading: Open Source Software and Libraries; LTR 43.3
And for a few Canadian based suspects
Richard Akerman - Science Library Pad.
Dean Giustini - Open Medicine.
Jeff Trzeciak and Amanda Etches-Johnson, both at McMaster University, conducting reference interviews through Second Life and using an Endeca powered catalogue. added June 13.07
… this list is a work in progress. Any suggestions?
-PC-
