LoomWare

Not a Bad Idea, If Not For...

This recent announcement from the federal government seems like a long time coming and one I personally am mostly in favour of, if only the government wasn't also decimating other services for the "those with less", including Internet access. Would this not have made so much more sense together with an announcement about the INCREASE in funding for CAP, instead of the one killing the CAP program? If I was a pessimist (and I'm not) I would think this was another brick in the wall around a much less open and democratic government. But hey, this is Canada! Isn't it?

Subject: Notification of Deficit Reduction Action Plan Implications for PWGSC's Depository Services Program / Avis concernant les répercussions du Plan d'action pour la réduction du déficit sur le Programme des services de dépôt de TPSGC

Sent: Apr 13, 2012 2:02 PM

FYI / A titre d'information ...

 La version française suit la version anglaise.

Dear Sir or Madam,

Further to the 2012 Budget, tabled on March 29, 2012, this is to advise you of a decision that affects the business relationship between Public Works and Government Services Canada Publishing and Depository Services Program, and your organization.

As part of the Deficit Reduction Action Plan, the decision has been made to completely transition all publications published by the Publishing Program and publications provided by departments to the Depository Services Program from traditional print to exclusively electronic publications. This aligns with the Government of Canada's greening government initiatives. This also aligns directly with Canadians' increasing access to electronic information and use of e-publications. Recent statistics from publications.gc.ca show a significant increase in the number of unique visitors to the site which was close to 2.2 Million and the number of downloads close to 10 Million annually.  The resulting demand for paper publications has greatly declined. This decline is expected to continue as the trend towards the use of the Internet to access publications increases.  By fully transitioning to free web-based publications we will eliminate the costs associated with producing, printing, distributing and warehousing hard copies.

 In 2014, Publishing and Depository Services will no longer be producing, printing, or warehousing hard copies of publications. However the Depository Services Program will continue to provide access to Government of Canada publications through publications.gc.ca.  Other services under the Publishing and Depository Services Program remain as they are.

Please be assured of our utmost co-operation in limiting the impact of this decision on your operations and in continuing to offer a high-quality service.

Thank you for your understanding and continued co-operation.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to communicate with us at: [email protected].

-----------------------------------------------------------

Monsieur, Madame, 

À la suite du budget de 2012 présenté le 29 mars 2012, ceci est pour vous informer d'une décision qui influe sur la relation d'affaires entre Éditions et Services de dépôt de Travaux publics et Services gouvernementaux Canada et votre organisation.

Dans le cadre du Plan d'action pour la réduction du déficit, la décision a été prise que toutes les publications publiées par le Programme des éditions du GC, et des publications que fournissent les ministères au Programme des services de dépôt, passeront de l'impression traditionnelle vers la publication électronique seulement, et ce dans deux ans. Cette mesure cadre avec les initiatives d'écologisation du gouvernement du Canada. Cette mesure cadre également avec la population canadienne qui a de plus en plus un accès direct à l'information et qui utilise les publications électroniques. Des statistiques récentes de publications.gc.ca montrent une augmentation importante du nombre de visiteurs uniques sur le site qui était près de 2,2 millions et du nombre de téléchargements de près de 10 millions par année. La demande pour les publications sur papier a ainsi fortement diminuée. Cette baisse devrait se poursuivre tant que la tendance vers l'utilisation de l'Internet pour acc!

é  der aux publications continue d'augmenter. En procédant à une transition complète vers une publication gratuite sur le Web, cela nous permettra d'éliminer les coûts associés à la production, l'impression, la distribution et l'entreposage des copies papier.

En 2014,les Services d'éditions et de dépôt ne feront plus la production, l'impression ou l'entreposage de copies papier des publications. Toutefois, le Programme des services de dépôt continuera de fournir l'accès aux publications du gouvernement du Canada par le biais du site publications.gc.ca. Les autres services offerts par les Éditions et Services de dépôt demeurent les mêmes.

Vous pouvez compter sur notre entière collaboration en vue de réduire les répercussions de cette décision sur vos opérations et continuer d'offrir un service de grande qualité.Je vous remercie de votre compréhension et votre collaboration continue.

Si vous avez des questions, n'hésitez pas à communiquer avec nous à :[email protected].

 

UPEI, Web of Science and Knowledge for All

There has been a great deal of interest in the last few days in an article that appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education this week. Since it is about open access to knowledge, it seemed unfortunate to me that the article is behind a fee wall, so I have copied the text below, based on the assumption that the Chronicle is actually interested in facilitating a discussion around this issue. (I had to get a colleague to send me the article since I do not subscribe.) Might I suggest to the Publisher that they move the article outside the fee wall as a nod to the importance of access to knowledge.

The Knowledge for All Proposal (about which I will write more in the coming weeks) is available on the Robertson Library Website : http://library.upei.ca/k4all.

Hot Type: Canadian University Hopes to Lead Fight Against High Subscription Prices U. of Prince Edward Island

By Jennifer Howard

Famous for mussels, serenity, and as the setting for Anne of Green Gables, Prince Edward Island, the smallest of Canada's provinces, seems an unlikely hotbed of revolution. But at the University of Prince Edward Island, the province's only university, a bit of scholarly-communication revolt is stirring.

On June 15, the university librarian, Mark Leggott, released a campus letter to let the faculty know the institution would not be renewing its subscription to the Web of Science database. Mr. Leggott's letter cited several reasons for the decision: "a challenging fiscal climate," a required three-year contract with price increases every year, a weaker Canadian dollar that would make those increases even harder to bear.

But here are the real fighting words: "Any subscription increase in these challenging times is difficult, but an increase of 120 percent is simply not acceptable," Mr. Leggott wrote. "Accommodating this level of increase lends credence to the vendors' business practices, and we felt it important to make a stand against these practices." Tellingly, the letter cites the recent standoff between the University of California system and the Nature Publishing Group over journal prices.

Published by Thomson Reuters, Web of Science is a citation index that covers more than 10,000 scholarly journals across a variety of disciplines. It allows users to track what's been cited and how often. Its multiple databases include conference proceedings and open-access journals, too. In the eyes of Mr. Leggott, it's also an overpriced product of a scholarly publishing system that no longer works. That's what he told me when I asked why the university wasn't going to renew.

"We just said enough is enough," he said. "These citation indexes are just not special any more, and we're in a period where financial challenges plus lack of innovation in the [publishing] industry are causing people to say, This just doesn't make sense anymore."

He called it "absolutely critical" that research institutions be franker about their dealings with publishers and their pricing models. That applies to small universities like his as well as to enormous systems like California's.

"We have a tendency to keep our negotiations confidential and quiet, and I think it's the most egregious process we can follow," Mr. Leggott told me. "We have been silent for way too long in letting it be known that this kind of scholarly publishing process is not sustainable."

Awareness and Elbow Grease

So a small Canadian university decides to give a citation index the heave-ho. So what? For one thing, observers nowhere near Prince Edward Island took note of the decision. For instance, the Law Librarian Blog saluted UPEI along with the California system for using their run-ins with publishers to make faculty members aware of how the traditional publishing ecosystem really works—and what it costs. "Most people outside of the librarians and deans do not really 'get' the price thing as it relates to scholarship," the blog observed. "Now they do, at least at UC and UPEI."

As the Law Librarian Blog pointed out, UPEI has done more than just cancel one subscription, and that makes its decision worth keeping tabs on. Mr. Leggott and the library staff took another practical and immediate step: They put together a guide of databases that provide the kind of citation-reference searching that Web of Science does. (The university will acquire a pay-as-you-go license to Web of Science for faculty members who really can't find a good alternative.)

Another gambit is far more ambitious. Mr. Leggott sees the Web of Science decision as an opportunity "to raise awareness around all these issues and see if there's any interest in building a different kind of approach." What he has in mind is "a Wikipedia-type index to scholarly literature" called Knowledge for All. Open source and freely available, the index would be built and maintained by libraries—not just UPEI's but as many as are willing to pitch in.

Mr. Leggott envisions Knowledge for All as an index built "using the elbow grease of the institution rather than the increasingly dwindling resources we have," he told me. "The goal here would be to index all of what can be identified as scholarly, whether it's peer reviewed or not peer reviewed."

Mr. Leggott is circulating the proposal to library consortia in Canada and abroad, hoping to get 10 to 20 institutions to sign on as founding members to hire a project manager and get the project in gear. It could mean only a modest outlay of money and staff time for participating institutions. The librarian estimates that there are some 40,000 science journals published every year; if 3,000 libraries pitched in, he calculates, "then each of them would have to index 15 journal titles." Instead of paying money to commercial publishers for products such as Web of Science, libraries could put their resources to work indexing the scholarly literature themselves.

Mr. Leggott says his job now is to convince other librarians that the idea has legs. His message: "Rather than paying into a dysfunctional scholarly-publishing environment, the library community should take the lead and make sure that knowledge that's created largely by scholarly communities is not locked behind a pay wall."

Whatever happens with the Knowledge for All project, it will be interesting to see whether UPEI's decision to ditch one of its standard databases will embolden librarians elsewhere to take similar measures. We're still waiting for one side or the other to blink in the California-Nature standoff, and what happens there will surely have a ripple effect. A big system like California's, with its combined research heft, has a decent chance of getting publishers to pay attention. Will publishers and other libraries sit up and take notice when a small university like UPEI says it's had enough?

Content providers may not care that much—if the action is limited to one small customer. Mr. Leggott says he has heard very little from Web of Science, and no details on how it will make sure that UPEI has access to Web of Science materials it has already paid for. "There seems to be little time or concern for a little institution like UPEI," Mr. Leggott told me.

But if UPEI can get enough other institutions to make Knowledge for All a serious experiment—or if it helps inspire other colleges and universities to take their own stands with publishers—its influence could exceed its size.

"A small university can have a big impact when there's a little bit of vision there," Mr. Leggott said.

Is it possible to donate an eBook to the library?

More Changes in the Library Landscape

An interesting post from Sue Polanka highlights some of the issues with a bread & butter library process - book donations. [On the other hand I suspect some Collections librarians will be happy to think of a day when they don't have to consider moldy boxes of past bestsellers.] Many libraries rely on the annual spring cleaning ritual for new material, so Sue's thoughts on what happens when they are all digital is an interesting one. As she points out, the challenges with donating eBooks far outweigh the advantages, at least in the current DRM-focused landscape. What struck me with this one was how quickly another long-standing tradition, not to mention way of building a Friends network, suddenly disappears. The other sad thought was how much this highlights the death knell of public lending in the digital age - at least in a way we can fathom. Contrast this with my coming post on ways for public libraries to make use of eBook readers.

Scraped from No Shelf Required

BBC Archive to Open Up

BBC News | Dyke to open up BBC archive

I had posted on this one before, so was happy to see a recent announcement suggesting that the BBC's considerable archive of material will soon be freely available to all: for non-commercial use. I liked this quote:

I believe that we are about to move into a second phase of the digital revolution, a phase which will be more about public than private value; about free, not pay services; about inclusivity, not exclusion.

I can go for that.

$100 laptop could sell to public

More on the OLPC project - I like the idea of having a commercial version that would only be sold to those who pay for 2 - one for them and one for someone in the developing world.

Information Technologies and International Development Journal

MIT Press Move to Open Access

A perfect example of the kind of journal that makes little sense behind a fee wall. ITID "focuses on the intersection of information and communication technologies (ICT) with international development. ITID aims to create a networked community of leading thinkers and strategists to discuss the critical issues of ICT and development, an epistemic community that crosses disciplines (especially technologists and social scientists), national boundaries, and the North and South hemispheres." A quick glance at the TOCs for the last few issues puts this one on my regular read list. Microsoft provided funding for this open access initiative via MIT's Open Access Sponsorship model, which provides an interesting option for funding some open access projects.

Global Text Project

Helping Make Learning Accessible to All

The Global Text Project is another example of the emerging efforts to create open textbooks, of which Wikibooks is the most famous example. Some nice features of this project are the international makeup of the Advisory Board and the proposal to link chapters from the books to journal articles in a complimentary journal called Envision: Journal of Learning and Knowledge Transfer. But what I really like is the fact that they will be offering "scholarships" to students who make particularly significant contributions to the texts: an interesting idea that could add a significant twist to the development of open knowledge.

Scraped from Harold Jarche

Canadian Internet Use Survey

Statscan Releases new Canadian Internet Use Survey

Some interesting results from Statistics Canada's latest Internet Use survey. One that is no surprise to me but would probably be so to some people who think Canada is advanced when it comes to access: 88% of people with over $86,000 annual income used the Internet, but only 61% with an income less than that did. In other words, in low income families and rural areas, Internet access is still not much better than 50%. T@his is also evident in the fact that Ontario, BC and Alberta have the highest usage rates. It was also interesting to see the reasons for going online (e-mail and web browsing being the biggies), especially the high number for news and weather. Don't invest in that traditional newspaper operation just yet... One thing that did surprise me was that almost 60% of people did their banking online. I thought a lot of people were still nervous about that, but obviously not. The obvious offshoot from this is that more and more people will expect to do all their financial transactions online, including library fines :-)

Working "One Laptop Per Child" laptop

Video Demo of the OLPC System

A short video of the 1st OLPC system. This prototype uses a 1GB flash drive to store the OS (Fedora) and a few apps. The USB port will allow external devises like CD/DVD drives. The OLPC initiative has also received its first order (from Nigeria) for 1 million of the systems (vunet.com) so it looks like things are moving quickly with this promising initiative. I also read a post re India's interest in the system and how some people in the Indian government are questioning the wisdom of that country signing on as well. The message cited concerns like it running Linux (a bonus I would say) and having to replace the motherboard when there is a problem. When we are talking about a $100 (and eventually sub-$100) system, I don't see how the 2nd one is an issue and the the lack of Windows is definitely a positive.

Scraped from Silicon Valley Sleuth

First Photos of MIT $100 Laptop

First Photos of MIT $100 Laptop

This is an interesting design - I like the flippers at the top :-) Go direct to the photo show.

Scraped from AlterSlash