http://dissentinghistorian.blogspot.com/2008/04/never-forget-never-forgive-open.html

Excerpt:

Even though the Brazilian constitution of 1988 guarantees the right to memory and the right to information, the governments of Fernando Henrique Cardoso from 1994 to 2002 and the Lula government from 2002- have effectively barred historians, family members of the dead and disappeared, and other Brazilian citizens from finding out exactly what happened during this dark period in Brazilian history. A presidential decree by Cardoso in 2002 mandated that "ultra-secret" documents could be kept private indefinitely if it is in the "interest of society and the state." While in opposition, Lula and the Workers'Party promised that if elected they would open the archives wide open. Yet in 2005, Lula transformed the decree of Cardoso into a law, maintaining the right of the government to keep documents secret. In the meantime, those responsible for the tortures and murders have had the opportunity to destroy many important documents relating to their crimes during the dictatorship.

Students, historians and human rights groups are currently campaigning to change the law.

Regarding the strong/weak OA discussion at

http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?m=200805

I am not convinced that the Harnad/Suber agreement is a great progress.

For Harnad/Suber are documents strong OA even when they don't qualify for OA according the BBB definition. CC-NC or CC-ND are for me definitively not compatible with the BBB definition.

For Harnad weak OA has pejorative connotations. For me "strong" has too positive connotations.

Embargoed and partial Open Access (Washington Principles for Free Access) is better than Toll-Only-Access.

Immediate Access free of cost is better than embargoed and partial Open Access.

Open Access documents under CC-BY-NC, CC-BY-ND, CC-BY-NC-ND licenses are better than fair use only.

CC-BY is better than the not so free CC licenses.

Nobody would contradict. But that isn't the problem. We need three neutral names instead of weak/strong.

(1) I would like to call CC-BY (attribution only) OA true or full OA because it is a necessary condition for OA according BBB.

If an institution doesn't want accept the consequences of BBB regarding re-use it should not sign the Berlin declaration.

(2) Weaker CC-licenses are only partially removing permission barriers. There remain important barriers. Thus I cannot call this "strong".

Harnad calls this "Permission-Barrier-Free" but this ignores that FREE has a clear meaning. For important research contexts CC-NC doesn't remove a barrier. The documents are not "free" according the definition at
http://freedomdefined.org/Definition

(3) Cost-free Access is indeed "weak".

We should not intimidate the other side. Calling CC-NC "strong" makes me angry. For Harnad (and Rentier) "weak" is too pejorative. For me Rentier's suggestion "basic" for "weak" is too positive.

(1) CC-BY = BBB OA
(2) Re-use OA with remaining restrictions
(3) Cost-free Access.

We need incentives that funders, repository managers, and journal publishers are going in the direction of full OA id est CC-BY. The OA journal seal by SPARC is a great step in this direction. The strong/weak dichotomy isn't.

John Carter's ABC for Book Collectors (8th edition 2004) is
online in PDF at the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers web site.

http://www.ilab-lila.com/images/abcforbookcollectors.pdf

ALL TIME HITS (for all papers in SSRN eLibrary)
TOP 10 Papers for �Humanities Research Network
January 2, 1997 to May 2, 2008

Rank Downloads Paper Title
1 22065 Fuck
Christopher M. Fairman,
Ohio State University - Michael E. Moritz College of Law,
Date posted to database: April 17, 2006
Last Revised: January 10, 2007

Source

Some background in German:
http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/0,1518,436457,00.html

From "Suing Georgia" (©ollectanea, April 22, 2008 9:05 AM), a brilliant piece by Georgia Harper, UMUC's Center of Intellectual Property's Scholar.

So, 5th piece: what's left if you really, really, really believe that educators ought to be able to use whatever they need to and want to use in their classrooms without worrying about what it costs or whether it's fair use?

Consumer resistance, or OA.

Read it in ©ollectanea. Highly recommended.

http://thesocietyofqualifiedarchivists.blogspot.com/2008/04/church-of-englands-hidden-agenda.html

In 2005 Pusey House, Oxford sold most of its pre-Tractarian library; Truro Cathedral sold Bishop Philpott’s Library; and writing in The Church Times, Professor Jonathan Clark in an article entitled The C of E is losing its own history reports the sale of cathedral libraries from Bangor, Canterbury, Ely, Lincoln, Llandaff, Lichfield, Exeter, St. Asaph and Wells on AbeBooks. Manuscript items are included in these various sales.

The critics of these actions mainly express concern about the Church’s financial incompetence. The Truro sale, described by one eminent librarian as a disaster, raised £36,000 for stock eventually sold on for half a millon pounds.

Excerpts from the Clark article which is online at
http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=55172

Unremarked, Anglican institutions are selling the contents of their ancient libraries. A search on Abebooks.com shows a swath of volumes for sale from cathedral libraries: Bangor, Canterbury, Ely, Lincoln, Llandaff, Lichfield, Exeter, St Asaph, Wells.

Even at Oxford, Pusey House, established as a think tank with a scholarly as well as a pastoral remit, in 2005 sold much of the ancient contents of its library for the years before the Tractarians. A friend, viewing this sale at Christie’s, and appalled at the rows of venerable volumes, described it as “like a scene from the dissolution of the monasteries”. Yet that, in present-day form, is too close to the truth.

One can imagine it. Accountants add up the retail value of the collections, calculate the number of borrowers or readers, and advise that there is no option but liquidation. Senior clergy, who no longer read the books, are all too happy to accept expert advice. The auction houses promise a professional service, and the best prices (which are not always realised). The Charity Commissioners make no complaint. There is little publicity.

Such sales are more than minor inevitabilities: together, they become a historical phenomenon. They signify the Church of England losing the argument, and turning away from an attempt to sustain a heavyweight historical rationale for itself. One wonders whether the libraries of most Anglican clerics now consist not of formidable works of scholarship, but of paperbacks from the 1970s, already disintegrating.

A generation ago, Anglican priests could count in their ranks historians of the scholarly stature of Henry Chadwick, Owen Chadwick, and Jack McManners; today, their number is diminishing radically, and their lack of preferment is almost assured. It is a trend that has been going on for some time.

On the Truro case see

http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/4251379/

http://www.missingmaps.info

The database is empty! (Has a thief stolen the contents??)

Source - Stolen map from Madrid

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20080417/chron.htm

EB on E-Mails: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/183816/e-mail

The publishing wave of the future for scholars will be open access: electronic books freely available on the web. Scholars rarely make money on their monographs. And few individuals or libraries can afford to buy from print publishers all of the monographs they'd like to access (think dollar/page Brill books). Open Access is the solution. Now we just have to get scholars and tenure review committees to accept it.

http://bibleandancientneareast.blogspot.com/2008/04/open-access-monograph-series-that.html

An exhibit highlighting the rising cost of library journal subscriptions to support faculty and student research.

http://astech.library.cornell.edu/ast/engr/about/StickerShock2.cfm