National Archives and Records Administration
Strategy for Digitizing Archival Materials for Public Access, 2007-2016
http://www.archives.gov/digitization/strategy.html

http://readingarchives.blogspot.com/2008/05/history-of-archival-collection.html

Reading Sara Christine Snyder’s “Odyssey of an Archives: What the History of the Gordon W. Prange Collection of Japanese Materials Teaches Us About Libraries, Censorship, and Keeping the Past Alive,” MA thesis, University of Maryland, 2007 reminds me that there are probably a lot of theses done on archival topics that we miss (dissertations usually lead to some form of publication, but masters theses often do not). You can find this study online at http://hdl.handle.net/1903/6954.

Snyder relates the story of how this collection of materials, compiled during the Allied Occupation of Japan, came to reside in the U.S. at the University of Maryland.

Richard J. Cox asks: So, my question is, are any archivists playing with the idea of the knowledge commons? Certainly, archivists understand the need for them to consider how information (elevated into evidence and knowledge) builds community. However, is anyone within this professional group using this broader concept to present their role within society and scholarly communities?

http://readingarchives.blogspot.com/2008/05/archives-and-knowledge-commons.html

A broken water pipe flooded the main building of Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa early Tuesday morning, closing the building and causing a small amount of damage to some books.

Firefighters were called to the building shortly after 2 a.m. when a pipe broke near the men's washroom on the second floor of the Wellington Street building, setting off an alarm.

The building remained closed to its 275 employees at 7:30 a.m. as fire crews continued to pump water out from the lower floors where some books are kept and where the water collected after cascading down from the source.

The water caused "minimal damage" to the collection, said Doug Rimmer, assistant deputy minister of programs and services at Library and Archives Canada.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2008/05/20/ot-archives-080520.html

http://blog.openwetware.org/scienceintheopen/2008/05/16/avoid-the-pain-and-embarassment-make-all-the-raw-data-available/

Exzerpt:

Science has moved on from the days where the paper could only contain what would fit on the printed pages. It has moved on from the days when an informal circle of contacts would tell you which group’s work was repeatable and which was not. The pressures are high and potential for career disaster probably higher. In this world the reliability and completeness of the scientific record is crucial. Yes there are technical difficulties in making it all available. Yes it takes effort, and yes it will involve more work, and possibly less papers. But the only thing that ultimately can really be relied on is the raw data (putting aside deliberate fraud). If the raw data doesn’t form a central part of the scientific record then we perhaps need to start asking whether the usefulness of that record in its current form is starting to run out.

http://sciencecommons.org/weblog/archives/2008/05/12/how-to-free-your-facts/

*Facts are (and should be) free
*Licensing facts can cause legal uncertainty and confusion
*Attribution for facts can add complexity and hamper reuse
*The solution: use a waiver for factual data, not a license or contract

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

Update:

http://www.ilab.org/services/abcforbookcollectors.php

Update:
http://www.ilab.org/download.php?object=documentation&id=29

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