A project to put historical constituency data online runs into familiar problems with Ordnance Survey

SA Mathieson
Thursday February 22, 2007
The Guardian

A project to put historical election data online has run into a problem familiar to supporters of Technology Guardian's Free Our Data campaign: Ordnance Survey's copyright.

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,2017958,00.html

Quote:

"Taxpayers would be amazed what is available within higher education, which is paid for by the general public but isn't available to the general public."

The Open Access "Taxpayer Argument" is also applicable when requesting "Remote access" to university databases for taxpayers in Germany, see (in German)
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bibliotheksrecherche#Bestehende_M.C3.B6glichkeit_zum_Zugang_zu_Informationen_von_zuhause

Digital Book Index has reached an important milestone, having now surpassed 130,000 eBooks, eTexts, eDocuments, and online reference tools. About 90,000 of these titles are available free to individual end-users, with the balance of titles indexed coming from high-quality subscription services such as Questia & NetLibrary, or independent Publishers. During the past year, we have added more than 25000 new titles.

...

Here's the address for an engaging reading & research experience.
http://www.DigitalBookIndex.org (mirror2)
http://www.DigitalBookIndex.com (mirror1)

See also:
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/837865

http://www.parkslopecourier.com/site/tab7.cfm?newsid=17862968&BRD=2384&PAG=461&dept_id=552853&rfi=6

Irreplaceable records charting the rise of a Brooklyn shipyard to a position of national dominance have been lost forever, vanquished to the trash heap by Swedish home furnishings giant IKEA.

See also
http://gowanuslounge.blogspot.com/2007/02/ikea-says-it-did-nothing-wrong.html

http://www.ivir.nl/creativecommons/CC_for_cultural_heritage_institutions.pdf

Esther Hoorn, Creative Commons Licences for cultural heritage institutions: A Dutch perspective, IVIR, September 2006 (73 pp. PDF). Excerpt:

...This study explores the possibilities for the cultural heritage institutions to provide free access to digital cultural heritage, based on voluntary use of standardized licences. The central question in this research is whether Creative Commons Licences constitute a tool allowing cultural heritage institutions to fulfil their mission within their funding and operational framework....

[A] general policy objective for cultural heritage institutions that cultural heritage should be broadly available and that user involvement should be facilitated. Yet the consequences of this are for a large part not yet translated into policies on access and re-use in the digital environment. From a user perspective for the participation in culture it is of importance to have access as well as the rights to re-use works. CC Licences can be instrumental to identify appropriate levels of sharing in fields of creative practice. For works of which a cultural heritage institution is the rights holder, the use of CC Licences makes re-use easier and therefore stimulates the production of new works....

Via Open Access News

Read!

http://www.jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/maps/pal/html/

The JNUL (Jewish National and University Library), David & Fela Shapell Family Digitization Project is pleased to announce the opening to the public of the digital collection: Holy Land Maps. This project, based on the Eran Laor Cartographic Collection at the JNUL, contains over 1,000 maps dating from 1462 through the early 20th century.



Each map is presented in a variety of image formats, including the zoomable MrSid format (which requires a special plug-in, available atthe project site). The maps are arranged both chronologically and by persons (cartographers, engravers, etc.). A number of maps are arranged by specific locations such as Acre or Mount Tabor (maps of Jerusalem arein a separate, previous, site). The bilingual site also contains an introduction and links to relatedsites. Each map is accompanied by detailed bibliographic data.

Source: http://maputopia.blogspot.com/2007/01/digitized-holy-land-maps.html

Peter Suber writes:

I'm very pleased to provide this update on the petition to the European Commission for guaranteed public access to publicly-funded research results.
http://www.ec-petition.eu/



As of this morning, there were 18,476 signatures (in the 24 days since the petition was launched on January 14).

The petition welcomes signatures from any individual or institution but especially from European researchers and European research institutions. Please help by signing the petition yourself, asking your institution to sign as an institution, and spreading the word.

Here are some of the notable institutional signatures:

* European research funders

Association of Medical Research Charities (UK)
Austrian Science Fund
British Heart Foundation
CNRS (Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique)
European Research Council
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinshaft (German Research Foundation)
INRIA (Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique)
Max Planck Society
Medical Research Council (UK)
Spanish National Research Council
Volkswagen Foundation
Wellcome Trust

* European university associations

Assocation of Swedish Higher Education
Conference of Italian University Rectors
Finnish Council of University Rectors
Hochschulrektorenconferenz (Germany)
Irish Universities Association
Portuguese Rectors Conference

* National academies in Europe

Academia Romana (Romanian Academy)
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Lithuanian Academy of Sciences
Royal Flemish Academy of Arts and Sciences
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Royal Scientific Society of Jordan
Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History & Antiquities
Schweizerische Akademie der Geistes- und Socialwissenschaften

* European research institutions other than universities

Brain Health Centre, Rome
CERN (European Centre for Nuclear Research)
CNRS-Paris Descartes Laboratory
BESSY (German Synchrotron Radiation Research Centre)
DESY (German Electron Synchrotron: Helmholtz Association)
Herder Institute, Marburg
IFO Institute for Economic Research, Munich
Istituto Superiore di Sanita (National Institute of Health, Italy)
Istituto Universitario di Scienze Motorie, Rome
Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering
Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW)
Netherlands Space Research Institute
Nordic Cochrane Centre
RWI Essen (Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung)

* European universities

National Pedagogical University, Lithuania
Università degli Studi del Molise
Università degli Studi della Tuscia ­ Viterbo
Università degli Studi di Messina
Università degli Studi di Teramo
Università degli Studi di Torino
Universidad de Huelva
University "G. d'Annunzio" of Chieti-Pescara
University of Bristol
University of Cyprus
University of Genoa
University of Ghent
University of Giessen
University of Göteborg
University of Goettingen
University of Groningen
University of Konstanz
University of Kristianstad
University of Liege
University of London Birkbeck College
University of London Royal Holloway College
University of London School of Advanced Study
University of Lund
University of Macerata
University of Minho
University of Naples 'Parthenope'
University of Porto
University of Southampton
University of Stockholm
University of Strathclyde
University of Twente
University of Umea
University of Westminster
University of Wolverhampton
University of Zurich

* European research organizations

ERCIM (European Research Consortium for Information and Mathematics)
ESIB (National Unions of Students in Europe)
euroCRIS (European Organisation for Current Research Information Systems)
European Educational Research Association
Euroscience (European Association for the Advancement of Science & Technology)
World Academy of Young Scientists

Kudos to the petition organizers for generating this remarkable response. The voice of the European research community is coming through loud and clear.

Remember that the petition is still open and welcomes signatures from every quarter.

Best,
Peter

Peter Suber
Senior Researcher, SPARC
Open Access Project Director, Public Knowledge
Research Professor of Philosophy, Earlham College
Author, SPARC Open Access Newsletter
Author, Open Access News blog
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/

Source:
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/3596.html

> The Independent and the Guardian have run the following
> articles about threatened funding cuts at the BL.
> http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2192972.ece
> http://guardian.co.uk/books
>
> If these are put into action, the British Library will start charging
> researchers, reduce opening hours, will pulp 15 per cent of its
> collection, & close the newspaper collection at Colindale.
> The BL management have said that the more letters of protest (to them,
> or to the newspapers) the better. I have a feeling that a good
> response from Cambridge would carry a lot of weight.

Ballard, Terry Prof. in: Book People
02.02.2007 18:51

I've got some fascinating anecdotal evidence that Google is
seriously ramping up their books project. Our library owns a set of 4400
sets of microfiched books from the 19th century, Library of American
Civilization. They seem like a great thing until students look at them
and find that they are in a weird format about the size of a credit
card, and the visual quality is challenged at best. Each year we run a
check of the U of Pennsylvania list to find which of these titles is
available free online and add a link to our catalog when it is. In 6
years of checking, we'd added 420 titles, or about 10 per cent of the
collection. I happened to have a student check Google Books last month
to see if they'd added anything new since August. They had - by the time
we'd added everything, the size of our linked LAC file nearly tripled.
Overnight, a quarter of the collection is linked. You can see the
results at:

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1849.xml

Terry

Terry Ballard, Automation Librarian

http://www.ec-petition.eu/



The petition in support of the European Commission's Proposal to mandate OA self-archiving has already amassed 13,000 signatures in 13 days and is still growing. It is being signed not only by individual grassroots researchers but by universities, learned societies, scientific academies:

Rectors/principals of research organisations (51)
Heads of university/research institution departments or schools (44)
International societies or research-based organisations (38)
National societies or research-based organisations (35)
Research-based or research-centred charities/foundations (21)
National or international research funding bodies (8)
National academies (3)
Rectors' Conferences/University associations (2)
Government departments (2)

The petition is also being signed by institutional libraries, research organisations and publishers:

Institutional libraries (144)
R&D-based companies (66)
Publishers (30)
International or national library organisations (26)
National ICT organisations (11)
Museums (research-based) (2)

Source: http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/200-Pit-Bulls-vs.-Petitions-A-Historic-Time-for-Open-Access.html

Notes from Mathias Schindler
http://blog.outer-court.com/forum/84554.html

On Schindler's PD question see the Google answer
http://searchengineland.com/070110-094130.php
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/3169470/