Peter Suber has blogged a JISC press release on the funding of 16 large projects.

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_01_28_fosblogarchive.html#117003715218007229

But will all of them be Open Access?

Definitively no. JISC isn't supporting OA to digitised heritage items.

The National Archives' project on the cabinet papers is - like the other project of this institution ( see http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/2483776/ ) - not OA but toll access (TA):

"Access will be offered through two established routes: via ATHENS,
allowing free access at the point of use for the UK academic sector,
and via pay-per-view payment for other users."

The core literatur on Irland will also TA:

"The Irish Studies Collection will be made freely available to all
users within the British Isles whether the general public, lone
scholars, or institutions. Outside the British Isles JSTOR will
operate their existing subscription model."

"19th century pamphlets online: Phase 1" is also a JSTOR cooperation and thus TA.

The Oxford "Electronic Ephemera" project is a cooperation with ProQuest (ergo TA):

"Any user, anywhere, will have unimpeded access to the high-quality cataloguing information and descriptive metadata that will be created during the course of this project. Members of UK HE and FE institutions, and anyone with access to a public library, will also be given full no-cost access to the entirety of the digital collection."

Once more the PUBLIC DOMAIN will be incarcerated!

http://www.ec-petition.eu/index.php?p=index

John Woram in MapHist
http://mailman.geo.uu.nl/pipermail/maphist/2007-January/009115.html

hillshaw at aol.com wrote: "If the cost of
maintaining enough webspace to post a
decent-resolution image of 1,000s of maps is
excessive, why not a rotating programme?"

Unfortunately, the cost of web space is not the
problem here. The problem is, the permissions fee
to post an image owned by some major institutions
is prohibitive. As I mentioned earlier, the
annual cost for that set of 16 images would
exceed £3,000 per year. And in another
situtation, if one set of images were rotated
with another, the permission costs would be even greater.

So, we have a bit of a dilemma here. The
institution can't justify the cost of posting the
images on its own website, due to limited
interest. Or even if the images were posted, it
can't justify the expense of writing some
appropriate text, for the same reason.

An outside specialist could do both, at no cost
to the institution or to him/herself, other than
the labor involved. But the institution won't
permit that, unless a very stiff fee is paid. So,
the images remain "buried", no papers are
written, and only those who know of their
existence, AND can afford to visit the institution, can enjoy access.

Seems to me this is a situation in which everyone loses.

(Emphasis by me)

I suppose it's not breaking news that libraries and archives aren't flush with cash. So it must be hard for a director of such an institution when a large corporation, or even a relatively small one, comes knocking with an offer to digitize one's holdings in exchange for some kind of commercial rights to the contents. But as a historian worried about open access to our cultural heritage, I'm a little concerned about the new agreement between Footnote, Inc. and the United States National Archives. And I'm surprised that somehow this agreement has thus far flown under the radar of all of those who attacked the troublesome Smithsonian/Showtime agreement. Guess what? From now until 2012 it will cost you $100 a year, or even more offensively, $1.99 a page, for online access to critical historical documents such as the Papers of the Continental Congress.

This was the agreement signed by Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein and Footnote, Inc., a Utah-based digital archives company, on January 10, 2007. For the next five years, unless you have the time and money to travel to Washington, you'll have to fork over money to Footnote to take a peek at Civil War pension documents or the case files of the early FBI. The National Archives says this agreement is "non-exclusive"—I suppose crossing their fingers that Google will also come along and make a deal—but researchers shouldn't hold their breaths for other options.

Read more from Dan Cohen at:
http://www.dancohen.org/blog/posts/national_archives_footnote_agreement

It's a sad message for Open access advocates. Let us hope that a lot of people who are buying access are ignoring the "terms of use" by making the Public Domain content free on other servers.

More information (and critical points) at the Spellbound blog:
http://www.spellboundblog.com/2007/01/17/footnotecom-and-us-national-archives-records/

Short critical comment:
http://freegovinfo.info/node/858

"Some forms of open access are, it seems, more open than others, with an American Scientist Open Access Forum debate ending with a consensus that a number of open access (OA) models exist", reports IWR
http://www.iwr.co.uk/information-world-review/news/2172651/whn-open-access-really-open

The debate was in early December. I agree with the statement by Peter Murray-Rust:
http://listserver.sigmaxi.org/sc/wa.exe?A2=ind06&L=american-scientist-open-access-forum&D=1&O=D&F=l&S=&P=100729

See also his blog entry:
http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?p=203

Harnad and others are permanently ignoring that all relevant OA declarations (BOAI, Bethesda, Berlin) have as essential point the removal of "permission barriers" (Suber).

The Berlin declaration had the form of a license (requesting that an OA document should be labeled as such by addition of the text of the declaration) but the growing popularity of the Creative Commons licenses makes them the first choice.

PLoS and BMC's Creative Commons Licenses CC-BY are exactly that what the OA definitions request. Whether excluding commercial use nor forbidding derivative works is in consent with these definitions. Each scholar should understand what he signs. If a scholar had signed BOAI he has explicitely given support to the aim that scholarly output should be really free. This means:
*mirroring the article in other repositories is allowed
*class room use is allowed
*using it for commercial online-media is allowed
*translating in another languages is allowed
and so on.

Suber seems to have decided not to attack Harnad although Harnad's position is not on the ground of the relevant OA definitions. The most authoritative source for OA is Suber's website and his interpretation of OA is unmistakable.

You can find a summarry of Suber's position and my critical comments (in English) at:
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/320964/

Most DOAJ journals are definitively not OA in the Berlin/BOAI sense.

Should be satisfied with free breakfeast if our aim was to have also free lunch?

*OA advocates should underline all the time they speak about OA that OA is both: cost free and free of permission barriers.

*OA repositories and OA journals should allow (and request) CC licenses for all content.

*The default CC license should be CC-BY.

*Mandatory deposit regulations for funded research should contain the duty to remove permission barriers (according to the last two points)

*If an author or an institution pays a lot of money for OA in a so-called hybrid journal the content should be free of permission barriers (default CC license).

*We need a registry (using OAI-PMH) for scholarly OA content free of permission barriers (whether DOAJ nor OAIster nor the CC search allows to filter such content).

This is also essential for advocates of open content projects like the Wikipedia and for advocates of OA for cultural heritage items in archives, libraries and museums. (And for advocates of open data too, where the remix-ability is a core feature of "Open Science").

http://institutionalreviewblog.blogspot.com/

The main focus of the five weeks old weblog seems to be the problems which are IRBs causing for Oral History projects.

"An institutional review board/independent ethics committee (IRB/IEC) (also known as ethical review board) is a group that has been formally designated to review and monitor biomedical and behavioral research involving human subjects." (en.wikipedia).

In the newest issue of "The Book Collector" is a comment on the Karlsruhe desaster. I am very thankful to Nicolas Barker who gave kind permission to re-publish the text here.


***

NEWS AND COMMENT

IN THE BADISCHE Landesbibliothek in Karlsrühe is one of the finest
collections of medieval manuscripts and early printed books in Germany.
Like other libraries of its kind, much of its wealth derives from the
secularisation of the monasteries in the first years of the nineteenth
century. At its core (but this is by no means the only part of its
riches) is the principal surviving part of the library monastery of
Reichenau, a foundation dating from the early eighth century and one of
the oldest libraries in Europe. Further books derive from other local
monasteries including St Blasien, and there are yet others from Hersfeld
and Fulda, both Anglo-Saxon foundations of the eighth century: the
English connections are strong, and well represented in the collections
with manuscripts dating from Anglo-Saxon times onwards. In September it
emerged that the government of Baden-Württemberg was on the brink of
selling some 3500 out of 4200 manuscripts, in order that the money
raised could be passed to the princely house of Baden (reports on what
might happen to the music and early printed books were conflicting). The
proceeds were to be used in part for the repair of Schloss Salem, a
building belonging to the family but currently in use as a school. The
intention was to raise 70 million euros, and by this act to settle any
possibility of the family claiming other things from the state. Not
surprisingly, few of the details have been published by the government
of Baden-Württemberg, but several issues were raised immediately. First,
as was pointed out by two substantial and well-informed articles in the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, any legal claims against the state are
very far from clear. At the time of the secularisation of the German
monasteries, property passed to the ducal library. In 1872
administration of the library was removed to the state, and then in 1918
it was in effect nationalised. The library thus became the Badische
Landesbibliothek. To cut a long story short, the manuscripts have long
been considered state property.

Quite apart from any legal claims that the family might be able to mount
(the case for them seems extremely thin), the proposal to destroy so
large and vital a part of Germany’s history has understandably caused an
international as well as a local outcry. The Karlsrühe Gemeinderat,
(roughly equivalent to an English town council) passed a unanimous
resolution condemning the proposal, noting that the collection is a
fundamental element of national identity, and of European significance.
A website petition gathered 2500 signatures within days; there were
formal protests from international bodies and learned academies
especially within Germany; senior librarians in other parts of Germany
raised their voices in protest; and, not least persuasively, the local
government was forbidden by Berlin to sell anything outside Germany.
Furthermore, any sale could entail the repayment of grants from the
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for the maintenance and cataloguing of
the collection. As we go to press the situation is very far from
resolved. Were the case to go to court, all parties would lose. Even in
the face of such widespread opposition, the threat is far from removed.
Now there is a further threat, in a suggested alternative which exposes
some of the real motives for the proposed sale: that money might be
raised by requiring various museums in Baden-Württemberg to give up
items worth several million euros, so as to provide a financial package
equivalent to what had been dreamt of on the shelves in the
Landesbibliothek. Such an idea, which has been well-labelled as
half-baked, is unworthy of one of the wealthiest areas of a rich country
such as Germany. But then, it is difficult to understand the mentality
of a government that sees only money in its region’s inheritance. And we
cannot help recalling that this is the Land which in 1993 purchased most
of the medieval manuscripts from the ducal library at Donaueschingen for
no less than 48 million DM.

Digitized at http://www.iampeth.com/books.htm

http://digital-scholarship.org/digitalkoans/2007/01/10/has-authoramacom-set-free-100-public-domain-books-from-google-book-search

DigitalKoans has commented the action by Philipp Lenssen who "has announced that he has put up 100 public domain books from Google Book Search on Authorama".

I am in doubt if there is any legal relevance according US law of Google's "Terms of use". The problem of valid contracts has been shortly discussed by Peter Hirtle in 2004:

"This is a very complex question, with few definite answers. My best guess is that in states that have passed UCITA laws (such as Maryland and Virginia), there is a good chance that a click-through license is binding. Whether a "terms of agreement" license is also binding is less clear - and it becomes even murkier when one moves outside of those states (or overseas)."

http://blog.librarylaw.com/librarylaw/2004/07/the_public_doma.html

See also

http://wiki.netbib.de/coma/GooglePrint

http://steinbeck.ucs.indiana.edu/novels/author.html