The EU adopts a weakened version of the INSPIRE Directive.

After a long period of negotiation, the European Parliament reached a compromise on the INSPIRE Directive (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe). One of the most difficult questions was, naturally, one of those on which the parties had to accept compromise: whether to require open access to publicly-funded geospatial data. The compromise, in the words of the EU President's office, is that geospatial data "designed for the general public" will "generally" be OA although government agencies may charge cost-recovery fees "for access to data that has to be updated frequently, such as weather reports". The new directive will take effect in the summer of 2007.

INSPIRE Directive
http://inspire.jrc.it/

Here's some of the news and comment:

Rufus Pollock, INSPIRE: Where Next? Open Knowledge Foundation Weblog, November 24, 2006.
http://blog.okfn.org/2006/11/24/inspire-where-next/

Michael Cross, Britain poised for victory in Brussels, The Guardian, November 24, 2006.
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1954152,00.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_11_19_fosblogarchive.html#116439996881900118

Better geographical data: conciliation agreement on INSPIRE, a press release from the European Parliament, November 22, 2006.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/expert/infopress_page/064-81-324-11-47-911-20061120IPR00064-20-11-2006-2006-false/default_en.htm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_11_19_fosblogarchive.html#116447123156022924

Anon., Inspire decision, Free Our Data: the blog, November 22, 2006.
http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/blog/?p=79
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_11_19_fosblogarchive.html#116439956278708122

European Parliament and Council reach agreement on spatial information directive, a press release from the office of Finland's EU Presidency.
http://www.eu2006.fi/news_and_documents/press_releases/vko47/en_GB/175161/
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_11_19_fosblogarchive.html#116421660650930807

Source: Peter Suber's newsletter
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/12-02-06.htm

http://ucsaction.org/campaign/12_1_06_EPA_Library_Closures/w6bb8g7r45ik6je

The EPA Closes Its Libraries, Destroys Documents

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has begun closing its nationwide network of scientific libraries, effectively preventing EPA scientists and the public from accessing vast amounts of data and information on issues from toxicology to pollution. Several libraries have already been dismantled, with their contents either destroyed or shipped to repositories where they are uncataloged and inaccessible.

The scientific information contained in the EPA libraries is essential to the agency's ability to make fully informed decisions that carry out its mission of protecting human health and the environment. Members of Congress have asked the EPA to cease and desist. Please call EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson at (202) 564-4700 either today, December 1, or Monday, December 4, and tell him how much scientists rely on data and literature. Urge him to immediately halt the dismantling of the library system until Congress approves the EPA budget and all materials are readily available online.

Update, 12:40p.m. EST 12/1: Calls are already flooding in and we've received reports that the EPA office is denying closing the libraries. However, ample evidence exists that this is indeed happening; click on "tell me more" below to find detailed sources. Your message can still be clear: The EPA should not close its valuable science libraries.

See also:
http://www.ala.org/ala/washoff/WOissues/governmentinfo/epalibraries/epalibraries.htm

http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/nation/16143635.htm

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/article01.asp?id=525

V&A to scrap academic reproduction fees

By Martin Bailey | Posted 01 December 2006

LONDON. In a move which could transform art publishing, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (V&A) is to drop charges for the reproduction of images in scholarly books and magazines. Reproduction costs now often make it difficult to publish specialist art historical material. The new scheme will come into effect early next year.

The V&A is believed to be the first museum anywhere in the world which is to offer images free of copyright and administrative charges. It also intends to take a “liberal” view on what should be deemed scholarly or educational. The new arrangements will normally apply to all books published by university presses. Free images will also be available for exhibition catalogues and journals such as Apollo and The Burlington.

Reproduction fees currently bring in just over £250,000 a year for the V&A, and it is estimated that around half this sum will be lost. However, administering the system eats into the profits, so the real loss is much less. Under the new scheme, publishers will be able to download images directly from the internet. Commercial publications will continue to be charged.

The V&A feels that it is important that readers see images of items in the collection, helping to fulfil its educational role and raise its profile internationally. Images of 25,000 objects in the V&A will be available.

The decision to end charging could well have major implications on art publishing since there will be pressure on other UK museums to follow suit.

Via http://www.library.gsu.edu/news/index.asp?view=details&ID=11566&typeID=62

See also
http://hangingtogether.org/?p=166

Comment:

A great decision! It is a welcome step in the right direction: open access AND no permission barriers for (digital) images of heritage items.

On the same topic see in English in this weblog:
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/2843775/
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/2484031/

There is a lot of full texts written by or about nobel prize laureate Harold Varmus, an open access advocate and co-founder of the "Public Library of Science" (PLoS).

See e.g. the full texts of speeches (1993-2005) at
http://www.mskcc.org/mskcc/html/1781.cfm

PubMed Central finds 4891 article with the keyword "varmus", 4887 are free.

From a recent press release (distributed today in the archives-L):

National Institutes of Health
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 1, 2006
National Library of Medicine

The National Library of Medicine, a part of the National Institutes of Health, announces the release of an extensive selection from the papers of molecular biologist and science administrator, Harold Varmus, on its Profiles in Science Web site at

http://www.profiles.nlm.nih.gov.

The Library has collaborated with the University of California, San Francisco Archives and Special Collections to digitize his papers and make them widely available. This brings to 20 the number of notable scientists who have personal and professional records included in Profiles.

With his long time collaborator, J. Michael Bishop, Varmus developed a new theory of the origin of cancer, which holds that the disease is not inflicted by external agents, such as environmental carcinogens, but arises from mutations in certain of our own genes.

[...]

The online exhibition features correspondence, laboratory and lecture notes, research proposals, published articles, and photographs from the Harold Varmus papers at the University of California, San Francisco. Visitors to the site can view, for example, Varmus's schematic depictions of gene control in birds, an extensive exchange of letters regarding the naming of HIV, and a photograph of Varmus receiving the Montgomery County (Md.) bicyclist of the year award.

It is strange that printed publications - as a very small selection - by Varmus (shown with permission of the right holders or Varmus himself) in this virtual exhibition are treated as "documents" without any connection or links to the mentioned full text sources.

Varmus texts or letters have no free licenses like the PLoS license CC-BY.

It is strange to see that laboratory photographs of DNA (possibly Public Domaine because of lack of originality) are "Reproduced with permission of the Regents of the University of California". This seems to be Copyfraud. All Varmus letter are showing the same claim. Is there a need for an "author's addendum" if a researchers deposits his papers?

This frumpy exhibition is no model for the future. The aim has to be to show scholarly excellence in an open access environment. Free full texts have to be an core element of such presentations.

There is no need to separate "archival" document presentations from the open access topic (which is mainly discussed by librarians and researchers). Archival materials have to be free in the same way like journal articles (see the Berlin declaration in 2003).

From the Netherlands, the "Images for the Future" project is building a large-scale conservation and digitization project to make available 285,000 hours of film, television, and radio recordings, as well as more than 2.9 million photos from the Netherlands' film and television archives. A basic collection drawn from the archive will be made available on the Internet either under CC licenses, or in some cases, in the public domain. The Government of the Netherlands, a long time supporter of the local Dutch CC project, will invest a total of 173 million Euros over a seven-year period. Their aim is to spur innovative applications with new media, while providing valuable services to the public.

The idea of an archive like this is not new. But the scale and values of this project are extraordinary. The Netherlands may be a small country, but if it is successful, the "Images for the Future" project may well be the largest archive of free culture available anywhere in the world.

Larry Lessig in the CC Weblog
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/6155

See also
http://www.kennisland.nl/en/publications/reports/Images-for-the-Future.html

From Peter Suber's Open Access News
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_11_05_fosblogarchive.html#116318960519020369

If you remember, Google blocks access to Google-scanned public-domain books outside the US. Finally we have Google's explanation:

Only books in the public domain -- books no longer under copyright -- have the download feature available. For users in the United States, this typically means books published before 1923. For users outside the U.S., we make determinations based on appropriate local laws. Since whether a book is in the public domain can often be a tricky legal question, we err on the side of caution and display at most a few snippets until we have determined that the book has entered the public domain. These books...may be in the public domain, but until we can be sure, we show them as if they are not.

We're working quickly to digitize and index as many books as possible so we can make Google Book Search truly comprehensive and useful. One way to treat digitized books that may be in the public domain would be to exclude them from the index until we were sure. However, our goal is to make the index as useful as possible, and that means including books as soon as we can rather than waiting for a perfect determination of public domain status. So, some books may initially show up in "Snippet View" and then later, be expanded to "Full View."

Comment. In most countries on Earth the duration of copyrights is the same as in the US. So why isn't it easy for Google to provide access to all of those countries as soon as it decides to provide access to the US?

At least Google admits that these books "may be in the public domain" and that it's temporarily treating them "as if they are not". That is, it hasn't wrongly classified them, but only delayed classifying them. Still, in most cases, it's hard to understand why any delay is necessary.

We have in this weblogs the following entries (in English) on this topic:

http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/1073534/ (How Google Print is Blocking Not-US-Citizens, 2005, Oct 19)

http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/2609488/ (Burning Money: Google's Scanning Nonsense 2006, Sept 1)

http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/2643658 (Google and Michigan block access outside U.S., 2006, Sept 8)

Comment:

It is not right that in the most countries the copyright rules are the same as in the US. Unfortunately the pre-1923 rule is US-specific. Most countries have a 70 (or 50) years post mortem auctoris term (the EU has 70 years).

Arguing against Google (and UMich) is speaking with a wall. Until now the best solution for people outside the US is to install a US free proxy (I have choosen a separate browser, Firefox users can use SwitchProxy http://www.erweiterungen.de/detail/SwitchProxy_Tool/ ). Downloaded PD works can be put on free respositories like Wikimedia Commons:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:De_Wikisource_book

If UMich is unwillingly to change the rights management according the life data of the authors which are given in the UMich OPAC - why should Google do any work in this direction? Google Book Users are apparently accepting the restrictions. There is no broad discussion on this topic (nor a small, Peter Suber is the only I know who cares on it).

The explanation Google gives is not sufficient for the lot of pre-1800 works Google presents only as snippets. No one can believe that these books are still protected in any country in the world (Mexico has a 100 year pma term).

See e.g. for the date 1600-1650:
http://books.google.com/books?q=date%3A1600-1650&btnG=Search+Books&as_brr=0

I wanted to let subscribers to and participants in this list know that I created a blog, "Reading Archives," where you can find descriptions of new or recent scholarly and other publications concerning (broadly) the nature and importance of archives in society (and so I am just sending out this message to all of you -- you can ignore if you wish). You can find this blog at http://readingarchives.blogspot.com/ -- and it is set up so others can post comments. I think you will find this of use. And, feel free to spread the word about this (hopefully this might even generate some discussion).

Here is a description of the blog --
Everywhere we look, there is something to remind us about archives, as repository and as documentary assemblage. Newspapers feature stories about the use, meaning, and value of archives. School groups visit museum exhibitions featuring documents, as instructional evidence and memory device, seeking a material orientation to the nature of the past. Self-help manuals tout the importance of writing life histories or compiling scrapbooks as therapeutic process and as supplements to personal archives. Video and computer games often lead us, in our imaginary role, into archives to discover clues. Movies pull the hero and villain into an archival repository to resolve mysteries. And scholars study archives as foundations for cultural memory and to resolve or extend debates about particular interpretations of the past.

Without question, there is more analysis of archives, the archival profession, and the archival mission than ever before. Although it is questionable that there is at present broad public comprehension about what archivists do or even how archival holdings are formed, few would argue with the notion that the public and scholarly perception is improving (but certainly at a glacial rate). What most certainly can be agreed is that it is essential to adopt a broad and systematic (as systematic as possible) regimen of reading across disciplines and through both scholarly and popular venues in order to gain any useful understanding of archives.

For years I have been doing just such reading, and in a variety of ways I have sought to generate discussion wrestling with where such reading leads both records professionals in enhancing their knowledge and that identifies other texts, published and unpublished, adding to the understanding of or challenging particular interpretations about the meaning and significance of archives. At various times I have tried to generate discussion about new scholarship on the Archives listserv, the Archival Educators listserv, and via my capacity as the Society of American Archivists Publications Editor. I also have written a number of books drawing on my extensive and, at times, eclectic, reading; the most recent example of this is my contribution to the revision of Understanding Archives and Manuscripts , recently published in 2006 by the Society of American Archivists, originally written by James M. O'Toole (and the revision was undertaken with Jim).

With this blog, I am planning to offer, as regularly as possible, critical observations on the scholarly and popular literature analyzing the nature of archives or contributing to our understanding of archives in society. I am not planning to comment on basic practice manuals, technical guides, or best practice reports; these I will continue to describe in my monthly column published in the Records & Information Management Report, a technical report I edit and that is published by M.E. Sharpe.

As with earlier efforts, ones meeting with mixed success, I hope this blog will be of assistance to anyone, especially faculty and graduate students, interested in understanding archives and their importance to society. I hope readers will comment on the postings, suggesting different perspectives or reflecting on other publications related to the specific topic or the broader importance of archives in society. I plan on making postings, from time to time, reflecting my own research and writing or recommending areas and topics that seem ripe for new research. As part of this, I intend to comment occasionally on the work that my own doctoral students are engaged in.

--
Richard J. Cox
Professor, Archival Studies
Chair, Library & Information Science Program
Chair, Library & Information Science Doctoral Studies
School of Information Sciences
University of Pittsburgh
Editor, Records & Information Management Report
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Voice: 412-624-3245
FAX: 412-648-7001
e-mail: rcox@mail.sis.pitt.edu
homepage: http://www2.sis.pitt.edu/%7Ercox/

Sources: ML Archives

The following entries were published in the category "English corner" of this weblog.

http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/2839062/ (Letter from Alain Stoclet to TLS, full text)
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/2799653/ (Protest letter IFLA, full text)
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/2799641/ (Protest letter CERL, full text)
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/2797046/ (Cronaca weblog entry)
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/2772922/ (Karlsruhe Lullus, Bibliodyssey weblog entry)
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/2772829/ (Open letter Fribourg, full text)
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/2756850/ (Cronaca weblog entry)
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/2743873/ (English version of the art historians' protest letter to the FAZ, exclusive full text)
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/2739268/ (Protest letter LIBER, full text)
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/2731521/ (Online petition, closed)
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/2720115/ (Loss of Karlsruhe manuscripts; links to listserv messages)
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/2704321/ (September 21, link to a listserv message)