Why you can't find a library book in your search engine | Technology | The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jan/22/library-search-engines-books

Finding a book at your local library should just involve a simple web search.

Finding a book at your local library should just involve a simple web search. But thanks to a US cataloguing site, that is far from the case

Yet there is an alternative that few people seem aware of: Worldcat (worldcat.org), which offers web access to the largest repository of bibliographic data in the world - from the 40-year-old Ohio-based non-profit Online Computer Library Center (oclc.org). But Worldcat suffers from the same problem on a larger scale.

President-elect Obama has made a clear commitment to changing the way government relates to the People. His campaign was a demonstration of the value in such change, and a glimpse of its potential. His transition team has now taken a crucial step in making the work of the transition legally shareable, demonstrating that the values Obama spoke of are values that will guide his administration. To further support this commitment to change, and to help make it tangible, we offer three “open transition principles” to guide the transition in its use of the Internet to produce the very best in open government.

President-elect Obama has made a very clear commitment to changing the way government works with its citizens. To this end, we offer these three principles to guide the transition in its objective to build upon the very best of the Internet to produce the very best for government.

Thoughts on how to make the transition between presidential administrations as open and transparent as possible.

President-elect Obama has made a very clear commitment to changing the way government works with its citizens.

http://open-government.us/

Fedora Commons + DSpace Foundation

"Fedora Commons and the DSpace Foundation, two of the largest providers of open source software for managing and providing access to digital content, are joining their organizations to pursue a common mission. Jointly, they will provide leadership and innovation in open source technologies for global communities who manage, preserve, and provide access to digital content."

Merger of the DSpace Foundation and Fedora Commons. Will continue to support these two platforms but will also pursue new data solutions.

Fedora Commons and the DSpace Foundation, two of the largest providers of open source software for managing and providing access to digital content, are joining their organizations to pursue a common mission.

Fedora Commons and the DSpace Foundation, two of the largest providers of open source software for managing and providing access to digital content, are joining their organizations to pursue a common mission. Jointly, they will provide leadership and innovation in open source technologies for global communities who manage, preserve, and provide access to digital content.

Education journals

The OER Center for California provides support for community college educators to find, create, remix, use, and share openly licensed learning content. Together, as knowledge workers, we can learn to share...and share to learn.

"A new Web site, Open Educational Resources Center for California, brings together information on free and open textbooks and course materials in one location. Though the Web site was designed for California's community-college faculty members, it could be a useful resource for anyone trying to find learning materials in the public domain."

A debate is carrying on in the undercurrents of the academic Web, pitting those who defend libraries' core mission of open access against the membership organization that collects and operates a massive online catalog on which many of them rely.

"A debate is carrying on in the undercurrents of the academic Web, pitting those who defend libraries’ core mission of open access against the membership organization that collects and operates a massive online catalog on which many of them rely."

OCLC and the blog-o-sphere

March 2009

News about MIT OA mandate: http://tinyurl.com/c9w4cl [from http://twitter.com/MyOpenArchive/statuses/1399671252]

Peter Suber writes about and comments on MIT's decision to adopt a faculty-wide OA policy, the first of a university doing so across all its departments unanimously. As he rightfully points out, this will send out strong signals to lawmakers and other educational institutions.

0309 - Each Faculty member grants to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology nonexclusive permission to make available his or her scholarly articles and to exercise the copyright in those articles for the purpose of open dissemination. In legal terms, each Faculty member grants to MIT a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of his or her scholarly articles, in any medium, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit, and to authorize others to do the same. The policy will apply to all scholarly articles written while the person is a member of the Faculty except for any articles completed before the adoption of this policy and any articles for which the Faculty member entered into an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement before the adoption of this policy. The Provost or Provost's designate will waive application of the policy for a particular article upon written notification by...

Sciyo is a free service that allows scientists to publish their works and connect with other authors. Works published on Sciyo are made available for free to visitors. Visitors can download works as PDFs. There are currently 211 free books on Sciyo. The category of books that is probably of most interest to readers of this blog is Technology and Education. In the future videos will also be available on Sciyo.