UBC has posted a handy overview of how Bill C-11 would affect copyright for Canadian education, plus some personal use info. Read it here.
Seen on the SLA Science-Technology Division listserv (applies to US, but may inspire similar action here):
“The Research Works Act will prohibit federal agencies from unauthorized free public dissemination of journal articles that report on research which, to some degree, has been federally-funded but is produced and published by private sector publishers receiving no such funding. It would also prevent non-government authors from being required to agree to such free distribution of these works. Additionally, it would preempt federal agencies’ planned funding, development and back-office administration of their own electronic repositories for such works, which would duplicate existing copyright-protected systems and unfairly compete with established university, society and commercial publishers.”
Speaking of publishers… Timothy Gower, award-winning Cambridge mathematician, recently blogged on the crimes of Elsevier as an academic publisher (particularly against academic libraries): Elsevier — my part in its downfall. He advocates pressuring them to change by not participating in Elsevier-published journals. Interesting discussion of this issue and open access academic publishing in the comments. Thanks to the SLA Science-Technology Division listserv for another goodie.
Andornot Consulting’s recent newsletter featured an interesting article on issues in digital archiving of government data: Today’s Digital Documents Are Tomorrow’s Dinosaurs (Rob Hummel & Jimmy Kemp, Washington Times).
US federal library recruiters offer useful advice to jobhunters on SLA’s Future Ready 365 blog here.
On a lighter note, if you haven’t seen this video by Toronto bookstore Type it’s well worth a look. Clever stop-motion short about what the books get up to after hours.
Finally, on a lighter note yet, check out this Librarian’s Guide to Etiquette post about library theft. The comments are funnier than the post!
