Open Access Week is a particularly appropriate time to reflect on the many different ways to expand access. Appropriately, new publishing and distribution models for the scholarly and scientific literature will be the subject of much discussion. Existing library collections of journals, books, newspapers, and government documents also contain substantial amounts of public domain material, and as Melissa Levine reminds us in her issue brief we are releasing today, “The public domain is the ultimate open access.”
Levine has spearheaded the largest and most comprehensive review ever undertaken of the copyright status of diverse-source publications. The Copyright Review Management System (CRMS), funded by IMLS, administered by the University of Michigan, and targeting the content of HathiTrust, is a remarkable project. Over a period of eight years, CRMS developed review protocols for the US and other Anglophone countries, built a distributed process for implementing the protocols, and coordinated an effort that examined half a million volumes. From this effort, some 330,000 volumes were determined to be in the public domain, allowing HathiTrust to unlock public access to them. CRMS has been a truly landmark effort to populate our digital public domain. Source: Finding the Public: Domain The Copyright Review Management System (ITHAKA S+R; 2016)
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.
From the FDLP/GPO: The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) Director Hugh Nathanial Halpern has responded to the Feasibility of a Digital Federal Depository Library Program: Report of the GPO Director’s ...
From the Associated Press: An effort to digitize more than 200 Boston Pops radio broadcasts conducted by John Williams from 1979 until 1991 is almost complete, the Boston Symphony Orchestra ...
UPDATE (Feb. 8): We’ve added a link to a statement by the Louisiana Library Association at the bottom of this post. From the Lafayette Daily Advertiser: Louisiana Attorney General Jeff ...
Association of American Publishers (AAP) Announces Finalists And Category Winners For 2023 PROSE Awards Microsoft Will Let Companies Create Their Own Custom Versions of ChatGPT, Source Says (via CNBC) National ...
From a Letter by Ithaka President Kevin Guthrie: I recently shared the 2023 priorities ITHAKA has set to help provide the infrastructure the academic community needs to support research, teaching, and learning ...
Here’s the Full Text of HathiTrust Announcement: HathiTrust, a member-based organization hosted by the University of Michigan, has received a 5-year, $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to fund ...
From UMass Amherst Libraries (Full Text): The University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries are pleased to announce the publication of The UMass Amherst Libraries Falcon Curriculum: An Open Source, Common Core PreK-12 ...
From the Annenberg School of Communications/U. of Pennsylvania: In a new report, “Americans Can’t Consent to Companies’ Use of Their Data,” researchers asked a nationally representative group of more than ...
From Fast Company: More than 50% of academics have used piracy websites like Sci-Hub in order to bypass paywalls for research they want to access, according to a recent study published in ...
AI Models Spit Out Photos of Real People and Copyrighted Images (via MIT Technology Review) California: Orange Unified School District Reinstates Digital Library After Parent Concerns (via Voice of OC) ...
The article linked below (full-text) was recently published Reference Services Review. Title Libraries Advancing Health Equity: A Literature Review Authors Amanda J. Wilson National Library of Medicine Catherine Staley National ...
From the Chicago Sun-Times Editorial Board: Anyone who has spent time on a bookmobile has learned enough to know nothing withstands the change of time. Still, we lament the slow ...
