Technology Blog

Wagdy Sawahel, ‘African UNESCO’ gets go-ahead, SciDev.Net, January 27, 2006. Excerpt:

The African Union (AU) has backed plans to create a scientific and cultural branch modelled on the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)….Among its aims, the proposed African Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (AFESCO) intends to boost the continent’s scientific capacity, promote international cooperation and protect African cultures. “It is a wonderful window of opportunity for all African countries to share their knowledge, skills and experiences while promoting the scientific collaboration that is vital for building common interests and mutual understanding between the peoples of Africa,” says Awatif Elegam of Sudan’s National Centre for Research….The Sudanese newspaper Alray Alaam reported on 23 January that the International University of Africa in Khartoum would host AFESCO.

Comment. The announcement doesn’t mention open access, though it does talk about knowledge-sharing. Insofar as AFESCO is modelled on UNESCO, it should support OA and may plan to do so. See the UNESCO endorsement of OA in its November 2005 Amendments to the Draft Programme and Budget for 2006-2007. I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who can describe where AFESCO is likely to stand on OA or recommend effective ways to influence its future position.

source: New African organization modelled on UNESCO

source: More structures in PubChem

Libraries in Taiwan, Hong Kong build NetLibrary eBook collection, a press release from OCLC, January 27, 2006. Excerpt:

Forty-eight university libraries in Taiwan and Hong Kong have purchased more than 50,000 OCLC NetLibrary eBooks under an extraordinary cooperative agreement that crosses geographical boundaries.

Under the agreement, the English-language NetLibrary eBooks in Biology and Life Sciences; Business, Economics and Management; History; Literature; Technology, Engineering and Manufacturing; and many other subject areas will be available electronically anytime, anywhere through the NetLibrary eBook platform. The eBook collection is the largest and most comprehensive of its kind in the Asia-Pacific region.

“This agreement goes beyond territorial borders and brings together people and institutions interested in providing electronic resources to meet the needs of all libraries in the region. Together, we have created a comprehensive program of innovation and service to libraries—for all library users,” said Prof. Hsianghoo Steve Ching, University Librarian at the City University of Hong Kong….”The Super eBook Collection demonstrates the power of cooperation among university administrators and library directors,” said Jay Jordan, OCLC President and CEO. “Working together, leaders at these 48 institutions are changing the ways that libraries support research, teaching and learning. We at OCLC are proud to be part of this exciting collaborative effort.”

“Sharing information in an electronic world offers increased relevancy and increased access to more content,” said Rich Rosy, Vice President, OCLC Content Management. “eBook resources can be searched more quickly and efficiently than printed materials. High-demand titles can be viewed more frequently. And eBooks can be accessed and read online instantaneously, with no need to house or ship borrowed print materials. This commitment to NetLibrary eBooks is an excellent example of how libraries can extend their investments in monograph collections.”

(PS: Access to NetLibrary books is free for users who have library privileges at participating libraries, but providing access is not free of charge for the libraries.)

source: Large ebook collection free for Asia-Pacific users

source: Another enhancement to author manuscripts under the NIH policy

source: JISC on OpenDOAR

source: Bronze release of RAE software for OA repositories

Four Swiss research organizations –the Rectors’ Conference of the Swiss Universities (CRUS), Council of the Swiss Scientific Academies (CASS), Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), and Swiss Conference of Schools for Teacher Education (SCTE)– have signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Acces to Knowledge.

Update (1/30/06). Make that five: The Conference of the Universities of Applied Sciences (CUAS) just signed.

source: Four Swiss research organizations sign the Berlin Declaration

source: DLD talk

source: Brody registry now ROARs

This week was the fourth version of Microsoft’ “search champ” program, and the first one where I’ve been heavily involved in the planning (rather than simply being an attendee). It was a great meeting, with some amazing people providing input into new product development in MSN/WindowsLive. I got see to old friends (like Cindy and Walt), and be a fangirl (hi, Merlin!).

During the wrap-up session, when Robert Scoble was talking about designing tools that would optimize everyone’s syndication experience so that they, too, could read 840 feeds, I called him an “edge case.” He didn’t like that. Not one bit. But his defense was, to me, unconvincing.

Robert’s an “edge case” to me in this context because very few people will ever have the time or the inclination—regardless of how good the tools are—to read that many sources. Robert does not because he’s some freak of nature, but because he’s got a job that requires him to monitor activity in the technology community. When I worked at the Library of Congress, I had a job that required me to read dozens of newspapers and magazines every single day, looking for articles related to governmental initiatives. That made me an edge case. Most people don’t read dozens of news publications every day, and it’s not that they want to but simply haven’t found the tools to do it. It’s that they don’t have a need for that much diffuse information.

He felt I used the term derisively, which I didn’t. He’s right that edge cases often push us in new directions, and I’ve got a long-standing interest in liminal spaces (the fancy academic term for those in-between spaces where contexts overlap and new ways of thinking and acting often emerge). But in his reaction, he confused what I see as two very different things—edge cases and early adopters. In this case he’s both. But his response focused much more on how his early adoption of new technologies—from macs to blogs—foreshadowed broader adoption. That’s about being an early adopter, which is not synonymous with being an edge case.

So what’s the difference? To me, an early adopter is someone who recognizes the value of a new technology or tool before it becomes widely used or accepted, and often evangelizes it to others. They recognize trends before they’re trends, and are the ones who are always acquiring the latest-and-greatest technical toys. An edge case is someone who’s on the extreme edge of an activity, regardless of whether they’re an early adopter. Someone who reads 840 blogs is an edge case. But so is someone who reads dozens of daily newspapers, or runs 10 miles every morning. Their choices may influence our behavior—those edge cases are great at recommending things to others—but most people will be far more moderate in their behavior.

There’s a story I cite a lot when I’m talking to people about diffusion of technological innovation. Back in my early days as a librarian in the 1980s, online searching didn’t mean launching a web browser and going to Google. Instead, it meant connecting via dial-up to an online database and doing a searches with complex boolean operators. Librarians loved this, and decided that the whole world needed to learn the “joy of searching.” It was that whole “teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime” mentality. One day at a library conference, I heard a wonderful speech by Herb White in which he scolded librarians for this mentality. “I have no joy of searching,” he told the audience. “I have joy of finding!”

In that context of online searching, librarians were both edge cases and early adopters—much like Robert is with blogs and syndicated feeds. They’re edge cases because they do in fact love to search as much as love to find. They find it hard to believe that not everyone would want to learn arcane search syntax in order to improve their online search experience. But they’re also early adopters—they were finding things online before the web was born, and they continue to push the limits on how you can use online search tools (one of my most popular posts ever was a transcription of Mary Ellen Bates’ fabulous “30 Search Tips in 40 Minutes” talk from the 2003 Internet Librarian conference).

Anyone who’s looked at aggregated query logs from a search engine knows that most of the people doing online searching these days aren’t masters of the boolean query. They didn’t become like the edge cases. But they did follow the early adopters—just in a more limited way.

So, Robert, my point wasn’t that because you’re an edge case nothing you do is relevant to other users. Nor do I think being an edge case is bad (I consider myself to be one, too). But the people who follow your lead as an early adopter won’t do it the way you do. They’re simply not going to want or need to read 840 syndicated feeds. And to try to optimize the user experience based on the needs of edge cases isn’t, I think, in anyone’s best interest.

source: edge cases and early adopters

Following Kevan’s post, which in turn followed Kottke’s, here’s my 2005 in cities.

Rochester, NY *
Atlanta, GA
Dubai, UAE
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA *
Los Angeles, CA
New York, NY
Monterey, CA *
Boston, MA
San Francisco, CA

One or more nights spent in each place. Those cities marked with an * were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days. Somehow I thought it was more. (Of course, there was a good bit of back and forth between Seattle and Rochester this year, so that may account for some of that sense.)

source: the year in cities

source: OA textbooks subsidized by ads

The Open Access Law project has launched a Copyright Experiences Wiki. From the site:

The purpose of this website is for legal academics and others to share our copyright experiences with law journals and other legal publishers. As academics, we have an interest in ensuring the widest dissemination of our work. Law Journals tend, however, to use standard-form copyright agreements that reqire a copyright assignment, and impose unreasonable restrictions on our rights to share and re-use our own work.
Some law journals, however, are more enlightened. Others, when pushed, will also see the light. Due to the transitory nature of student-run law journal staffs, still others are actually unaware of their own past practices.
This site will allow you to learn what other people have been able to persuade law journals to accept. On the pages linked from here, legal writers describe their copyright experiences. The information is as good or bad as what you contribute to it.

Comment. I like this idea. It goes beyond the SHERPA and Eprints databases on journal access policies by letting authors describe what negotiations they’ve tried at which journals with what success. Every law journal has (or will have) a separate page in the wiki for community annotation.

source: Access policies at law journals

The future Inter-library loan request, CharteringLibrarian, January 25, 2006. An unsigned blog posting. Excerpt:

I’ve been doing quite a bit of research on DSpace and other repository tools lately, and a thought has just occurred to me.
At the moment, a fair proportion of our received Inter-library loan requests are actually held by us, sometimes as paper copies, but regularly as part of online subscriptions. With the proliferation of open-access repositories, more and more journal articles, theses, book chapers etc. are going to become freely available online. How about an Inter-Library loan system that automatically took request details and processed them through some kind of metadata filter, and then on to relevant search facilities? This could then offer users the option to look at any possible results, before deciding whether or not to still submit their request. It would obviously depend on the details they provided, but if it worked it could hugely reduce the time taken for these people to find their requests, and the staff time spent working on Inter-library loans. Unfortunately my skills aren’t quite up to creating something that could do this…yet!

Comment. This is a great idea. Until it can be automated, patrons and librarians can run their ILL requests through OAIster, the most comprehensive search index of OA repositories worldwide. This will save time, save money, and spread the message about OA. Here’s an idea for Phase 2. When Professor X submits an ILL request for an item already OA in an repository, the ILL librarian sends back a note with a URL to the item, a short explanation of what OA repositories are, perhaps with a link, a list of Professor X’s non-OA journal publications, and a pointer to the institutional repository.

source: Integrating OA repository searches into the ILL system

Dean Giustini, Evidence-based patient care - information & open access is key, UBC Google Scholar Blog, January 26, 2006. Excerpt:

[I]magine a hypothetical situation where a young, single mother of two growing children, living in a remote area of Canada, learns of a recurrence of her cancer. In extremis, she makes a phone call to a hospital librarian. This is an extreme and graphic example of the importance of open access to evidence-based information. Imagine how this problem is compounded by the challenges of waiting lists and poor health care coverage! Fortunately, there are a number of excellent consumer information tools and websites - view them directly or search for them using a search engine - that will help this female patient….Finally, it must be stressed, that health librarians are important allies for physicians in providing evidence-based care. We are trained to lead the patient to the most pertinent information based on our knowledge of sources and our ability to interpret the patient"s clinical question. When at a distance, easy open access to information is humane.

source: OA to medical info at a distance

James Ashton has written a profile of Crispin Davis, the Reed Elsevieir CEO, for The Daily Mail (January 26, 2006). I can’t find it online, but William Walsh blogged an excerpt on Issues in Scholarly Communication yesterday. An excerpt from his excerpt:

Aside from the plaudits, Reed has also made enemies. Some factions regularly rail at its sheer size in the academic world, even though it has only 20% of the market to supply lofty titles like Tetrahedron and Cell to university libraries. The threat of researchers posting their papers straight on the internet has receded and Reed still makes its fattest profits in science and medical.

Comment. “The threat of researchers posting their papers straight on the internet has receded.” If this means that researchers are self-archiving less, then it’s false. Researchers are self-archiving more. If it means that Reed Elsevier no longer feels threatened by self-archiving, then it’s true but misleading. Elsevier has given blanket permission for self-archiving since mid-2004. To describe self-archiving as decreasing and to describe it as a threat to Elsevier are equally mistaken. I suspect that Davis made both mistakes and that Ashton simply followed along.

source: Crispin Davis notwithstanding, self-archiving is on the rise

source: Launch of NARCIS, gateway to Dutch research

source: Official launch of OpenDOAR

Lund University has awarded an honorary doctorate to Ingegerd Rabow for her work on scholarly communication and open access. From today’s announcement:

I have the pleasure to announce that the Faculty of Humanities at Lund University has decided to award to Ingegerd Rabow, [senior librarian in Lund’s] Library Head Office…a honorary doctorate for her work in Scholarly Communication and Open-Access. As project manager for the ScieCom - Swedish Resource Centre for Scientific Communication (www.sciecom.org), one of the driving forces behind the Nordic Conferences on Scholarly Communication (www.lub.lu.se/ncsc2006) and her work as an Open Access advocate within Sweden, the Nordic countries and elsewhere Ingegerd has contributed significantly to the movement for open access to research results. The Lund University OA-policy, the signatures to the Berlin Declaration by the Swedish Association of Higher Education and the Swedish Research Council has a lot to do with Ingegerd’s work.

Comment. I believe this the first honorary doctorate in any country for work to advance OA. All who have attended the Nordic conferences on scholarly communication or tried to get a university, professional association, or government agency to commit to OA will acknowledge Ingegerd’s ability to bring people together to bring about institutional change. We need more effective advocates like her and in more countries. Congratulations to Ingegerd and kudos to Lund University for recognizing and supporting her contributions.

source: Honorary doctorate to Ingegerd Rabow for her OA work

Here we go again:

[www.theregister.co.uk]

Home Office pushes tough anti-hacker law
‘Hacker tool’ ban proposal provokes derision

The UK Government plans to toughen up computer crime laws under
proposals outlined in the Police and Justice Bill on Wednesday. The
bill would double the maximum jail sentence for hacking into computer
systems from five years to ten years, a provision that will classify
hacking as a more serious offense and make it easier to extradite
computer crime suspects from overseas. Denial of service attacks,
something of a grey area under current regulations, would be clearly
classified as a criminal offense under amendments to the 1990 Computer
Misuse Act (CMA) proposed in the bill.

Industry pressed for changes along these lines even prior to the 2004
inquiry by MPs that recommended changes to the CMA to modernise UK
computer crime law. Other provisions in the bill are likely to prove
far more controversial. Clause 35 of the bill contains provisions to
ban the development, ownership and distribution of so-called “hacker
tools”.

But the clause fails to draw adequate distinction between tools
which might be used for legal as well as unlawful purposes. Reg
readers have been quick to point out that the distinctions between,
for example, a password cracker and a password recovery tool, or a
utility designed to run DOS attacks and one designed to stress-test a
network, are not properly covered in the proposed legislation. Taken
as read, the law might even even make use of data recovery software to
bypass file access permissions and gain access to deleted data,
potentially illegal.

“As far as I can see, this looks a complete dog’s breakfast of a
clause as it fails to consider that many so-called ‘hacker tools’ have
perfectly legitimate uses,” writes Reg reader Dave Lambert, who runs
the Talk Politics blog.

Spy Blog describes the bill as a “pathetic hodge podge” that’s being
prepared without proper consultation. It describes Home Office
attempts to modify the CMA as “ineffectual and pathetic”. “This bill
extends the powers of the police, mucks around with existing policing
structures, creating extra bureaucracy, and contains a portmanteau of
ill-thought out miscellaneous measure,” Spy Blog rants.

Modifications in computer crime law make up a small, but important,
section of the wide-ranging Police and Justice Bill. The bill is
largely concerned with attempting to drive up standards across the
police service via modifications to existing police structures and
empowering communities to take an active role in tackling anti-social
behavior.

Police will also get more powers, including the ability to demand
passenger and crew data on journeys within the UK. Airlines and ferry
companies would have to provide police with advance details of the
name, date of birth and nationality of passengers in advance, The
Guardian reports, adding that the measures could lead to delays at
ports.

As a colleague put it:

Alec Muffett you are a criminal and you are going to jail!
- which helps focus the mind wonderfully.

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source: Security Tool Developers to be Criminalised in UK