Category: Uncategorized

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From Aaron Swartz’s Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto:

“Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them? Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to children in the Global South? It’s outrageous and unacceptable.

“I agree,” many say, “but what can we do? The companies hold the copyrights, they make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and it’s perfectly legal—there’s nothing we can do to stop them.” But there is something we can, something that’s already being done: we can fight back.

Those with access to these resources—students, librarians, scientists—you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not—indeed, morally, you cannot—keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world.”

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Yes. Let’s change the world:

“Mr. Geffert is starting a new publishing operation overseen by the library and committed to open access, called the Amherst College Press. It will produce a handful of edited, peer-reviewed, digital-first books on “a very small number of subjects,” the librarian says.”

Source: For New Ideas in Scholarly Publishing, Look to the Library

The doctor said our baby has “a beautiful aortic root” which of course got me thinking of my fav line from the Wife of Bath’s tale: “It tikleth me aboute myn herte roote.” Which (of course) makes one think of Skelton’s line “He ys the kynges derlyng and his swete harte rote.” All this to say, I have a new nickname for the baby: myne herteroote. Right up there next to “mon petit chou.”

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“Further, the library must be willing to allow dedicated time for what happens after exploration. The “serve ‘em and send ‘em along” model is no longer serving a patronage whose information needs include planning, building and executing projects that utilize the strengths of librarianship (information organization and broad contextualization). Reframing the library as a productive place, a creative place engaged in producing and creating something – whether that be digital scholarly works or something else entirely – will open the door to allow the library into the life of the user.”

Source: Micah Vandegrift and Stewart Varner, “Evolving in Common: Creating Mutually Supportive Relationships Between Libraries and the Digital Humanities.”

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VA Tech is one of my models for what academic libraries should be in the 21st century. Even though I risk my UVA-degreed soul when I say that.

“At Virginia Tech we’re positioning ourselves to not only provide content, but to support content production. We think of this as not only about access to information, but also about enabling the creation of new knowledge. We’re evolving from a warehouse model toward a studio model.”

Source: Brian Matthews, ITERATE OR DIE: Reflecting on Blockbuster & Atari

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This is brave. I fully support this:

Source: What I Must Do

I have come to the conclusion that my knowledge should and will be accessible. Therefore, I will only publish openly.

  • I will only publish in open access journals.
  • I will only review for open access publications.
  • I will only sign book and chapter contracts that share copies of the text online (whether licensed through Creative Commons or made available in some other, free form).
  • I will only attend conferences that make any related publications accessible for free.
  • I will also only contribute to open-access publications that do not charge authors for publishing. […]

Change begins when we as a community move forward together. However, absolute change can only come about with absolute decisions.