The whole EB v Wiki argument is actually rather boring. All information must be evaluated based upon the sources and intentions, politics, desires etc of the authors and publishers. But I did think it was kind of cute to see the page on Wikipedia called Errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica that have been corrected in Wikipedia.
(via Memex 1.1)
The current edition of CTWatch Quarterly (August 2007) is themed The Coming Revolution in Scholarly Communications & Cyberinfrastructure.
My only problem is when does a revolution stop being coming, approaching and imminent and actually appear to be here. The Open Access movement should not be discribed as a coming event. It is here and it is spreading. But never mind my splitting of terminological hairs just read the journal. Its table of contents includes an interesting array of articles and authors. It’s available both in html and in pdf.
The Shape of the Scientific Article in The Developing Cyberinfrastructure Clifford Lynch, Coalition for Networked Information (CNI)
Next-Generation Implications of Open Access Paul Ginsparg, Cornell University
Web 2.0 in Science Timo Hannay, Nature Publishing
Reinventing Scholarly Communication for the Electronic Age J. Lynn Fink, University of California, San Diego
Philip E. Bourne, University of California, San Diego
Interoperability for the Discovery, Use, and Re-Use of Units of Scholarly Communication Herbert Van de Sompel, Los Alamos National Laboratory Carl Lagoze, Cornell University
Incentivizing the Open Access Research Web Tim Brody, University of Southampton, UK Les Carr, University of Southampton, UK Yves Gingras, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) Chawki Hajjem, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) Stevan Harnad, University of Southampton, UK; Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) Alma Swan, University of Southampton, UK; Key Perspectives
The Law as Cyberinfrastructure Brian Fitzgerald, Queensland University of Technology, Australia Kylie Pappalardo, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Cyberinfrastructure For Knowledge Sharing John Wilbanks, Scientific Commons
Trends Favoring Open Access Peter Suber, Earlham College
Here is a conference tip for those of you who may be in Uppsala on the 21 September. It’s a free one-day conference on creativity and copyright called Using Fairly. Among the speakers (and organizers) is Eva Hemmungs Wirtén, the author of the excellent book No Trespassing.
This is definitely an event worth attending…
Boing Boing reports about a cool Open Library project:
The Internet Archive has launched a demo of the Open Library, a project that seeks to gather all the information about all the world’s books and make it publicly available as a giant books wiki.
While many books are making their way online for free access, most still are restricted or cost money to touch. The Open Library combines links to open resources with information on in-copyright works and enables you and me to review, annotate, correct and convene.
I think this project (which right now seems to point to almost half a million books) is very cool — it’s going to be a major addition to the world’s open cultural infrastructure. I have a hunch that it’s going to be the primary way many if not most people access books, and I see it becoming an always-open window on the desk of every librarian.
Aaron Swartz led this project, which was conceived by Brewster Kahle — please send them support, critiques and book databases!
Lets hope the project grows!
The general image of the librarian is definitely uncool but this image has been changing for a long time. When the New York Times published its article A Hipper Crowd of Shushers last week (8 July) this was a sign of the times.
Librarians? Arenâ??t they supposed to be bespectacled women with a love of classic books and a perpetual annoyance with talkative patrons â?? the ultimate humorless shushers?
Not any more. With so much of the job involving technology and with a focus now on finding and sharing information beyond just what is available in books, a new type of librarian is emerging…
How did such a nerdy profession become cool â?? aside from the fact that a certain amount of nerdiness is now cool? Many young librarians and library professors said that the work is no longer just about books but also about organizing and connecting people with information, including music and movies.
The upcoming documentary The Hollywood Librarian (release 29 September) will also become part of the way in which the perception of librarians is changing.
Instead of being only the strict formal organizer the librarian is actually on the forefront of several important debates in the information society. The questions of access to knowledge, privacy, free speech, open access and parts of the DRM debate are being lively discussed among librarians.
An often used argument against privacy is “nothing to hide” – this refers to the concept that if you have nothing to hide then you should not be concerned about your privacy. In part it is built on a reversed no smoke without fire idea. The problem with this is not that people have something to hide but rather the problem is that innocence is not necessarily an defense against bad consequences.
Often the nothing to hide idea is use against those who argue for more privacy regulation i.e. stronger protection against invasion of privacy. The numerous examples of innocent people getting hurt should provide an abundance of material to ensure that such an argument is not used but again this is wrong. We tend to forget past injustice and often believe that our legal system will only act against the guilty.
Daniel Solove has written an interesting article on the other use of the nothing to hide argument. This is from the abstract:
In this short essay, written for a symposium in the San Diego Law Review, Professor Daniel Solove examines the nothing to hide argument. When asked about government surveillance and data mining, many people respond by declaring: I’ve got nothing to hide. According to the nothing to hide argument, there is no threat to privacy unless the government uncovers unlawful activity, in which case a person has no legitimate justification to claim that it remain private. The nothing to hide argument and its variants are quite prevalent, and thus are worth addressing. In this essay, Solove critiques the nothing to hide argument and exposes its faulty underpinnings.
Read ‘I’ve Got Nothing to Hide’ and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy.
I came across an interesting article by Lars Ilshammar entitled When Computers Became Dangerous: The Swedish Computer Discourse of the 1960s. Lars does an excellent job in laying out contemporary technology history in Sweden. The work seems mainly to be based upon his PhD (Offentlighetens nya rum. Teknik och Politik i Sverige 1969-1999 in 2002).
Lars has written lots of good stuff but most of it is in Swedish (Among my favourites 404 â?? utflykter i glömskans landskap which he wrote together with Ola Larsmo in 2005) so finding an article in English is indeed a bonus.
When Virginia Wolf wrote the long essay A Room of One’s Own in 1928 (published 1929) it was a call for the need for authors to have a physical and mental space within which they would have the possibility and acceptance to create. It was also a criticism against the male dominated society and the way in which women were denied such a room. Naturally there is an online version under CC license – it is well worth reading.
Since I will be beginning a new job at the University of Lund in September I really need to find such a room (in Lund).
So if anyone knows where I can rent a room or an apartment in Lund – please let me know.
The 10th ETHICOMP conference will be held at the University of Pavia, Mantua, Italy and will have the theme Living, Working and Learning beyond Technology.
For more information and the full Call for Papers to the 10th ETHICOMP conference go here. The dates to remember are:
1 July 2007 – Call for papers
22 February 2008 – Latest date to submit abstracts to ccsr@dmu.ac.uk
11 April 2008 – Authors informed of programme committee decisions
27 June 2008 – Last date for receipt of full papers from authors (electronic version)
24 September to 26 September 2008 – ETHICOMP 2008, University of Pavia, Mantua, Italy
Over the last several years I have been based at the University of Göteborg working as a lecturer and carrying out my research. Last year my research resulted in the defense of my thesis. During my time at Göteborg I have managed to be a researcher in Italy, a visiting fellow in England, I joined the Free Software Foundation and became project lead for Creative Commons Sweden.
In recent years I have come to focus greatly on copyright and open access questions so it was with great interest that I applied for a role in an open access project based at the University of Lund. Yesterday I was offered (and accepted the position).
The main thrust of my work will be:
This all means that after the summer most of my work will be based at the University of Lund. Lund is one of the oldest universities in Sweden (established 1666) and it is one of the driving forces in the open access arena. But, fortunately for me I will also be able to keep a small position at the University of Göteborg.
Photo Al Monner (1935) Historic photoarchive