digital

Libraries and Copyright

Copyright has a tendency to make library work difficult. This is a growing trend and many of the larger libraries in the world are struggling to come to terms with copyright issues.

Yesterday the EU’s High Level Expert Group on Digital Libraries – which includes, inter alia, stakeholders from the British Library, the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, the Federation of European Publishers and Google – presented an advisory report on copyright issues to the European Commission.

The group also discussed how to ensure more open access to scientific research and how to improve public-private cooperation. The work of the High Level Group is part of the European Commission’s efforts to make Europe’s rich cultural and scientific heritage available online. For this purpose, the group advises the Commission on issues regarding digitisation, online accessibility and digital preservation of cultural material.

Read their Report on Digital Preservation, Orphan Works and Out-of-Print Works, Selected Implementation Issues available here and the annex Model agreement for a licence on digitisation of out of print works available here.

(EU Press Release)

Posted on by mklang

iCommons Summit

The third annual iCommons summit will be held in Dubrovnik, Croatia (15-17 June) and this year I have the good fortune to be able to attend.

The event includes people like Creative Commons CEO, Larry Lessig, CC Chairman and Digital Entrepreneur, Joi Ito, Wikipedia Founder, Jimmy Wales and CTO of Linden Labs, Cory Ondrejka. We have also add some new voices to the debate this year including Indiaâ??s Lawrence Liang who has become renowned for his considered commentary on the positive impact of piracy in developing countries, Jonathan Zittrain discussing themes from his new book â??The Future of the Internet and How to Stop Itâ??, Benjamin Mako Hill from MIT who will talk about competing visions of â??free cultureâ?? from the free software perspective, and Becky Hogge from the Open Rights Group, who will talk about successful campaigns to rid the world of restrictive IP laws.

I am really looking forward to it and to meeting all the other commoners. Naturally the event will be blogged 🙂

Posted on by mklang

Capitalism 3.0

Are you drowning in books to be read? Sometimes I think that I am. Then while I am in the middle of the deep end of the pool, instead of a life buoy, another book comes skimming across the water. This time it was Peter Barnes’ book Capitalism 3.0 which is available both as in a Pdf file (licensed under Creative Commons naturally) and in the more comfortable paper variety.

After scanning through the pdf I ordered the book. Barnes’ argument is based on the idea that capitalism is flawed and needs to take the Commons into consideration. He takes a broad view of the commons which includes headings such as nature, community and culture. Based upon this view he attempts to draw together the diversity of our commons and connect it to the capitalist approach to business.

 

 The book is critical of the accesses of old capitalism (which Barnes calls Capitalism 2.0). But he is also a bit too positive to what capitalism has done well – but a good book must be one that you disagree with in parts. Barnes attempts to show that Capitalism 3.0 has a chance of alleviating some of the access of capitalism 2.0 and he ends his book on a positive note:

Capitalism 2.0 had its moments. It defeated communism, leveled national boundaries to trade, and brought material abundance never seen before. But its triumph was accompanied by huge unpaid bills, debts that are now coming due. Perhaps we ought to think of ourselves as a company in bankruptcy. We canâ??t pay all of our bills, but we can pay some, especially if we stretch the payments out. In some cases, we can compensate debt holders with equity. In any event, we need to reorganize our economy so, in the future, we donâ??t run up the same debts again. Thatâ??s what
Capitalism 3.0 would do.

But Capitalism 3.0 also has a higher purpose: to help both capitalism and the human species achieve their full potential. To do that, our economic machine must stop destroying the commons and start protecting it. At the same time, it must lift the bottom 95 percent of humans at a faster rate than it raises the top 5 percent. This requires more than compassionate rhetoric, or a few bandages around the edges. It requires an upgrade of our operating system.

You can either buy a copy of the book or, if you prefer it, download it from the Capitalism 3.0 website.

Posted on by mklang

Rewards of Plagiarism

Back in May last year I wrote about a case of plagiarism from my university. The interesting thing about this plagiarism was that it was a teacher who had stolen part of a masters thesis written by two students whom she had supervised.

At the department of business studies two students wrote their masters thesis. Their supervisor then took parts of the text and included it word for word in an article she presented at an international conference. The students were not acknowledged in any way. The head of department defended the supervisorâ??s actions in the student press â?? which is sad, but in a sense an understandable defence. Still sad and it shows a definite lack of backbone. (this blog in May 2006)

The local newspaper reports that the case has been under review again and that this time the plagiarizing researcher is not being defended. She has, according to the experts, not followed good research practice and the case is clearly one of plagiarism.

The embarrassment must have been bad when the department defended the plagiarizing researcher, but now that the guilty opinion has been delivered it must be really bad. In addition the whole department that defended her actions as common practice really has egg on its face now.

Good. Stealing other peoples work is not acceptable. Stealing from students is unacceptable and really quite pathetic.

Posted on by mklang

Been Offline

Since I spent the weekend moving I have been unable to go online. Actually my online behavior of late can at best be called erratic. All due to the weekends activities. The tough part about this is not so much getting organised afterwards (which is terrible) but to attempt to catch up on all the reading. My inbox, rss reader and real life reading have piled up in an incredible way. This all makes me feel like Chaplin in the film “Modern Times“.

The lack of time to read is a common complaint. This is also connected to the increase in channels of information pouring in. Some of the choices are easy, while others are tough to lose for nostalgic reasons. Less or no television, skip the daily newspaper, more focused book reading, attempting to focus on one task at a time (rather than multitasking) and generally staying on top of all information flows by not allowing them to pile up.

Was it always like this? Obviously the couple of hundred feeds in my rss is new. How should one cope with the information one wants to maintain without becoming a simplified one-track person? In Republic.com Cass Sunstein writes about the daily me. This is the idea that users will tailor their information needs and ignore all “unnecessary” information. The result can be the creation of groups of outsiders who are unable to relate to their local groups.

Posted on by mklang

Recommendation Mapping

Recommender systems are nothing new. The list of books on the side of this blog is generated by LibraryThing which has a very nice recommender system. It analysis your library and then recommends books contained in other users libraries. Amazon tends to use recommender systems and recommends customers that people who bought a certain book also bought certain other books.

This is nothing new. But when I came across Amaznode I was pleasantly surprised by the graphical representations of their recommendations (which are based on Amazon). The system creates a web of books which others have bought. This is a cute way of representing data.

Posted on by mklang

Rare Book Room

Wow – I have just found the Rare Book Room (via Stingy Scholar). It is an educational website intended to allow the visitor to examine and read some of the great books of the world.

Over the last ten years, a company called “Octavo” embarked on digitally photographing some of the world â??s great books from some of the greatest libraries. These books were photographed at very high resolution (in some cases at over 200 megabytes per page).

This site contains all of the books (about 400) that have been digitized to date. These range over a wide variety of topics and rarity. The books are presented so that the viewer can examine all the pages in medium to medium-high resolution.

In particular the site contains:

1. Some of the great books in science, including books by Galileo, Newton, Copernicus, Kepler, Einstein, Darwin and others.

2. Most of the Shakespeare Quartos from the British Library, the Bodleian Library, the University of Edinburgh Library, and the National Library of Scotland. It also contains the First Folio from the Folger Shakespeare Library.

3. A complete set of Poor Richardâ??s Almanac by Benjaman Franklin.

4. Very rare editions: Gutenberg â??s Bible (from the Library of Congress), Harvey’s book on the circulation of blood, Galileo â??s Siderius Nuncius, the first printing of the Bill of Rights, and the Magna Carta.

Posted on by mklang

En tus brazos

En Tus Brazos is a short animation about the Tango king and his partner. I will not tell you about it as anything I shall say would give away part of the story. The film is brilliantly done and the story is well chosen. The dance of life indeed!

The film is moody and intriguing. It was released in 2006 and created by Fx Goby, Mattheiu Landour and Edouard Jouret.

Posted on by mklang

Is it really happening?

Oh my god!!! This is the most recent strip from PhD comics. Slackerney is on his way! This is truly the end of an era.

 

For those of you who are unable to see the significance of this event then either you are hopelessly lost… or you have a wonderful experience ahead of you discovering the work of Jorge Cham. The comic strip is called Piled Higher and Deeper (PhD in case you missed it) and features the troubles of ordinary PhD students struggling with writing, conferences, self doubt, procrastination, insecurity, supervisors, food and sleep deprivation in the futile quest for a title.

The strip began in 1997 and the whole archive is available online. But beware it is not only highly amusing it is addictive and will increase your level of procrastination to new heights. I became hooked in 2002/2003 and since then I have read all the strips, bought the books, bought the t-shirt and included this strip (with permission!) in my own PhD thesis.

The significance of the strip above is that Mike Slackerney is about to pass his PhD. He has been a student since before anyone else can remember – his supervisor is embarrassed to remember the date. So this event must be seen as an evolutionary leap forward.

Personally I think it is great since I took way too long to finish writing my thesis – but remember Newtons First Law of Graduation: A grad student in procrastination tends to stay in procrastination unless an external force is applied to it. (PhD comics 3 March 2001)

Posted on by mklang