Jessamyn West, BOTM for June, 2006
Jessamyn West is librarian.net. She's a writer, speaker, agitator for all things library (well, maybe not ALL things!). You may have seen her "five technically legal signs for your library" that she created when the USA PATRIOT Act first came out. As she says on her about page:
I love libraries because I believe they are a true manifestation of the public sphere in the US. They are a place where people can read what they want, be who they are, and inform themselves about what interests them. I like to help people do that. I am also fiercely protective of losing what is special about libraries, and much of my work concerns this preservation issue in its many facets. I am a user-oriented librarian when I’m working at a library, and a library activist when I am not. My passion presently is mucking about in the intersection of libraries, technology and politics and describing what I find there.Continue reading
Blogger of the month bios
Below is the growing list of bios for our guest bloggers, which we call BOTM (blogger of the month). Continue reading
Final OA thoughts
As i go two days over my guest blog status, i wanted to share a couple of resources for "further reading" in regards to Open Access and other issues: Found via New York Academy of Medicine Library's Grey Literature Report: Federal funding for health services research. My cubicle neighbor at the University of California at Berkeley helped work on the UC Berkeley Faculty Conference on Scholarly Publishing March 31, 2005 [i can still hear her hair pulling at times] which resulted in this webpage Scholarly Publishing — New Models that provides nice background information and links. If you are looking for databases of freely available OA journal information available on the internet there are many "out there", but two i recommend are: Gold Rush which provides access to over 50 open access databases and over 8000 open access journals in a variety of subject areas. Genamics JournalSeek that includes a description of the journals as well as link outs to database and indexing information via Openly Jake. And, i close with a link to a letter from my predecessor, Judith C. Wilkerson, who in November 2004 published a Comment on NIH Notice NOT-OD-04-064 Open Access to Taxpayer Funded Research to the National Institutes of Health's Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni in which she notes, among other things: It is a public policy mistake to delay access to the public that paid for research and the US research community, especially if content is released immediately to third world countries that could be our enemies. It is not is the best interest of the country or its citizens. Nor is it fair. Don't forget to share you views with Congress as legislation is being considered and remember to: OpenTheGovernment.org! Perhaps i'll see some of you in NOLA. Continue reading
Stoss: protect and save EPA libraries
In the Spring, 2006 issue of Electronic Green Journal, Fred Stoss, Biological, Environmental Studies and Mathematics Librarian at SUNY Buffalo, has written a very good editorial entitled, Protecting Public Access to Environmental Information and Saving the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Libraries. In it, he cogently outlines the historic importance of the EPA library network. He urges everyone to follow ALA's suggestions and contact your Congressional representatives immediately. The ALA site has some good talking points. We reiterate Fred's call. Please tell your member of Congress to restore the $2.5 million needed for the EPA libraries to continue to operate at the same level in FY 2007!! Continue reading
FDSys Blog – RIP?
The GPO staff tasked with developing the Future Digital System (FDSys) launched a blog in May 2005 to communicate with the potential user and developer communities. Although never properly or officially promoted to the depository community, we at FGI hailed its launch as a forward-looking way of gathering feedback and offering the potential for dialog between system designers and potential users. In my personal view, it never developed that way. It did have a useful role in announcing new FDSys documents and requesting feedback. After some pointed questions about policy neutral systems, the people running the FDSys blog announced that henceforth they would only respond to "appropriate questions." Even after that though, new announcements would occaisionally be made. No more, it seems. While new developments about FDSys have been made through other channels, there have been no new postings on the FDSys blog since January 24, 2006. Four months in Internet time is ages, so I'm making the assumption that the experiment in rapid-two way collaboration is effectively ended. On the positive side, perhaps they're too busy building to have time blogging. But I hope it is something that GPO will try again in the future when they have time to write and the community has time to listen. Continue reading