 |
|
|
|
|
eIFL.net Newsletter
No. 35 - September/October 2008
1. eIFL.net-related News8th eIFL.net General Assembly around the cornerAs it is customary in the eIFL.net network, this year another eIFL country has kindly volunteered to host our 2008 General Assembly. On this occasion, on November 6-8 the Bulgarian national consortium BIC will welcome around 100 participants from national consortia from our 48 member countries, our partner publishers, board and staff, who will engage in a lively 3 day conference about latest trends in the profession and the eIFL businessagenda. All indications are that 18 publishers will attend the event. We are planning a speed dating session, where all the countries will have an opportunity to visit each and every participating publisher to discuss offers, renewals and problems. We would like to thank our publisher partners for sponsorship. Logistic arrangements are at an advanced stage and the final program as well as other details will be available very soon on our web site at www.eifl.net.Spotlight on Libraries promoting Access to KnowledgeWe continue with our series “Spotlight” where we usually feature one of the eIFL countries. This time our story is on Access to Knowledge A2K.The story looks into why libraries have been actively participating in the social movement Access to Knowledge since 2004. eIFL.net is a natural ally to the A2K movement, a platform where it gives voice to and advocates for enhanced and fair access to knowledge by libraries across its member countries in the developing and transition world. “Access to Knowledge” means many things to many people. First, we asked librarians how to say “Access to Knowledge” in their own language. The variety of responses shows the rich diversity of languages and cultures in our network, with the common purpose of making access to knowledge a reality for library users in developing and transition countries. We hope you will enjoy watching the video!. Please read the full story at www.eifl.net. eIFL.net starts its work in NepaleIFL.net received a grant from Foundation Open Society Institute (FOSI) to start working with our new partner country Nepal. The grant is focused on capacity building and creation of a library consortium through a series of events. The first workshop on consortium building and e-resources is planed for November and we are thankful to Ann Okerson from Yale University and Helena Asamoah-Hassan from Ghana Library Consortium (CARLIGH) who agreed to facilitate the discussions and learning as resource persons.2. eIFL.net Events in September-October 2008:* Monika Segbert presented eIFL.net, with a special reference to eIFL-OA, at the international workshop ‘Open Access to Scientific Literature and other Digital Scientific Information Resources in Central America and the Caribbean: Focus on Education and Health for Sustainable Development’. This meeting was organised by the Academy of Sciences of Cuba on September 3-4 and on September 8 Monika met with the Cuban library community to discuss possibilities and potential of partnering with eIFL.net* On September 8-10, eIFL-IP took part in the Third Access to Knowledge Global Conference, Information Society Project at Yale Law School. eIFL.net Advisory Board member Emilija Banionyte spoke at the eIFL-IP co-organised panel on exceptions and limitations, and Teresa Hackett spoke on the WIPO Development Agenda. More details at a2k3.org * On September 17, Teresa Hackett, eIFL-IP Manager, delivered the 18th Annual Mortenson Distinguished Lecture entitled "Libraries Advocating for Access to Knowledge: our role in the global A2K movement". Please read www.library.uiuc.edu * Several of the eIFL Open Access coordinators from Africa will attend the Institutional Repositories workshop organised by the University of Pretoria, South Africa on 1-3 of October. More information can be seen at www.ais.up.ac.za * On October 1-4, eIFL FOSS Manager Randy Metcalfe will participate at Access 2008 Conference in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The program and other details are available at access2008.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca * On October 3-4, Iryna Kuchma, eIFL OA Program Manager, will give a presentation “Advantages of Open Access for Libraries” at the Open Access session at the Vth International Conference "Informatio-2008" (Ukraine, Alushta). Irina Razumova from Russian library consortium NEICON and Ausra Vaskeviciene from Lithuanian library consortium LMBA will share their consortium experiences with Ukrainian colleagues. More information about the conference is at www.eifl.net * eIFL OA will give a paper ‘eIFL.net Open Access: Building Links between Regional, Disciplinary, and Interdisciplinary initiatives’ at the 21st CODATA International Conference, Scientific Information for Society-from Today to the Future, to be held on October 5-8 in Kyiv, Ukraine. Programme details and related information can be viewed at www.codata.org * On October 13-14, Rima Kupryte and Monika Segbert will meet with library stakeholders in Vietnam and on October 15-18 they will travel to Singapore to attend the Bridging Worlds 2008 Conference and meet librarians from the region. * Susan Veldsman will be attending the Frankfurt Book Fair on October 14-16 to discuss all the variation agreements and offers to eIFL.net. Additional information about the fair this year can be found at www.book-fair.com * On October 15-16, eIFL.net and Electronic Library Consortium of Armenia (ELCA) will co-organise a national OA awareness raising workshop in Armenia. * On October 20-22, the Kenya library consortium will hold a meeting to discuss best ways for the consortium to move forward in terms of sustainability and partnership with eIFL.net as a newly joined member. Susan Veldsman will participate in this meeting on behalf of eIFL.net. * On October 21-22 (tentative), the national library consortium BelLibNet and eIFL.net will jointly hold an Open Access awareness raising in Belarus. * Safia Rafikova, eIFL Open Access country coordinator in Kyrgyzstan, will represent eIFL.net and will give a presentation about consortium development and Open Access at the Central Asia 2008 Conference in Fergana, Uzbekistan, on October 21-25. She will present progress on the open repository in the American University of Central Asia ( elibrary.auca.kg), a national open repository for ETDs CRAD ( oel.bik.org.kg) and shared digital repository for Central Asia Business. * Randy Metcalfe will participate in FSOSS2008, Free Software and Open Source Symposium to be held at Seneca College, Toronto, on October 23-24. Related event information can be viewed at fsoss.senecac.on.ca * On October 24, Teresa Hackett will give a presentation at the 8th annual conference of the Croatian Academic and Scientific Libraries. Please see the programme at nippur.irb.hr 3. eIFL Negotiations and Useful ResourceseIFL.net Collaboration with South African National and Information Consortium (SANLiC)eIFL.net has signed a one year agreement with the South Africa consortium SANLiC, whereby Susan Veldsman will be doing negotiations for all of their licenses. SANLiC consists of 28 university and research libraries. In addition to all the renewals and licensing of new content for eIFL.net member countries, Susan will be busy with SANLiC’s 14 three year renewals and 44 annual renewals.On September 30, a second publisher product demonstration will be held at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria. Each publisher will have a half an hour where they could do a product demo, plus they had to recap on their offers to the South African Library and Information Consortium. The objective is to support consortium members in the management and understanding of the deals, offers and products out there. Content in French LanguageCAIRN is the result of a partnership amongst 4 French speaking publishing houses (Belin, De Boeck, La Découverte, Erès) with the aim to publish and disseminate journals in Social Sciences and Humanities and give them enhanced visibility on the Internet.To date, CAIRN web site ( www.cairn.info) provides access to more than 44.000 articles in 161 e-journals on a wide range of disciplines, including Economics, Law, History, Philosophy, Literature and Linguistics, Political Sciences, Information Sciences, Sociology and Education, which have been published since 2001. Access to their online archives is user-friendly and for free, and for each backfile journal it is specified which material is available at no cost. In addition to table of contents, editorials and summaries of past journals issues, full text articles are often accessible for free, too. eIFL is currently exploring possible ways to establish a partnership with this remarkable project for its French speaking library users in licensing current content. SSL, a Social Science Library for developing countriesThe Global Development And Environment Institute at Tufts University is pleased to announce the release of the Social Sciences Library: Frontier Thinking in Sustainable Development and Human Well-Being. Selective, authoritative, and interdisciplinary, the Social Science Library (SSL) collection is available on a CD-ROM and will be distributed without cost to university libraries throughout the developing world. The SSL CD contains nearly 2,000 carefully selected journal articles and book chapters in seven social science disciplines: Anthropology, Economics, History, Philosophy, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science. The goal of the SSL is to assist scholars, thinkers, and policy makers in developing countries to contribute to, and benefit from, the on-going creation of social science knowledge and understanding.The first stage of distribution of the SSL will be managed by the Global Development And Environment Institute’s partner, Winrock International, and will begin at selected sites in Ghana and Nigeria in September 2008. All eIFL.net countries are eligible to receive a CD-ROM. More information about the SSL can be found at www.socialsciencelibrary.org Contact person Suzanne Bremer (suzanne.bremer[at]tufts.edu) 4. Update on eIFL-IPActive copyright librarians in AfricaThe Standing Conference of African National and University Libraries of Eastern, Central and Southern Africa (SCANUL-ECS) organised a seminar on libraries and copyright at its recent meeting in Zambia. Led by Charles Lungu, eIFL country coordinator and Benson Njobvu, eIFL-IP representative, eIFL-IP librarians from the region were invited to speak on topics affecting their countries. Kgomotso Radijeng talked about liability for copyright infringements in Botswana; Kathy Matsika spoke passionately about the real impact of copyright laws on access to learning materials in Zimbabwe; a colleague, on behalf of Japhet Otike, outlined the effect of copyright on the provision of information in Kenya, and Benson Njobvu reported on a survey at the Department of Library and Information Studies at the University of Zambia on student awareness of access provisions (exceptions and limitations) in Zambia copyright law. Teresa Hackett, eIFL-IP Programme Manager, gave a presentation about library activism and global trends in access to knowledge.Librarians in the region are clearly thinking about how copyright impacts on their day-to-day situations, and are starting to critically evaluate national copyright laws to see how they benefit libraries and education. Congratulations to our colleagues in Zambia for taking the initiative to organise the seminar. The papers will be published in due course. If any other eIFL.net member countries would like to hold a similar event, we will be pleased to advise (contact teresa.hackett [at] eifl.net). Meet the eIFL-IP librarians!It’s always nice to put a face to a name, so we have recently added photos of the librarians who work with us on copyright issues. The eIFL-IP librarians, nominated by their national consortium, are a national focal point for eIFL-IP. As well as attending eIFL.net training in current copyright issues for libraries and on strategies for advocacy, they have the opportunity to represent eIFL.net at international conferences and policy forums. In addition, eIFL.net provides support and assistance for copyright-related national and regional events. A mailing list keeps everyone up-to-date with developments, and conferences in 2008 and 2009 provide face-to-face contact and an opportunity to share experiences. Please visit www.eifl.neteIFL-IP at 74th IFLA Conference in QuébecIt was a busy week for eIFL-IP in Québec. Teresa Hackett attended two business meetings of the IFLA Committee on Copyright and Other Legal Matters (CLM). The CLM Action Plan 2008-2010 was updated, significant national copyright developments were discussed, as well as strategies in international negotiations. A representative from WIPO attended as a guest.Teresa Hackett gave a preview of the eIFL.net proposals for minimum copyright provisions at the CLM session “Users’ rights: making copyright work for libraries”, where Professor Kenneth Crews outlined the results of his study, commissioned by WIPO, into library exceptions and limitations in national copyright laws. Important new developments in Canada, the UK and the US were also presented. The second CLM session on barriers of access to government information, was co-organised with the Committee on Free Access to Information and Freedom of Expression. Apart from the CLM events, sessions on multi-media materials, genealogical data, digital libraries, the digitisation of library collections, and indigenous knowledge, all featured copyright and related matters showing how important copyright is for many aspects of library work. Finally, Teresa attended the brainstorming session of Ellen Tise, President-Elect of IFLA, whose presidential theme is “Libraries Driving Access to Knowledge”. During table discussions on how libraries can drive access to knowledge, Teresa introduced the emerging, global social movement on Access to Knowledge (A2K), of which eIFL.net is a part. eIFL.net can help contribute to the President-Elect’s agenda by connecting IFLA with the A2K movement and by ensuring that copyright, amongst other issues, is an element on the agenda. 5. eIFL-OA/IR News and Useful ResourceseIFL.net signed the Seoul Declaration calling for open access to publicly-funded researchCivil society organizations that participated in the OECD 2008 Ministerial Meeting on the Future of the Internet Economy on June 17-18 in Seoul have issued the Seoul Declaration (June 16, 2008): thepublicvoice.orgDSpace and eIFL.netElena Okhezina, Ural State University Library and eIFL Open Access country coordinator in Russia, and Iryna Kuchma, eIFL Open Access program manager have been invited to join DSpace Global Outreach Committee. The primary goal of the DSpace Global Outreach Committee (DGOC) is to help facilitate more regional support, trainings, user group meetings, resources for the DSpace user community world-wide. The committee’s kick off meeting will be held on September 23.Ukrainian publisher and scholarly society cooperate with ConnexionsNauka Publishers based in Kyiv, Ukraine, specialised in educational and scientific literature, and the Center for American Literary Studies in Ukraine at the Institute of Literature after Taras Shevchenko of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine started cooperation with Connexions – an environment for collaboratively developing, freely sharing, and rapidly publishing scholarly content on the Web ( cnx.org).Two modules and courses have been published: Contemporary Media Systems and Political Communications based on Ukrainian translation of the book by Daniel C. Hallin Comparing media systems: three models of media) and Discourse of Romantism in the US Literature. More information is available at www.eifl.net The Open Access Documentary ProjectIntelligent Television and BioMed Central are co-producing a set of videos celebrating the benefits of open access to scientific and medical research. Principal production has begun in London, New York, and at CERN in Geneva, featuring video interviews with activists, publishers, and consumers of scientific and medical information in the developed and developing world. The first video clips feature Science Commons Executive Director John Wilbanks and SPARC Executive Director Heather Joseph, who mentioned eIFL.net activities when telling about equitable distribution of knowledge. In 2007 the Open Society Institute awarded a grant to support the Project.You can view the first clips at www.intelligenttelevision.com Blogs about Open Access from eIFL.net countries- Gray Area: Opening up scholarly publishing by Eve Gray, publishing consultant and Open Access advocate in South Africa: blogs.uct.ac.za (in English)- BOA: Blog on Open Access by Justyna Hofmokl, sociologist and coordinator of Creative Commons Polska: boa.icm.edu.pl (in Polish) -Cybermon's blog for your access to knowledge by L.Gantulga, System Administrator, Mongolian Academy of Sciences: cybermongol.blogspot.com (in Mongolian) If you are from a developing or transitional country and have a blog about Open Access, please send a link to iryna.kuchma[at]eifl.net 6. eIFL-FOSS ProgrammeUpdate on the eIFL-FOSS ILS ProjectDuring July and August the eIFL-FOSS ILS pilot projects began building on the momentum established at the June training workshop. In August the Malawi pilot site was switched to Mzuzu University with the Koha efforts being led by Irene Sachs. Fortunately Mzuzu University had been participating in training workshops organized locally by the MALICO Technology Research Group, so they were already familiar with Koha. In the Koha project itself, the good news is that the long-awaited version 3.0 was released on August 10. The Koha pilot sites of the eIFL-FOSS ILS project welcomed this news as they had been working with version 2.9 as well as beta releases of 3.0. All will now standardize on version 3.0. The Evergreen project has also been a hive of activity, aided by the translation of Evergreen’s international version into Armenian by Tigran Zargaryan.Software Freedom Day – 20 September 2008In July a discussion arose on the eIFL-FOSS Country Coordinators mailing list on how best to participate in the world-wide Software Freedom Day on September 20 (see softwarefreedomday.org). Ideas ranged from sharing library facilities with local Linux User Groups (LUGs) for meetings and training to running demonstrations of currently deployed FOSS software used in the libraries (everything from ILSs, institutional repository software, digital collections software, and more traditional desktop software such as OpenOffice or FireFox). What will you be doing to celebrate Software Freedom Day this year?Update on the Southern African Greenstone Support Network ProjectThe Southern African Greenstone Support Project pilot held its final meeting in July in Johannesburg. The participants included representatives of the national pilot project centres established in Lesotho, Malawi and Zimbabwe, the sub-regional centre at the University of Namibia (UNAM), the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH) as the coordinating agency for the Greenstone network in Tanzania, and Digital Innovation South Africa (DISA) which had provided expert support for two of the pilot project’s training workshops. Participants in the pilot project were rightly proud of its considerable achievements at the national level in a relatively short period of time. At the same time there was a broad consensus on the critical importance of a follow-up project. The good news is that additional support for the Southern African Greenstone Support Network has been secured from the Koha Foundation which also funded the pilot project. Details on the support network will be gradually added to the its new home on the eIFL.net site at www.eifl.netAs ever, please visit the eIFL-FOSS space on the eIFL.net website for the latest news and information from the eIFL-FOSS program: www.eifl.net The eIFL Team
|
eIFL news
Upcoming events
Member Countries
|
|
Login
