Friday, May 22, 2009

PKP Conference 2009 - Early Bird Registration Ends June 8

PKP Conference 2009 - Early Bird Registration Ends June 8

Planning to attend the Second International PKP Conference in Vancouver from July 8 - 10, 2009? If so, you should register soon, as the Early Bird rates will be ending June 8!

If not, you might want to take a closer look at our outstanding program with over 50 sessions by a truly international caste of speakers from 6 continents, including experienced library and open access publishers, and leaders in academic publishing technologies and initiatives.

Our prestigious international speakers include:

- John Willinsky, PKP Director and Professor at both the Stanford University School of Education and the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia;
- Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Internationally renowned author and Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature as well as the Director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine;
- Ana Maria Cetto, Investigator, Physics Institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and Technical Cooperation Leader and Subdirector of the International Atomic Energy Agency;
- Gregg Gordon, Social Science Research Network President and CEO;
- and many more:
http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009/pkp2009/schedConf/presentations

This year's conference combines a stimulating mixture of both the theoretical and practical, with several pre-conference and post-conference workshops on Open Journal Systems, Lemon8-XML, Creating Open Access Journals, Networkshops for Editors, Librarians, and Software Developers, and Walking the Talking with the CLA Open Access Interest Group:
http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009/pkp2009/schedConf/workshops

Additional conference highlights include:

- An early look at the latest PKP software application, the Open Monograph Press;
- Opportunities for face to face meetings with the PKP Team;
- A software "hackfest" for developers to get together, experiment, and innovate;
- A special focus on graduate students and scholarly publishing;
- And, of course, the beauty of Vancouver in the summer!

http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009/pkp2009/schedConf/travel

We very much hope to see you in July!

Heather G. Morrison
Planning Committee, 2nd International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference
Project Coordinator
BC Electronic Library Network
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Phone: 778-782-7001
Fax: 778.782.3023
Email: heatherm@eln.bc.ca
Web: http://www.eln.bc.ca

Don't miss! the
2nd International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference
Vancouver, July 8-10, 2009
http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009/pkp2009

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Library faculties now in the lead in departmental OA mandates!

The library faculty of Gustavus Adolphus College have adopted an open access mandate, the 4th such mandate. According to Peter Suber, library faculty are now in the lead with the most open access departmental policies!

Monday, May 11, 2009

Why not teach students to use OA resources?

Dorothea Salo asks: why bother teaching students to use toll access databases when they won't have access to them after they graduate?

My perspective: information literacy is a key skill for the knowledge age, and the need for librarians to develop and provide instruction will only grow. But why not focus primarily on open access resources, since this is what they will have access to for sure after graduation?

Many librarians, for that matter, are looking for information on how to search for open access information. The top question I've been getting at recent presentations, where I tend to cover just how much OA there is - more than 4,000 journals in DOAJ, over 2.6 million items available in fulltext from PubMed alone, >26 million publications available through Scientific Commons is: so how do I find this stuff? Hint: great topic for a future conference presentation proposal...

Hat tip to Open Access News.

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

ALA, ACRL, and ARL ask judge to assert vigorous oversight of proposed Google Book Search settlement

Excerpt:

The associations asserted that although the settlement has the potential to provide public access to millions of books, many of the features of the settlement, including the absence of competition for the new services, could compromise fundamental library values including equity of access to information, patron privacy and intellectual freedom. The court can mitigate these possible negative effects by regulating the conduct of Google and the Book Rights Registry the settlement establishes.

Sunday, May 03, 2009

May 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber has just released the May 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter, highlighting the Open Access Tracking Project at Connotea. OA Librarians everywhere, please join us in the ever-growing task of tracking OA developments, through the OA Tracking Project and the Open Access Directory.

We'll be needed, as on July 1 Peter Suber will be moving on to a full-time commitment to open access at Harvard, as a Berkman fellow. Peter will continue to write the SPARC Open Access Newsletter and contribute from time to time to Open Access News. Congratulations and best wishes to Peter, and to Harvard.