Speaker Says Librarians Play Pivotal Role in Open Access Movement

“I’m not a lawyer, none of this is legal advice,” is how Molly Kleinman started her Open Access address Tuesday at the Bijou Theater in the IMU.

Kleinman’s talk, titled “Open Access: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Internet,” focused on a movement within academic culture to make research and scholarship available for free online—and as soon as she started talking about copyright law it was apparent why lawyers might be needed.

Oct. 19-25 is International Open Access Week
 

WiderNet Reaches Milestone, Looks to Future

The 300th eGranary Digital Library is set to be delivered to the Uganda Institute of Information and Communication Technology in Kampala, Uganda.

The eGranary is referred to as “internet in a box” and is a product of the WiderNet Project, which also refurbishes computers to donate to African institutions.
The hard drives look tiny, but contain two terabytes of information. That means 10 million digital resources. Portals customize access to the resources linking nurses in Zambia, for example, with relevant health sites.

WiderNet director Cliff Missen
holds the 2 terabyte eGranary.
“We want to put the right information in the right person’s hands at the right time but we don’t know what that is,” WiderNet director and SLIS professor Cliff Missen says.

Humanities Symposium Panel Covers Variety of Issues

The last event for the Carol Spaziani Intellectual Freedom Fest doubled as a kickoff panel for the 2009 Obermann Humanities Symposium Thursday night at the Iowa City Public Library.

The two hour panel tried to address “The Digital Public Sphere: Books in the Age of New Media” and touched on questions like how digital communities affect writing and what’s next for the literary community.

SLIS Students to Present at SLA Meeting

Student scholarship recipient Jamie Hosek will report on attending the SLA national conference, and Digital Libraries Fellow Angela Murillo will present on a project involving live readings from the International Writing Program in Second Life.

ALA Releases 2010 Scholarship Applications

The American Library Association (ALA) has $300,000 in scholarship and grant money available for next year. The online applications are open from now until March 1, 2010.

Scholarships range from specific to general and, according to ALA, most range from $1,500 to $7,000 per student.
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