Readex Digital Institute
Speaker: Paul Duguid, School of Information, University of California, Berkeley.
“The World According to Grep: Seeing the World through a Search Window”
Popularity: 34% [?]
Speaker: Meg Bellinger, Director of the Office of Digital Assets and Infrastructure
Popularity: 29% [?]
I will be trying my hand at live blogging this conference beginning with the keynote address on Wednesday morning at 9:00. The speaker is David Seaman, Associate Librarian for Information Management at Dartmouth College. The live blog is interactive, real time, with occasional media.
Popularity: 27% [?]
Readex, a company that specializes in digiting historical primary source research materials, has graciously invited me to a conference on digital research — and is even footing the bill. Vermont. October. Leaves. Crisp autumn air. Bed and Breakfast. Very gracious, indeed.
Held annually since 2003 in Chester, Vermont, the Readex Digital Institute offers a casual yet intellectually challenging forum for exploring the digital research universe. Past attendees, including a diverse group of academic librarians and faculty, praise the Institute for the unique platform it provides to discuss wide-ranging issues affecting 21st-century scholarship.
So, I will be blogging the conference for those of you with an interest in research. Partial agenda:
Follow my Facebook status for updates as I suffer and endure the Vermont autumn. The highlight of the trip may well be the Vermont Country Store. They have everything.
Popularity: 16% [?]
Back in May I posted a link about the Orphan Works Bill taken up by Congress. Though it would not have provided a sorely needed recodification of the rather burdensome and vague US Copyright Code, it would have provided some measure of protection to those who desire to advance the field of knowledge by building upon the work of an author who has been either unresponsive to a researcher’s attempts at securing copyright permissions or whose location and contact information are unknown. This protection would have come in the form of limiting judicial remedies in cases where an author or other copyright owner who had been unresponsive to a diligent, good-faith effort on the part of a researcher subsequently sued.
Anyway, the Senate passed the bill but it has since died a quiet death in the House. I agree (I think) with Lawrence Lessig’s NTY argument that what constitutes a “good-faith effort” may have been too vague in this bill, but I hate to throw out the orphan with the bathwater. Lessig points out the problem:
The Congressional Research Service has estimated that just 2 percent of copyrighted works that are 55 to 75 years old retain any commercial value. Yet the system maintains no registry of copyright owners nor of entities from which permission to use a copyrighted work can be sought. The consequence has been that an extraordinary chunk of culture gets mired in unnecessary copyright regulation.
On a related note, I urge all my readers who are Members of Congress (ha!) to consider and act on the recommendations by the Section 108 Study Group sponsored by the Library of Congress.
There. I feel better getting that off my chest.
Oh, and the fastest way to kill a blog and lose readers? Begin blogging about copyright law.
Popularity: 19% [?]
Agreed.
… as digitally stored information becomes increasingly accessible, libraries will need to provide more spaces for people to study. John Wilkin, the librarian at the University of Michigan has noted that “… we have more than just about any institution in terms of electronic resources available to our users. … And yet, at the same time, people are coming to the library in greater numbers. Our gate count goes up, our circulation stays high … people come together to use resources.” Libraries will increasingly be places of interaction and study, and students and faculty will require more help indentifying reliable and trustworthy information, accessing that information, and using it.
From Daniel O. Aleshire, Earthen Vessels: Hopeful Reflections on the Work and Future of Theological Schools (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008) 88.
Popularity: 15% [?]
