Dr Mike Taylor at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol wrote the following article in the Guardian:

Academic publishers have become the enemies of science

The US Research Works Act would allow publishers to line their pockets by locking publicly funded research behind paywalls.

This is the moment academic publishers gave up all pretence of being on the side of scientists. Their rhetoric has traditionally been of partnering with scientists, but the truth is that for some time now scientific publishers have been anti-science and anti-publication. The Research Works Act, introduced in the US Congress on 16 December, amounts to a declaration of war by the publishers.

The USA’s main funding agency for health-related research is the National Institutes of Health, with a $30bn annual budget. The NIH has a public access policy that says taxpayer-funded research must be freely accessible online. This means that members of the public, having paid once to have the research done, don’t have to pay for it again when they read it – a wholly reasonable policy, and one with enormous humanitarian implications because it means the results of medical research are made freely available around the world.

This has slipped through under the radar. I wasn’t even aware of it until yesterday until an email on a  list a subscribe to (thanks Danny Kingsley) came through my desk which included the following:

The Research Works Act (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.3699) is basically saying that publishers have intellectual property invested in work that they publish, so that the NIH and other mandates making research available open access are illegal.

Peter Suber says of the Act:  “A new bill, The Research Works Act (H.R.3699), designed to roll back the NIH Public Access Policy and block the development of similar policies at other federal agencies, has been introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives….Essentially, the bill seeks to prohibit federal agencies from conditioning their grants to require that articles reporting on publicly funded research be made accessible to the public online. Supporters of public access need to speak out against this proposed legislation.”

Arthur Sale said in a post to GOAL: “There is one aspect of the proposed Act HR3699 that is very interesting. It is an admission by the publishers involved that they do not at present have any intrinsic intellectual property right to control the disposition of the Version of Record  otherwise known as the ‘publisher’s pdf’. The Act is an attempt to create a new right. You should read the full proposed Act (see Note 4). It is absurd, and badly drafted, perhaps deliberately to mislead.”

More on this can be found here:

1. “Research Bought, Then Paid For”, Michael Eisen – New York Times – http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/opinion/research-bought-then-paid-for.html?_r=1
2. “Librarians, Open Access Advocates ‘Vehemently Oppose’ Research Works Act”, Michael Kealley, The Digital Shift – http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2012/01/publishing/librarians-open-access-advocates-vehemently-oppose-research-works-act/
3. Elsevier-funded NY Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney Wants to Deny Americans Access to Taxpayer Funded Research – Mike Eisen – http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=807
4.  Trying to roll back the clock on Open Access: Research Works Act introduced – American Library Association – District Dispatch
5. January 9 – http://www.districtdispatch.org/
6. An example of one of the letters to Congress opposing the bill is Tim O’Reilly’s here: https://www.popvox.com/bills/us/112/hr3699/comment/263013
7. Several AAP members have stated they do not want to have anything to do with the bill. Here are a couple of examples:
   1. Pennsylvania State University Press says No to Research Works Act – http://bit.ly/x9UzXE
   2. Peter Suber asks :” Can AAP Members stay neutral in the row over the Research Works Act?” http://poynder.blogspot.com/2012/01/can-aap-members-stay-neutral-in-row.html

 And on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23ResearchWorksAct

https://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23RWA

https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23stopRWA

http://twtpoll.com/badge/if/?twt=2jls90&b=1&bt=1

I was interested to see the following report coming out of Australia.

Australian govt may brand Anzac Day

The Australian federal government is reportedly looking to brand the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australia and New Zealand forces during World War I.

A market research company has been paid $103,275 to conduct focus groups nationwide last year on branding Anzac Day, News Limited reported.

“It is a political intervention which should be snuffed out immediately, not just because it’s a waste of money but because Anzac Day … (is) profoundly celebrated and commemorated,” former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett said.

A Department of Veterans’ Affairs spokeswoman told News Limited the concept for “a national brand or motif” came after an Anzac Centenary Advisory Board meeting on October 14.

She said the government was tendering for a design and that ideas would be focus group tested.

Victorian RSL boss David McLachlan would not comment until he had seen the plans.

I am not sure you could brand Anzac day, but if they are looking at something similar to what we were discussing then I don’t see what the problem is. I would need to see more details.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 16,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

The first keynote was presented by Agnes Kukulska-Hulme, a softly spoken professor from the Open University in the UK.  Her presentation entitled “Self directed learning with mobile devices: where is it taking us?” underlined the trend mentioned in the Horizon Report [pdf] that mobile learning is here and becoming more and more important.  It was interesting to me to hear about the projects her teams have been involved in because we’ve just launched our mobile library site.  Her presentation involved a text heavy slide presentation which I’m hoping will be available online somewhere because she mentioned many print references I’d like to chase up and read.  As you do.

Some of the projects she mentioned were:

• MOTILL: mobile technologies in lifelong learning
• English in Action
• PI: personal inquiry
• Out that & in there (a field trip learning experience designed for social inclusion)
• Language learning projects
• iSpot: wildlife identification

Kukulska-Hulme says there are many choices for mobile learning, both informal and formal, especially for areas like language learning. So what can educators learn from these mobile learners?  She refers to her research paper to answer this.¹

Learning environments are varied and include at home, out and about, on transport and so on.  This has implications such as privacy to undertake learning in such spaces.  Motivation for learning with mobile devices varies, but most express a desire to have a mixture of spontaneous and planned learning experiences.

Two of the keynotes from this day were from top geeks working for IBM and Vodafone.  Personally I felt they did not add anything to the conference knowledge as I felt their content had already been addressed in earlier keynotes.  I would recommend that if you’re invited to give a keynote that you actually attend the other conference plenaries to get a flavour for the audience and adjust your presentation in response.

Of the parallel sessions I attended, I enjoyed hearing about

• Peerwise – a tool that supports students in the creation, sharing, evaluation and discussion of assessment questions.  It seems like it would be helpful in revising for some content heavy courses.
• Intelligent tutoring tools – computer programs that teach people and respond to their learning
• The use of augmented and alternative realities in teaching – this one has made my brain tick a bit about the structure and design of some of our orientation activities.

The last keynote from Judy Kay showed us some projects her students are working on involving touch tables, a way of monitoring group participation and a project aligning course outcomes with accrediting body standards.

The overall themes to the conference appeared to be the importance of personalisation (of tools, curricula, pedagogy etc) and mobilisation (of tools, curricula, pedagogy etc).

1. Kukulsha-Hulme et al (2011). Mature students using mobile devices in life and learning. International journal of mobile and blended learning, 3(1), 18-52. Retrieved from http://oro.open.ac.uk/28367/

The conference opened with a keynote from Steve Wheeler (@timbuckteeth) who is well known in the elearning world.  His keynote did not disappoint, managing to be inspiring and amusing at the same time.  He had been asked to present on elearning futures – to do a bit of prophet-like horizon gazing for us.

I was interested to hear his reponse to the question of how to keep up with change?  As he points out, we’re (i.e. those of us in the education industry) trying to prepare young people for careers we don’t know exist using a model of education designed for homogenisation born out of the needs of the industrial revolution.

These days, it’s not about “what you know” but about the “how”.  It’s also about making connections, because if you don’t know, you need to ask “who do I connect with who does?”.  Which is where the importance of having a PLN comes into play and the value of distributed cognition.

Steve made some statements about the future of learning, namely that it is

• social
• personal
• augmented
• non-touch (think gesture based like Wii)

Unfortunately he didn’t quite complete all his slides, but I imagine they’ll be available via his blog shortly.

Other sound bites include:

• technology is often resisted by people because of worries about threats to their future, because they have vested interests in maintaining the status quo or fear of more work
• speaking about the importance of maintaining the “gift economy” on the internet and promoting open knowledge, creative commons and so on he made this statement “knowledge is like love, you can give it away and still keep it”

The keynote was followed by a number of parallel sessions in streams following the themes of strategy, pedagogy, technology, technology workshops and languages.

I presented a presentation on the library’s involvement in the institution’s elearning strategy:

Joann from Horowhenua has put out the following call:

Plea for help from Horowhenua Library Trust

Horowhenua Library Trust is the birth place of Koha and the longest serving member of the Koha community. Back in 1999 when we were working on Koha, the idea that 12 years later we would be having to write an email like this never crossed our minds. It is with tremendous sadness that we must write this plea for help to you, the other members of the Koha community.

The situation we find ourselves in, is that after over a year of battling against it, PTFS/Liblime have managed to have their application for a Trademark on Koha in New Zealand accepted. We now have 3 months to object, but to do so involves lawyers and money. We are a small semi rural Library in New Zealand and have no cash spare in our operational budget to afford this, but we do feel it is something we must fight.

For the library that invented Koha to now have to have a legal battle to prevent a US company trademarking the word in NZ seems bizarre, but it is at this point that we find ourselves.

So, we ask you, the users and developers of Koha, from the birth place of Koha, please if you can help in anyway, let us know.

For those of you who don’t know [which can’t be many] the background, in the late nineties the Horowhenua Library Trust decided not to go down the traditional path of changing their LMS and developed open-source product called Koha. This was given to the world and is now used widely internationally. A few years ago a company in the US called PTFS/Liblime attempted to hijack Koha and turn it into their proprietary LMS. They have also sort sought to claim ownership of the name Koha.

Sadly it looks like they are going to be successful. Now we have the ridiculous situation that they will deny the very people who originally developed Koha the right to use that name. What is even more stupid is that the Maori Advisory Board to the Trademarks people has approved this. Yep, they are happy to give a Te Reo term to a US company as a trademark.

UPDATE: Your can donate to HLT’s legal funds here. Link removed as no longer seeking funds.

UPDATE 2: You can also send cheques to Horowhenua Library Trust, 10 Bath St, Levin. re: Koha Trademark Fund..  See above.

UPDATE 3: This will be featured on Radio NZ tomorrow.

UPDATE 4: Liblime response;

PTFS/LibLime Granted Provisional Use of Koha Trademark in New Zealand

UPDATE 5: Joann posted this update;

Update on NZ Koha trademark.

Who would have thought that one little blog post on a Tuesday morning would have generated so much interest and debate and support.

Horowhenua Library Trust have been bowled over by the generosity of a global community who are as concerned as we are at the PTFS New Zealand trade application to register the mark Koha in relation to software.

We have received hundreds of emails offering support for fighting the ‘good fight’. I haven’t quite replied to them all yet – but I am trying . The press have provided balanced coverage with Radio NZ, TV1 and TV3 all reporting the story pretty accurately here, generating much discussion in Maori and mainstream media forums.

We have accumulated donations of about $12k, mostly through $20 and $50 donations from individuals around the globe (including many Americans) and the generosity of the legal profession offering free representation is amazing.

We have accepted the services of Sacha Judd, Andrew Matangi & John Glengarry from Buddle Findlay, assisted by Rochelle Furneaux, who have agreed to work pro-bono for us (bless them all I say). They have been guiding us for the last few days and are busy preparing a objection to the PTFS / Liblime application should one be necessary.

We believe we are well placed now to mount a strong legal challenge and we think we have enough in donations to cover filing fees, document costs and other disbursements. While It goes completely against my nature to turn down donations to Horowhenua Library Trust, in all conscience we should stop the fundraising drive at this stage. Rest assured if is necessary to challenge the PTFS application all the way to the High Court then we may well be coming back cap in hand!

PTFS have issued a press release saying they are willing to hand the NZ Koha trademark over to a non-profit representing the Koha community. That organisation is the Horowhenua Library Trust, elected by the Koha global community, and we would be delighted to accept that offer and add the NZ Koha trademark to the store of other Koha community property we currently hold in trust ie domain names and trademarks. It would be a very simple matter for PTFS to assign the existing application to Horowhenua Library Trust and we invite PTFS to do so. The Library Trust has never stopped any Koha user or developer or vendor from carrying out their business. Our track record over the last 12 years of releasing the Koha code and supporting the Koha community to go about its business unimpeded is exemplary and we have no intention of ever changing that approach.

Filed under: Rant Tagged: Koha, open source ]]> http://diligentroom.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/the-exemplar-of-stupid-koha-vs-liblime-trademark/feed/ 108 Michael Parry kohalogo http://diligentroom.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/a-happy-work-outcome-new-resources-for-the-new-zealand-electronic-text-centre/ http://diligentroom.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/a-happy-work-outcome-new-resources-for-the-new-zealand-electronic-text-centre/#comments Mon, 14 Nov 2011 23:52:09 +0000 Michael J. Parry http://diligentroom.wordpress.com/?p=1591 ]]> One of the really good things of my job is when we get to push new collections onto the NZETC. So here is a little plug promoting some of our new resources.

Three new collections on Elsdon Best, student media and Antarctic research

Filed under: Academic publishers, Announcements, eBooks Tagged: NZETC ]]> http://diligentroom.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/a-happy-work-outcome-new-resources-for-the-new-zealand-electronic-text-centre/feed/ 0 Michael Parry http://diligentroom.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/do-we-need-an-ir-or-a-ddms/ http://diligentroom.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/do-we-need-an-ir-or-a-ddms/#comments Wed, 09 Nov 2011 00:58:00 +0000 Michael J. Parry http://diligentroom.wordpress.com/?p=1587 ]]> Currently I am in Melbourne at eResearch Australasia which has been really interesting. I am hearing a lot about data and data management.

One of the things that I have been thinking, and please excuse the brain dump, is that rather than having an IR (Institutional repository) we should have complete DDMS (document data management system) that informs and guides the whole research process.

I see it helping the researcher tracking their research through the whole process and then enabling them to “publish” not only the end result but the research and data at various stages.

It’s something I need to think more on.

1. Who are you here for? Why are you here? Where to invest? What to invest in that will help the place run as a business so people’s visits are comfortable (Te Papa has to keep the toilet rolls coming in)!
2. Are we transformational? The impact we have on our audience is really important.  This was a theme that came through in this conference and is a good one to look at although, in some places can be difficult to measure and report on.
3. Are we being a forum for the future -  how do we interact with events and public interests?
4. Have you got an issue to focus on? E.g. Te Papa are looking at sustainability, environmental issues
5. Treasuring the treasures? For example, where do we go for the history of science and technology in New Zealand?  It’s not just about arts.
6. Connecting with people? Are we doing this and focusing on the learning outcomes?  Museum collections are becoming more about individual’s stories and less impersonal.  Houlihan illustrated this in an effective way by passing around “a piece of rubbish”.  At the end of the presentation he expanded on this item which turned out to be a part of a boot heel from a Welsh soldier he had picked up from the field of battle at Mametz Wood.  He showed a photo of the memorial at the battle field and described the carnage that occurred.  (As it happened, I was holding the boot heel at the time it was so poignant).  As Houlihan said, we were touching history.
7. Are we sharing authority? With iwi, with our clients, online and IRL.
8. Going digital? There are always a lot of ideas on how and what to do with this, but not so much input about the how.
9. Are we keeping fit? Are we a learning organisation?
10. Are we staying touch? Are we keeping people involved?
11. Getting down to business and providing value for money?
12. Telling your story? There are people and venues where our voice needs to be heard.  Are we actually doing that?  Where is our political voice?
13. Are we building sustainable leadership? Where are the leaders of tomorrow for our institutions?  Houlihan sees this as a real issue in New Zealand and others at conference agree.

Houlihan says libraries and museums unlock a world of information and provide context – we should never loose sight of that.

After morning tea I attended Cherie Tautolo’s session “Tai Tokerau taniwha rau: empowering students to achieve” where she illustrated what she has been doing in in Whangarei to support the students there.  The student population there is almost an even split between Māori and non-Māori. Cherie has made physical changes to her space to improve the wairua of the library so students feel more comfortable there.  She advocates creating a sense of familiarity and providing a mix of spaces within a library.  For example, areas that allow discussion and noise are appreciated by Māori who find the idea of a “silent” space off putting.  I would comment that we find many students of all kinds of cultures are the same – group work and discussion areas are heavily used at MPOW.  Much of what Cherie passed on is good customer relations practice – make connections (personal as well) with your students, know their names and so on.  This is easier to do at smaller campuses, but it is possible to do this also at larger places.  As with all populations, building relationships with users is always fruitful.  Cherie also participates in campus events which facilitates relationships too. Cherie referred to a survey that found one of the major reasons Māori feel uncomfortable is the lack of Māori staff and students there.  Normalising the presence of Māori in the library will assist to make the place more inviting.

I also attended a workshop on Empowering users, empowering libraries: interactive user interaction, activities and games that work and a research session More than a quiz.  Both these sessions were more affirming than informative for me, but I am still glad of the affirmation!  Sometimes it helps to know that we’re doing stuff the same as other libraries.

Andrew Booth’s presentation pimped the importance of evidence-based library and information practice (EBLIP).  This is something I’ve heard before but I appreciated his highlighting some of the biases and myths we perpetuate in the profession.  For example, myth number 2: the librarian always knows best or The Divine Right of Librarians. This is something I’m always saying – we have to be very careful about thinking we know what our users want.  Booth says librarians have two primary cognitive bias:

1) status quo – the tendency to like things to stay relatively the same

2) deformation professionalle – a tendency to look at things from the point of view of one’s own profession rather than from a broader perspective

Booth posits (somewhat tongue in cheek) that if we’re not practicing EBLIP we may be performing some of these alternative practices (Isaacs & Fitzgerald, 1999)

• Eminence based library and information practice
• Vehemence based library and information practice
• Eloquence based library and information practice
• Providence based library and information practice
• Diffidence based library and information practice

The conference dinner was a blast – pictures here.

Day Four began with Jenica Rogers presenting a motivational keynote advocating project managing your dreams.  She had many good things to say – but Deborah has ably summarized it better than I, so I’m going to defer to her on this one.  One thing that did resonate with me was her final commentary pointing out that farmers everywhere in the world always say “it hasn’t been a good year”, but they still keep farming anyway.  It’s easy to look at all the obstacles and difficulties that we face and feel daunted by it all.  But it’s never been a good year for libraries so we should just suck it up, get over it and get on with it.

As Lianza11 ends, the conference convenors for Lianza12 take over the reins for next in Palmerston North, 23rd-26 Sept with the overarching theme of Ipukarea (which refers to our ancestral homeland, a place that representing our history and a place to go for rejuvenation) plus additional themes of celebrate, sustain, and transform.

Overall, for me the conference was more about affirmation than anything new and exciting.  I’m glad I went because it has given me an opportunity to present a couple of posters and reflect a little on where I am and where I want to go.

Isaacs, D. & Fitzgerald, D. (1999). Seven alternatives to evidence based medicine. British Medical Journal. 319 (1618). Retrieved from http://www.bmj.com