Harvard University says it can't afford journal publishers' prices | Science | The Guardian

Harvard University says it can't afford journal publishers' prices | Science | The Guardian: Harvard University says it can't afford journal publishers' prices
University wants scientists to make their research open access and resign from publications that keep articles behind paywalls

A memo from Harvard's
faculty advisory council said major scientific publishers had made
scholarly communication 'fiscally unsustainable'. Photograph: Corbis

Exasperated by rising subscription costs charged by academic publishers, Harvard University
has encouraged its faculty members to make their research freely
available through open access journals and to resign from publications
that keep articles behind paywalls.



A memo from Harvard Library
to the university's 2,100 teaching and research staff called for action
after warning it could no longer afford the price hikes imposed by many
large journal publishers, which bill the library around $3.5m a year.



The
extraordinary move thrusts one of the world's wealthiest and most
prestigious institutions into the centre of an increasingly fraught
debate over access to the results of academic research, much of which is
funded by the taxpayer.



The outcome of Harvard's decision to take
on the publishers will be watched closely by major universities around
the world and is likely to prompt others to follow suit. Read more...

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The strangely familiar browsing habits of 14th-century readers - MIT News Office

Today we constantly switch from one text to another: news, blogs, email, workplace documents and more. But a new book by an MIT professor reveals that this is not a new practice: In the 14th century, for instance, many people maintained eclectic reading habits, consuming diverse texts in daily life.

Consider Andrew Horn, the chamberlain for the city of London in the 1320s — meaning he was essentially the lawyer representing London’s interests in court against the king, who was Edward II for most of that time. The bound manuscripts in Horn’s possession, handed down to the city and preserved today, reveal a rich mixture of shorter texts: legal treatises, French-language poetry, descriptions of London and more. Read article....

The Future of Libraries: Short on Books, Long on Tech | Mobiledia

The Future of Libraries: Short on Books, Long on Tech

Where's the books?

By Margaret Rock | June 10, 2013

This isn't your childhood library. The Hunt Library at North Carolina State University is beautiful. The main floor looks more like a sleek Apple showroom than a stuffy library. And instead of a Genius Bar, there's an Ask Me alcove, where you can get help on everything from laptops to flash drives.

Rather than the Dewey system, color-coded walls, stairs and elevators help you find not just books and research papers, but also media rooms, video game collections and even a 3-D printing lab to create plastic models. But the best part? Built with state funds and private donations, it's open to the public.

Welcome to the library of the future.


"There's a lot of talk about how libraries should change, but very few ideas of how they should be shaped," said Vaughn Tan, a member of the Harvard's University Library project. "Every library should figure out what they want to be and just do that." Read more...

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The Digital Public Library of America Has Arrived | The Scholarly Kitchen

Posted by Joseph Esposito ⋅ Apr 23, 2013

English: Illustration of the final chase of Moby-Dick. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Digital Public Library of America has just launched and can be found at the annoyingly unconventional URL http://dp.la. That’s the only criticism I have to make of it, the funny domain name. Otherwise it’s an impressive performance. I have just begun to browse it and expect that I will come to use it regularly. It’s a bit like Wikipedia in that respect — always present in the background when you need it and welcome for precisely that reason.

There will be endless commentary about DPLA, so my remarks here are simply to call attention to the project and to encourage people to check it out. It’s a moving target — what it is today will be significantly different in 6 months. Heaven only knows what it will look like in 5 years.

I have been watching the project since it was first conceived and I subscribed to several of the mailing lists for the working groups. There has always been a gap, at least in my opinion, between some of the lofty — and incendiary — aspirations of the project and the actual nuts-and-bolts work to get it up and running. The “information wants to be free” crowd has embraced DPLA, and that’s unfortunate. (There are many subgroups within the world of free information advocates.) But the actual service that is available right now is very useful, if limited by the current scope of its collections. I say “current scope” as though I actually knew what that scope is. Unlike in a physical library, you just can’t tell by digging into the search tool just how large DPLA is. You will not see documents that you don’t specifically request, so what you do see is the tip of the tip of the iceberg. Over time the amount of ice below the surface is no doubt going to grow beyond human measure. read more....

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New 10 Top Schools Endorsing Free Online Learning – Stephen's Lighthouse

New 10 Top Schools Endorsing Free Online Learning – Stephen's Lighthouse

http://www.onlineeducation.net/2013/01/11/10-Top-Schools-Endorsing-Free-Online-Learning

“While there has overall been an enormous surge in the number of students who are pursuing degree programs and coursework online, in recent years there has been an increased focus, perhaps spurred on by the economic crisis, on providing high quality online courses free of charge. While these courses often can’t be used toward a degree, they do provide students all over the world with the opportunity to learn, grow, and potentially even prepare themselves for the working world. Surprisingly, some of the schools getting in on the popularity of free online courses (and in some cases even pioneering the practice) are among the best schools in the U.S., if not the world. Here are just a handful of the great schools that are now offering, and encouraging others to offer, free online courses that anyone can use.

1. Harvard University :

   Harvard launched a much publicized collaborative program with MIT in 2012 called edX, offering online university-level courses in a wide range of fields for no charge. The non-profit project has attracted a lot of attention and in its first semester more than 100,000 students signed up for free online versions of its computer science and public health courses. Harvard Law has also gotten in on the free online course game, and just this year announced that it will be offering a free course on copyright law to 500 lucky students, complete with certificates of completion.  Read more...

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Lessig Blog, v2

Lessig Blog, v2

Prosecutor as bully

(Some will say this is not the time. I disagree. This is the time when every mixed emotion needs to find voice.)

Since his arrest in January, 2011, I have known more about the events that began this spiral than I have wanted to know. Aaron consulted me as a friend and lawyer. He shared with me what went down and why, and I worked with him to get help. When my obligations to Harvard created a conflict that made it impossible for me to continue as a lawyer, I continued as a friend. Not a good enough friend, no doubt, but nothing was going to draw that friendship into doubt.

The billions of snippets of sadness and bewilderment spinning across the Net confirm who this amazing boy was to all of us. But as I’ve read these aches, there’s one strain I wish we could resist:

Please don’t pathologize this story. Read whole article

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