- LIS-Forum - ncsi.iisc.ernet.in

"Re: Contents of LIS-Forum digest...NET relief mooted for MPhil, PhD students"
by Susmita Chakraborty 24 Apr '06

24 Apr '06

Dear All, Please refer to LIS Forum email message titled "NET relief mooted for MPhil, PhD students". I would like to share my personal observations in this regard. Firstly, let see who are qualifying UGC-NET/ SLET for Lecturership in Library and Information Science (LIS). The Meritorious or Talented or Hard-working LIS professionals are mostly qualifying these competitive examinations. On the other hand, let we see who are getting admission into MPHIL/ PHD programmes in LIS. Only few full-time MPHIL/ PHD courses are available in India as compared to total number of MLIS/AIS/ADIS passed outs. These full-time MPHIL/ PHD courses select student on the basis of Merit or NET/SLET. But they belong to only a few percent (about 10%) of total MPHIL passed outs in India. Rest 90% percent students are getting admission into MPHIL courses on the basis of ability to pay hefty course fee (varies from Rs. 10,000/- to Rs. 36,000/-). So, these 90% MPHIL/ PHD students are not that much Meritorious/ Talented/ Hard-working as compared to UGC NET/ SLET qualified LIS professionals, but they have financial capacity to pay the hefty course fee. There is also no consistency or transparency in the admission process of PhD programmes except for the NET/SLET qualified LIS professionals. So, if we propose to exempt of UGC NET/ SLET clause from the eligibility criteria of college librarians/ university assistant librarians/ documentation officers/ lecturers, probably we will discourage Meritorious or Talented or Hard-working persons to come into LIS profession. Instead, Library Associations, Forums can collectively pressurize UGC to produce sufficient numbers of UGC NET/ SLET qualified candidates, or to hold GRE type examination for admission into MPHIL and PhD programmes. Also, Library Associations and University departments can introduce NET/SLET coaching classes to address the shortage of qualified manpower and for the greater benefits of the society. Hope, the apex organizations, like, UGC, AICTE, MCI, should set the eligibility criteria on the basis of above-mentioned facts, and not bypassing the above-mentioned facts. With regards S. Chakraborty Kolkata

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Worldwide open access to journals predicted
by Subbiah Arunachalam 24 Apr '06

24 Apr '06

Friends: Here is something which sounds like fun, but who knows it could turn out to be true! Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] ----------------------------------- From Peter Suber's blog Budapest 2.0 Richard Feinman has written a press release from the future on how OA might evolve in the next 2.5 years. Excerpt: December 1, 2008. Budapest. The quiet frozen surface of the river stands as counterpoint to the heated discussions in the Duna (Danube) Hotel where representatives of governments, libraries, universities and major publishing houses are trying to hammer out guidelines for the implementation of a Universal Open Access Protocol (UOAP)....Scheduled for 2009, UOAP would make the contents of all scholarly publications free without subscription. The UOAP operation is to be funded by a consortium of government agencies, private foundations and commercial sources and follows a period of ad hoc funding and substantial confusion in the world of scientific journals, a situation which dates to the event now known in the publishing world as Nature Day of which the conference is the first anniversary. On Nature Day, December 1, 2007, 100 university librarians (with backing of their respective faculties) handed an ultimatum to Nature publishing, one of the larger publishers of scientific technical journals. This rather strange manifesto proclaimed that the profit that Nature gained from providing journals to university libraries was excessive and rather than pay the price asked by Nature, the librarians offered to pay one fifth of the price for the print version and required that Nature be open access, that is, available on line without subscription. The libraries agreed to support the open access version at a further reduced price for five years even though it would be available to everybody in the world. If Nature did not agree, the libraries threatened to cancel their subscriptions. "It seems strange telling a manufacturer how much profit they can make but really this is what a consumer does every time they choose one of several competing products" said Kuan-Teh Jeang of the NIH and editor of Retrovirology, a journal that has been open access since 2003....In the end, an undisclosed compromise was settled on. Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), was next. "They claimed to be not-for-profit" said Richard Feinman, editor of Nutrition & Metabolism, "but their journal operation was a big money-maker and the funds were used for other activities which, however worthwhile, were not what we intended to pay for when our libraries subscribed to the journal. I told them they should change their name to the American Association for the Advancement of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAAAAS)." ...[A]uthors and editors were quite enthusiastic. "Well, transparency was the key," said Barbara Starfield of Johns Hopkins, editor of International Journal for Equity in Health. "Once the faculty members recognized the burden being placed on the libraries and how unscrupulous the publishers were, in combination with the obvious benefits of wide circulation and controlling your own copyrights, everything fell into place." Faced with guaranteed income at a lower price or a difficult battle with customers, most publishers instituted the open access movement. Quite remarkably this was done, in some cases, literally, overnight since publishers already had the tools for online publication. It was only necessary to remove the gateway. The pressure was, in fact, great - once battle lines were drawn, authors and reviewers (who are not normally paid by publishers) jumped to side with the libraries. The new contracts provided great savings for the libraries but everyone realized that they had agreed to pay for the world's technical journals, and that a global solution had to be found. In essence, it was recognized that much money flows into publishing and it only had to be redirected. This lead to today's meeting in Budapest. The meeting today, like Nature Day itself is also the anniversary of the 2001 meeting in Budapest of the Open Society Institute (OSI) which might be said to have initiated the Open Access movement. Friends: Here is something which sounds like fun, but who knows it could turn out to be true! Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] ----------------------------------- From Peter Suber's blog Budapest 2.0 Richard Feinman has written a https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/2956.html press release from the future on how OA might evolve in the next 2.5 years. Excerpt: December 1, 2008. Budapest. The quiet frozen surface of the river stands as counterpoint to the heated discussions in the Duna (Danube) Hotel where representatives of governments, libraries, universities and major publishing houses are trying to hammer out guidelines for the implementation of a Universal Open Access Protocol (UOAP)....Scheduled for 2009, UOAP would make the contents of all scholarly publications free without subscription. The UOAP operation is to be funded by a consortium of government agencies, private foundations and commercial sources and follows a period of ad hoc funding and substantial confusion in the world of scientific journals, a situation which dates to the event now known in the publishing world as Nature Day of which the conference is the first anniversary. On Nature Day, December 1, 2007, 100 university librarians (with backing of their respective faculties) handed an ultimatum to Nature publishing, one of the larger publishers of scientific technical journals. This rather strange manifesto proclaimed that the profit that Nature gained from providing journals to university libraries was excessive and rather than pay the price asked by Nature, the librarians offered to pay one fifth of the price for the print version and required that Nature be open access, that is, available on line without subscription. The libraries agreed to support the open access version at a further reduced price for five years even though it would be available to everybody in the world. If Nature did not agree, the libraries threatened to cancel their subscriptions. "It seems strange telling a manufacturer how much profit they can make but really this is what a consumer does every time they choose one of several competing products" said Kuan-Teh Jeang of the NIH and editor of Retrovirology, a journal that has been open access since 2003....In the end, an undisclosed compromise was settled on. Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), was next. "They claimed to be not-for-profit" said Richard Feinman, editor of Nutrition & Metabolism, "but their journal operation was a big money-maker and the funds were used for other activities which, however worthwhile, were not what we intended to pay for when our libraries subscribed to the journal. I told them they should change their name to the American Association for the Advancement of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAAAAS)." ...[A]uthors and editors were quite enthusiastic. "Well, transparency was the key," said Barbara Starfield of Johns Hopkins, editor of International Journal for Equity in Health. "Once the faculty members recognized the burden being placed on the libraries and how unscrupulous the publishers were, in combination with the obvious benefits of wide circulation and controlling your own copyrights, everything fell into place." Faced with guaranteed income at a lower price or a difficult battle with customers, most publishers instituted the open access movement. Quite remarkably this was done, in some cases, literally, overnight since publishers already had the tools for online publication. It was only necessary to remove the gateway. The pressure was, in fact, great - once battle lines were drawn, authors and reviewers (who are not normally paid by publishers) jumped to side with the libraries. The new contracts provided great savings for the libraries but everyone realized that they had agreed to pay for the world's technical journals, and that a global solution had to be found. In essence, it was recognized that much money flows into publishing and it only had to be redirected. This lead to today's meeting in Budapest. The meeting today, like Nature Day itself is also the anniversary of the 2001 meeting in Budapest of the Open Society Institute (OSI) which might be said to have initiated the Open Access movement.

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Journal publishers bribing scientists subtly
by Subbiah Arunachalam 24 Apr '06

24 Apr '06

Friends: A very good proposal. Membership in the editorial boards of low quality journals should be given negative points in evaluation of a scientists for Fellowships, funds and promotion, says a distinguished American chemist. We certainly need to follow such a policy in India. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] From Peter Suber's blog A modest proposal to curb journal proliferation Chris Reed, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry (University of California, Riverside), offers the following modest proposal on CHMINF-L: Colleagues: In last week's interesting CHMINF-L discussion on Nature's proliferation of new journals, faculty habits, and the serials market, I saw no mention of an ongoing parallel onslaught by Bentham. In the past month, I have received no less that three invitations to join the editorial boards of new Bentham journals -- "Current this", "Frontiers of that" -- none in areas of my real expertise. The same old tactics are being used: exploiting a faculty weakness for seeing one's name in print, offering a career advance by having Editorial Board appointments on one's CV at promotion time, flattering authors with invitations to contribute papers in special issues, etc. All this effectively silences faculty from speaking out, or even caring about, the issues librarians understand so well. It is one of the reasons I am advocating that promotion policies at the University of California specify that appointments to the editorial boards of low quality, overpriced journals should count against promotion. The idea may not be so outrageous in five or ten years time. I have also recommended that the best way to change faculty habits is the pay them. Overpriced journals should be cancelled and some of the saved money given to Departments whose faculty agree not to submit to, referee for, accept editorial board appointments on journals they decide are too exploitive. Let me be a little provocative here. How far are librarians willing to go on this? Personally, I'd love to see faculty and librarians form a real partnership on this. (And its not the money driving me). PS. In case you are wondering, yes, I did hit the delete key on those Bentham invitations. Friends: A very good proposal. Membership in the editorial boards of low quality journals should be given negative points in evaluation of a scientists for Fellowships, funds and promotion, says a distinguished American chemist. We certainly need to follow such a policy in India. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] From Peter Suber's blog A modest proposal to curb journal proliferation http://www.chem.ucr.edu/faculty/reed/reed.html Chris Reed , Distinguished Professor of Chemistry ( http://ucr.edu/ University of California, Riverside ), offers the following https://listserv.indiana.edu/cgi-bin/wa-iub.exe?A2=ind0604&L=CHMINF-L&P=R10… modest proposal on CHMINF-L : Colleagues: In last week's interesting CHMINF-L discussion on Nature's proliferation of new journals, faculty habits, and the serials market, I saw no mention of an ongoing parallel onslaught by Bentham. In the past month, I have received no less that three invitations to join the editorial boards of new Bentham journals -- "Current this", "Frontiers of that" -- none in areas of my real expertise. The same old tactics are being used: exploiting a faculty weakness for seeing one's name in print, offering a career advance by having Editorial Board appointments on one's CV at promotion time, flattering authors with invitations to contribute papers in special issues, etc. All this effectively silences faculty from speaking out, or even caring about, the issues librarians understand so well. It is one of the reasons I am advocating that promotion policies at the University of California specify that appointments to the editorial boards of low quality, overpriced journals should count against promotion. The idea may not be so outrageous in five or ten years time. I have also recommended that the best way to change faculty habits is the pay them. Overpriced journals should be cancelled and some of the saved money given to Departments whose faculty agree not to submit to, referee for, accept editorial board appointments on journals they decide are too exploitive. Let me be a little provocative here. How far are librarians willing to go on this? Personally, I'd love to see faculty and librarians form a real partnership on this. (And its not the money driving me). PS. In case you are wondering, yes, I did hit the delete key on those Bentham invitations.

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What is access to knowledge (A2K)?
by Subbiah Arunachalam 23 Apr '06

23 Apr '06

Friday, April 21, 2006 What is Access to Knowledge? Jack M. Balkin The Yale Information Society Project Access to Knowledge Conference kicked off today. (You can learn more about the conference panels here and here.) I gave a speech on the first panel about framing access to knowledge, using insights from a year-long seminar that Yochai Benkler and I have been teaching on the issues. Here is the prepared text of my remarks: On behalf of the Information Society Project I want to express how happy we are to have you all here, and our pleasure at being a part of this wonderful movement that you, in the audience, have helped create. For the last year Yochai Benker and I have been running a research seminar at Yale with some very talented students on the theory and practice of access to knowledge, trying to understand the larger theoretical commitments behind the access to knowledge movement. This conference is the culmination of a long process of thought, study and reflection, which is part of the larger access to knowledge project here at the ISP. We hope that we can contribute in our own small way to what is already a rich and exciting conversation about the goals of access to knowledge. We are thrilled to be able to host what is truly an international event in an ongoing social movement that is unfolding before our very eyes. Today I want to make three points about the theory of access to knowledge. First, Access to Knowledge is a demand of justice. Second, Access to Knowledge is both an issue of economic development and an issue of individual participation and human liberty. Third, Access to Knowledge is about intellectual property, but it is also about far more than that. Access to Knowledge is a demand of Justice Access to Knowledge is a set of principles that emerge from a loose collection of different social movements. These social movements, in turn, are responding to changes in economy and society produced by new information technologies. Information and knowledge are embedded in goods like drugs that have value, and in social structures like education and science that produce value. Moreover, information, like capital, is not just a thing in itself but it's also a set of relationships between persons and groups. Some control it, others don't and law helps enforce that division of power and control. As the global economy develops, control over knowledge and information increasingly determines global wealth and power. Because not all countries participate in the global economy equally, not all of their citizens enjoy its benefits equally. Different societies prepare their members differently to participate in the information economy, and different countries have competitive advantages in producing information and controlling its distribution. Access to knowledge can be a confusing term because it actually refers to four different things. Here I borrow Yochai Benkler's typology: a.. 1. Human knowledge-- education, know-how, and the creation of human capital through learning new skills. b.. 2. Information-- like news, medical information, data, and weather reports. c.. 3. Knowledge-embedded goods-- goods where the inputs to production involve significant amounts of scientific and technical knowledge, often but not exclusively protected by intellectual property rights. Some key examples are drugs, electronic hardware, and computer software, but in contemporary economic life, information and intellectual property provide an increasingly important share of almost all valuable goods. d.. 4. Tools for the production of KEG's-- examples include scientific and research tools, materials and compounds for experimentation, computer programs and computer hardware. The goal of access to knowledge is to improve access to all four of these components of the knowledge economy: a.. 1. Access to human knowledge b.. 2. Access to information c.. 3. Access to KEG's d.. 4. Access to tools for producing KEG's Access to knowledge is a question of distributional justice, both within a society, say rich and poor, men and women, and across different societies, say countries in the North and the South. Given the long term trend in the world economy toward increasing the share of wealth going to these four components of the knowledge economy, what does justice require? I think we can make two claims: First, if you can produce the same or greater amounts of these four components and distribute them more widely and equitably both within countries and across national borders, justice demands this. Second, if you can spur additional innovation and information production in areas that existing market structures currently do not serve-- e.g., drugs for diseases in the third world, educational materials for persons in the poorest countries-- justice also demands this. Let me put it another way: Access to knowledge means that the right policies for information and knowledge production can increase both the total production of information and knowledge goods, and can distribute them in a more equitable fashion. The goal is first, promoting economic efficiency and development, and second, widespread distribution of those knowledge and informational goods necessary to human flourishing in our particular historical moment- the global networked information economy. I repeat: It's not just a trade off between equity and efficiency. We are not simply fighting about how to divide up a pie. Access to knowledge is about making a larger pie and distributing it more fairly. Or, at the risk of extending this pie metaphor well beyond its appropriate scope, access to knowledge means giving everyone the skills to make their own pies and share them widely with others. (And now all this talk of pies is starting to make me hungry.) This brings me to my third point. Access to Knowledge is both an issue of economic development and an issue of individual participation and human liberty. >From the arguments I've offered so far, which, I should mention, owe a considerable debt to the work of my friend and colleague Yochai Benkler, it sounds as if Access to Knowledge is just about economics and development. It isn't. I put it this way because some of the strongest arguments against A2K have been economic arguments that the current system is better for economic development and efficiency, and we have to sacrifice equality to promote development. What we've been trying to show in our seminar here at Yale is that this is just plain wrong. The best information policies, the best knowledge policies, the best development policies actually lower barriers to access to knowledge, they produce more information goods and they distribute them more widely. Our seminar has been trying to show how the best economic arguments are on our side. The crazy thing about the push toward global harmonization and IP maximalism is that it doesn't make economic sense. It benefits particular stakeholders, to be sure, and they often claim that making them wealthy makes everyone else better off. But it turns out it's not true. A more balanced set of IP policies actually produces greater wealth and distributes it more widely and fairly. But access to knowledge is about more than increasing GDP or promoting rapid development. For example, we might promote human development through producing lots of information goods for people and distributing them widely. On the other hand, we might promote human development by promoting decentralized access to information tools and by encouraging participation in the production of information goods by large numbers of people. Access to knowledge is about the second strategy- participation-- as much as the first. Or in economic terms, its about whether information production will be primarily centralized and proprietary or whether large parts of it should be decentralized and participatory. What we've been trying to show in our seminar here at Yale is that a vast range of information policies, ranging from free and open source software to universal service policies in telecom to networks of farmers sharing agricultural information aren't just about stuffing people's Christmas stockings with more information goods, but rather giving individual people tools to think with, build with, form communities with, and then watch these communities take off, enabling people to make their own knowledge and information goods either individually or through peer production models. You see, there is always more than one way to promote human flourishing using knowledge and information, and therefore you should usually adopt more than one strategy. You can make drugs cheaper or you can give people information about their health. Why not do both? You can reduce the costs of information embedded goods, or you can free up access to knowledge tools, increase literacy rates, and let people build things together and share their efforts. Again, why not do both? Is access to knowlege a human rights issue? Sure it is. Health, literacy, education, freedom of speech and participation in the knowledge economy all involve questions of human flourishing and all involve questions of human rights. So there is considerable overlap between the focus on development and the focus on human rights. But relying primarily on the rhetoric of human rights brings its own risks. I'll mention only two. First, people have started to argue that intellectual property is a universal human right so that people who resist increasing IP protections and making them equally stringent around the world are actually violating universal human rights. Second, much of good information policy requires governments to invest in information production-- scientific research, weather reports, agricultural information, health information, public libraries, educational materials-- and also to promote telecommunications infrastructures- cheap cell phones, universal access, telecenters and so on. A lot of good information policy comes from freeing up or encouraging the private sector to innovate, for example through government procurement policies, tax breaks, and IP reforms. Some of these policies and reforms aren't easy to squeeze into the rhetoric of human rights discourse, although, believe me, people have tried. (Is there a human right demanding that government spend more money on scientific research or that it provide network neturality policies in telecommunications? Maybe so, but human rights discourse might not be the best way to express one's goals in these particular situations.) That is why we have committed ourselves to talking about access to knowledge in multiple ways, as an issue of development, an issue of justice and an issue of human freedom and participation. It's a big topic, and there is no one single rhetoric that captures all of it. That brings me to my third point. Access to Knowledge is about Intellectual Property, but about far more than that. Much of the focus of access to knowledge, and much of what we are going to be talking about here, has been on intellectual property. There are good reasons for this. As you'll see in our discussions here, the international IP and trade regime has increasingly adopted policies that prevent the efficient and equitable flow of knowledge, information, and knowledge goods. However, if our goal is the promotion of human flourishing, economic development, and human freedom, Access to Knowledge must look beyond international trade and IP policy. First, no matter how restrictive IP laws may be, they may not be the major cause of human suffering and lack of access to knowledge around the world. Providing basic telecom access and rudimentary health care may be far more important in some countries. Using IP to deny people cultural freedom is bad enough, but broader censorship policies may be even worse. Second, we should always distinguish between law in the books and law in action. Sometimes the text of legal rules and treaties don't tell you how these laws are actually being enforced. Countries sign lots of treaties- like human rights treaties- that they don't actually enforce or only enforce selectively. Conversely, some treaties give countries opportunities to protect freedom- for example, exceptions and limitations provisions-- that they never use. Third, in some cases IP enforcement isn't the major stumbling block to economic development and human flourishing. For example, suppose a country wants to promote a local pharmaceutical industry. Its IP policies are important, but more important is their interaction with other policies like the presence or absence of research and development subsidies and tax breaks. Research and Development subsidies may be much more important than IP; and price controls may do as much harm as bad IP policies. A functioning public sphere, a free press, and government transparency- all goals of access to knowledge, by the way-- may be necessary to reduce government corruption and keep government policies from being skewed toward the short term interests of powerful stakeholders. Let me generalize this point: Universal telecom access and increased cell phone access, giving out free computers, providing public libraries and local telecenters, sharing agricultural information among farmers and educating women about their health and contraceptive options may be some of the most important things that a country can do to promote access to knowledge for a large proportion of its population. My point is that governments promote access to knowledge in many different ways besides IP laws-- through regulation and deregulation, through government procurement policies that encourage private actors to produce knowledge and information goods, and through the government's own provisioning of information, knowledge and education. That's why this conference contains panels on a wide variety of topics that go beyond current fights over the international IP regime-- panels about telecommunications, educational policy, and health policy. All of these policies serve the larger goals of A2K- the goals of justice, of development, and of participation in the forms and practices of knowledge by everyone on the planet. Friday, April 21, 2006 [A] What is Access to Knowledge? Jack M. Balkin The Yale Information Society Project http://research.yale.edu/isp/eventsa2k.html Access to Knowledge Conference kicked off today. (You can learn more about the conference panels http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme here and http://research.yale.edu/isp/a2k/wiki/index.php/Yale_A2K_Conference here .) I gave a speech on the first panel about framing access to knowledge, using insights from a year-long seminar that Yochai Benkler and I have been teaching on the issues. Here is the prepared text of my remarks: On behalf of the Information Society Project I want to express how happy we are to have you all here, and our pleasure at being a part of this wonderful movement that you, in the audience, have helped create. For the last year Yochai Benker and I have been running a research seminar at Yale with some very talented students on the theory and practice of access to knowledge, trying to understand the larger theoretical commitments behind the access to knowledge movement. This conference is the culmination of a long process of thought, study and reflection, which is part of the larger access to knowledge project here at the ISP. We hope that we can contribute in our own small way to what is already a rich and exciting conversation about the goals of access to knowledge. We are thrilled to be able to host what is truly an international event in an ongoing social movement that is unfolding before our very eyes. Today I want to make three points about the theory of access to knowledge. First, Access to Knowledge is a demand of justice. Second, Access to Knowledge is both an issue of economic development and an issue of individual participation and human liberty. Third, Access to Knowledge is about intellectual property, but it is also about far more than that. Access to Knowledge is a demand of Justice Access to Knowledge is a set of principles that emerge from a loose collection of different social movements. These social movements, in turn, are responding to changes in economy and society produced by new information technologies. Information and knowledge are embedded in goods like drugs that have value, and in social structures like education and science that produce value. Moreover, information, like capital, is not just a thing in itself but it's also a set of relationships between persons and groups. Some control it, others don't and law helps enforce that division of power and control. As the global economy develops, control over knowledge and information increasingly determines global wealth and power. Because not all countries participate in the global economy equally, not all of their citizens enjoy its benefits equally. Different societies prepare their members differently to participate in the information economy, and different countries have competitive advantages in producing information and controlling its distribution. Access to knowledge can be a confusing term because it actually refers to four different things. Here I borrow Yochai Benkler's typology: 1. Human knowledge-- education, know-how, and the creation of human capital through learning new skills. 2. Information-- like news, medical information, data, and weather reports. 3. Knowledge-embedded goods-- goods where the inputs to production involve significant amounts of scientific and technical knowledge, often but not exclusively protected by intellectual property rights. Some key examples are drugs, electronic hardware, and computer software, but in contemporary economic life, information and intellectual property provide an increasingly important share of almost all valuable goods. 4. Tools for the production of KEG's-- examples include scientific and research tools, materials and compounds for experimentation, computer programs and computer hardware. The goal of access to knowledge is to improve access to all four of these components of the knowledge economy: 1. Access to human knowledge 2. Access to information 3. Access to KEG's 4. Access to tools for producing KEG's Access to knowledge is a question of distributional justice, both within a society, say rich and poor, men and women, and across different societies, say countries in the North and the South. Given the long term trend in the world economy toward increasing the share of wealth going to these four components of the knowledge economy, what does justice require? I think we can make two claims: First, if you can produce the same or greater amounts of these four components and distribute them more widely and equitably both within countries and across national borders, justice demands this. Second, if you can spur additional innovation and information production in areas that existing market structures currently do not serve-- e.g., drugs for diseases in the third world, educational materials for persons in the poorest countries-- justice also demands this. Let me put it another way: Access to knowledge means that the right policies for information and knowledge production can increase both the total production of information and knowledge goods, and can distribute them in a more equitable fashion. The goal is first, promoting economic efficiency and development, and second, widespread distribution of those knowledge and informational goods necessary to human flourishing in our particular historical moment the global networked information economy. I repeat: It's not just a trade off between equity and efficiency. We are not simply fighting about how to divide up a pie. Access to knowledge is about making a larger pie and distributing it more fairly. Or, at the risk of extending this pie metaphor well beyond its appropriate scope, access to knowledge means giving everyone the skills to make their own pies and share them widely with others. (And now all this talk of pies is starting to make me hungry.) This brings me to my third point. Access to Knowledge is both an issue of economic development and an issue of individual participation and human liberty. >From the arguments I've offered so far, which, I should mention, owe a considerable debt to the work of my friend and colleague Yochai Benkler, it sounds as if Access to Knowledge is just about economics and development. It isn't. I put it this way because some of the strongest arguments against A2K have been economic arguments that the current system is better for economic development and efficiency, and we have to sacrifice equality to promote development. What we've been trying to show in our seminar here at Yale is that this is just plain wrong. The best information policies, the best knowledge policies, the best development policies actually lower barriers to access to knowledge, they produce more information goods and they distribute them more widely. Our seminar has been trying to show how the best economic arguments are on our side. The crazy thing about the push toward global harmonization and IP maximalism is that it doesn't make economic sense. It benefits particular stakeholders, to be sure, and they often claim that making them wealthy makes everyone else better off. But it turns out it's not true. A more balanced set of IP policies actually produces greater wealth and distributes it more widely and fairly. But access to knowledge is about more than increasing GDP or promoting rapid development. For example, we might promote human development through producing lots of information goods for people and distributing them widely. On the other hand, we might promote human development by promoting decentralized access to information tools and by encouraging participation in the production of information goods by large numbers of people. Access to knowledge is about the second strategy participation-- as much as the first. Or in economic terms, its about whether information production will be primarily centralized and proprietary or whether large parts of it should be decentralized and participatory. What we've been trying to show in our seminar here at Yale is that a vast range of information policies, ranging from free and open source software to universal service policies in telecom to networks of farmers sharing agricultural information aren't just about stuffing people's Christmas stockings with more information goods, but rather giving individual people tools to think with, build with, form communities with, and then watch these communities take off, enabling people to make their own knowledge and information goods either individually or through peer production models. You see, there is always more than one way to promote human flourishing using knowledge and information, and therefore you should usually adopt more than one strategy. You can make drugs cheaper or you can give people information about their health. Why not do both? You can reduce the costs of information embedded goods, or you can free up access to knowledge tools, increase literacy rates, and let people build things together and share their efforts. Again, why not do both? Is access to knowlege a human rights issue? Sure it is. Health, literacy, education, freedom of speech and participation in the knowledge economy all involve questions of human flourishing and all involve questions of human rights. So there is considerable overlap between the focus on development and the focus on human rights. But relying primarily on the rhetoric of human rights brings its own risks. I'll mention only two. First, people have started to argue that intellectual property is a universal human right so that people who resist increasing IP protections and making them equally stringent around the world are actually violating universal human rights. Second, much of good information policy requires governments to invest in information production-- scientific research, weather reports, agricultural information, health information, public libraries, educational materials-- and also to promote telecommunications infrastructures cheap cell phones, universal access, telecenters and so on. A lot of good information policy comes from freeing up or encouraging the private sector to innovate, for example through government procurement policies, tax breaks, and IP reforms. Some of these policies and reforms aren't easy to squeeze into the rhetoric of human rights discourse, although, believe me, people have tried. (Is there a human right demanding that government spend more money on scientific research or that it provide network neturality policies in telecommunications? Maybe so, but human rights discourse might not be the best way to express one's goals in these particular situations.) That is why we have committed ourselves to talking about access to knowledge in multiple ways, as an issue of development, an issue of justice and an issue of human freedom and participation. It's a big topic, and there is no one single rhetoric that captures all of it. That brings me to my third point. Access to Knowledge is about Intellectual Property, but about far more than that. Much of the focus of access to knowledge, and much of what we are going to be talking about here, has been on intellectual property. There are good reasons for this. As you'll see in our discussions here, the international IP and trade regime has increasingly adopted policies that prevent the efficient and equitable flow of knowledge, information, and knowledge goods. However, if our goal is the promotion of human flourishing, economic development, and human freedom, Access to Knowledge must look beyond international trade and IP policy. First, no matter how restrictive IP laws may be, they may not be the major cause of human suffering and lack of access to knowledge around the world. Providing basic telecom access and rudimentary health care may be far more important in some countries. Using IP to deny people cultural freedom is bad enough, but broader censorship policies may be even worse. Second, we should always distinguish between law in the books and law in action. Sometimes the text of legal rules and treaties don't tell you how these laws are actually being enforced. Countries sign lots of treaties like human rights treaties that they don't actually enforce or only enforce selectively. Conversely, some treaties give countries opportunities to protect freedom for example, exceptions and limitations provisions-- that they never use. Third, in some cases IP enforcement isn't the major stumbling block to economic development and human flourishing. For example, suppose a country wants to promote a local pharmaceutical industry. Its IP policies are important, but more important is their interaction with other policies like the presence or absence of research and development subsidies and tax breaks. Research and Development subsidies may be much more important than IP; and price controls may do as much harm as bad IP policies. A functioning public sphere, a free press, and government transparency all goals of access to knowledge, by the way-- may be necessary to reduce government corruption and keep government policies from being skewed toward the short term interests of powerful stakeholders. Let me generalize this point: Universal telecom access and increased cell phone access, giving out free computers, providing public libraries and local telecenters, sharing agricultural information among farmers and educating women about their health and contraceptive options may be some of the most important things that a country can do to promote access to knowledge for a large proportion of its population. My point is that governments promote access to knowledge in many different ways besides IP laws-- through regulation and deregulation, through government procurement policies that encourage private actors to produce knowledge and information goods, and through the government's own provisioning of information, knowledge and education. That's why this conference contains panels on a wide variety of topics that go beyond current fights over the international IP regime-- panels about telecommunications, educational policy, and health policy. All of these policies serve the larger goals of A2K the goals of justice, of development, and of participation in the forms and practices of knowledge by everyone on the planet.

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Smt. K.K.Lalithabai (Laltha Lenin) - A deidacated teacher
by Gopakumar Velayudhanpillai 22 Apr '06

22 Apr '06

Dear professionals, I came to the library profession 23 years back from Kerala Unviersity. I had the noble opportunity of being a student of Smt. K.K.Lalithabai, who had always shown dedication in her efforts to bring students to the subject areas which are new to them. Her approach to the subject always kindled curiosity among the students and were anxious to know more about it. Further when somebody gets a job in a university like situation they will forget about their social commitments. But my teacher was always in the fore front of socail activities and even now she is there. She had been awarded by various cultural forums for her literary works. We the students of Smt. Lalithabai are proud to say that we are her students. A team of great teachers lead by late Prof. K.A.Isaac, Sri.C.A.Augustine, Dr.C.V.Rajan Pillai and Smt. Lalthabai was there tp lead us into the profession. I wish my beloved teacher a great future during her retired life with activities commited to social cause. gopakumar.v Gopakumar.V Research Scholar Department of Library & Information Science Mangalore University Mangalagangotri gopakumar.v(a)rediffmail.com Dear professionals, I came to the library profession 23 years back from Kerala Unviersity. I had the noble opportunity of being a student of Smt. K.K.Lalithabai, who had always shown dedication in her efforts to bring students to the subject areas which are new to them. Her approach to the subject always kindled curiosity among the students and were anxious to know more about it. Further when somebody gets a job in a university like situation they will forget about their social commitments. But my teacher was always in the fore front of socail activities and even now she is there. She had been awarded by various cultural forums for her literary works. We the students of Smt. Lalithabai are proud to say that we are her students. A team of great teachers lead by late Prof. K.A.Isaac, Sri.C.A.Augustine, Dr.C.V.Rajan Pillai and Smt. Lalthabai was there tp lead us into the profession. I wish my beloved teacher a great future during her retired life with activities commited to social cause. gopakumar.v Gopakumar.V Research Scholar Department of Library & Information Science Mangalore University Mangalagangotri gopakumar.v(a)rediffmail.com http://adworks.rediff.com/cgi-bin/AdWorks/sigclick.cgi/www.rediff.com/signa… http://adworks.rediff.com/cgi-bin/AdWorks/sigimpress.cgi/www.rediff.com/sig…

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[Fwd: dLIST Tech Notes]
by arun＠mssrf.res.in 22 Apr '06

22 Apr '06

Friends: Anita Coleman of Arizona State University wants to share the following news with the oa-india group and others. A couple of the archive maintainers had wanted the eprints statistics fix, in particular. Thanks. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] >>>>>>>>>>>> Hello everybody, dLIST patches to Eprints and PKP software are now easily available for your download and use. Thanks to Joseph Roback, dLIST Research Assistant and a graduate student in the Dept. of Computer Science, University of Arizona. The user functionalities include: # EPrints -> Displaying "Latest Addtions" from Apache SSI (Server Side Include) # EPrints -> Displaying "News" from Apache SSI (Server Side Include) # EPrints Statistics -> Various Bug Fixes, MySQL improvements # PKP -> OAI Flow Control Harvesting # PKP -> OAI ListSet Harvesting # PKP -> Improved Advanced Search, Optimized for MySQL4+ The patches and documentation can be downloaded from the dLIST Technical Notes & Downloads page, http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/tnnd.html. Please let us know if you find them useful and we'll include you on our 'brag' page. Thanks. Anita Coleman http://www.u.arizona.edu/~asc

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Document Delivery Service
by Mailing List Manager 21 Apr '06

21 Apr '06

Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2006 12:17:26 +0530 From: Chandrima Roy <croy(a)docdelserv.com> Dear All, For all your requirements for full text articles, Conference Proceedings, Reports, Patents & others, please contact us to obtain Copyright compliant articles at very reasonable rates. Articles in Pdf or Tiff format are made available via email within 4-5 days upon receipt of the order (s). For more information please log on to http://www.docdelserv.com <http://www.docdelserv.com/> or contact us at info(a)docdelserv.com . Thanking you Chandrima Roy (Document Delivery Service) Divan Enterprises B-9, Basement, "A" Block, Local Shopping Complex Naraina Vihar, Ring Road New Delhi - 110028 Tel: +91-11-25770411 Fax: +91-11-25778876 Email: croy(a)docdelserv.com

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Special Issue on Media Emerging
by Puna Das 21 Apr '06

21 Apr '06

Global Issues Special Issue on Media Emerging Volume 11, Number 2, March 2006 http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itgic/0306/ijge/pdf.htm http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itgic/0306/ijge/ijge0306.pdf TABLE OF CONTENTS Emerging Media Reshape Global Society Newspapers Recreate Their Medium How Community Newspapers Adapt to New Technology Broadcasters Getting Online, Staying On Air Public Libraries in the Internet Age Connecting Cultures on the Internet Readers Make a Newspaper Their Own The $100 Laptop Bloggers Breaking Ground in Communication Online Albums Making Connections a World Away Internet2—Creating Tomorrow's Internet Fighting Online Crime What Every e-Consumer Should Know The Next New Thing Is Here Bibliography Internet Sites http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itgic/0306/ijge/pdf.htm http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itgic/0306/ijge/ijge0306.pdf _____________________________________________________________ ANUP KUMAR DAS/ SWAPAN KUMAR PATRA/ BIDYARTHI DUTTA INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION SOCIETY OF INDIA NEW DELHI _____________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Matrimony: Find your partner now. Go to http://yahoo.shaadi.com

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NET relief mooted for MPhil, PhD students
by js vijaya 21 Apr '06

21 Apr '06

NET relief mooted for MPhil, PhD students Manash Pratim Gohain Monday, April 10, 2006 TIMES OF INDIA Even though the education sector is booming, shortage of quality faculty continues to be a nagging concern. If a report to exempt PhD and MPhil students from the National Eligibility Test (NET) is cleared by the University Grants Commission (UGC), it may prove to be a boon for both students and institutes. The report was formulated by a committee formed in January 2006 by the Ministry for Human Resources Development (MHRD) to review NET examinations. The interim report, which has been forwarded to UGC for consultation, observed that there is no rationale behind the clause that PhD and MPhil graduates need to first qualify NET to be eligible for teaching at the college and university level. NET was introduced in 1989. In 1993, UGC decided to give PhD and MPhil degree-holders exemption from NET, whereby students who had completed their PhD and MPhil on or before December 31, 1993, were eligible to apply for college and university level faculty positions. In 2002, UGC decided that the exemption would be extended to only PhD graduates. Again those who had completed their PhDs after December 31, 2002, were not eligible to apply for faculty positions. Keeping in view the large number of vacant positions in different universities and colleges across the country and the shortage in quality faculty, the interim report suggests permanent exemption from NET. The report observed that MPhil and PhD are the highest degrees in our academic system and the NET requirement undervalues these degrees. The three-member committee is headed by B Mungekar, member, Planning Commission. Vijayalakshmi J S Librarian Administrative Management College 18th K M Bannerghatta Road Bangalore 560083 Ph: 080-7828657 Mob:9886380349 e-mail:jsvijaya@yahoo.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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3d seek: Doodle - A new kind of search engine!
by hemaa＠ingvysyabank.com 21 Apr '06

21 Apr '06

Dear all, A new kind of a search engine has been developed based on practical pattern recognition and all the user needs to do is to key in a freehand sketch! For more details, read below: <http://www.3d-seek.com/3DSeek/Update.aspx> http://www.3d-seek.com/3DSeek/Update.aspx <http://nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=105851&org=ENG> http://nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=105851&org=ENG February 23, 2006 Working with support from the National Science Foundation's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, Imaginestics, a company located in West Lafayette, Ind., has created 3D-Seek: a new kind of search engine that lets users find items in an online catalog without ever needing to know the items' names, part numbers or keywords. Thanks to a major advance in practical pattern recognition, all the user needs is a freehand sketch--a doodle. The Purdue Research Park-based company developed 3D-Seek and its associated catalog mainly for manufacturing firms, which are constantly looking for hinges, bolts, conveyor belts, motors and a host of other products. For those firms, notes Errol Arkilic, the NSF officer overseeing the SBIR awards, "this search engine can help find the proverbial needle in the haystack. By allowing manufacturers to re-deploy and re-purpose parts from existing catalogs, the tool can make it easier for businesses to design complex mechanical systems." Eventually, however, the basic search engine could prove equally useful for ordinary shoppers: instead of having to go to the hardware store lugging, say, a specific plumbing joint, a customer could just sketch what he or she needed to find an exact match. The 3D-Seek software was built on top of technology created by Karthik Ramani and his colleagues at the NSF-supported Purdue Research and Education Center for Information Systems in Engineering (PRECISE) </cgi-bin/goodbye?http://tools.ecn.purdue.edu/~cise/> at Purdue University. Ramani, who is an NSF CAREER < <http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5262> http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5262> Awardee, the director of PRECISE and the chief scientist of Imaginestics, had led the way toward search algorithms that ranked among the world's fastest for a certain application: comparing the computer-aided design files and other 3-D images that are ubiquitous in industry. From there, further collaboration between university and company researchers resulted in a system that required only critical shape characteristics, not entire image files. This allowed even faster search speeds and protected the proprietary information held by parts suppliers loading their products to the online database. And as a bonus, the refined search could now glean important information from quick sketches, a favorite means of communication for engineers and designers. The public can try the freehand-search online at the 3D-Seek portal </cgi-bin/goodbye?http://www.3d-seek.com>. "In order to make such a search engine commercially viable we had to overcome the challenge of matching something as rudimentary as a doodle to a 3-D object - in seconds," said Nainesh Rathod, co-founder and President of Imaginestics. "This is important, as Web users have become accustomed to retrieving information instantaneously. Our shape-search engine processes data that are far more complex then those handled by the leading Internet search engines, and yet still finds results quickly." While researchers have been working for several years on software that can compare industry-standard 3-D image files to each other, the new method is faster than most and permits search "terms" that are far outside the norm. With the new tool, users can find in seconds what once took weeks of warehouse searches or even a complete part redesign. "It's the difference between describing a part over the phone and seeing it in person," added Rathod. "You can look at it visually instead of explaining it in words." The 3D-Seek catalog currently contains more than 6,000 parts and continues to grow as suppliers manually upload their files or as the system's i-crawler web spider discovers parts online. A related technology, i-prowler, hunts for image files on a user's computer and merges them with either the online database or an internal company catalog - critical for large companies that may not have simple mechanisms to search internal inventories. Even global corporations can have difficulty tracking supplies internally. According to Rathod, a Fortune 100 manufacturer recently estimated that lack of a proper search technology resulted in duplicate purchases for 10 to 16 percent of parts. One reason is that factories creating the same product, yet located continents apart, will go to different suppliers for the same component. Those suppliers may have to independently engineer the components from scratch, which can be costly. With an easily searchable company-wide database, even metric conversion would not stand in the way of a part search. -NSF- Thanks & Regards Hema Amble Librarian, ING Vysya Bank CDC Message Dear all, A new kind of a search engine has been developed based on practical pattern recognition and all the user needs to do is to key in a freehand sketch! For more details, read below: http://www.3d-seek.com/3DSeek/Update.aspx http://www.3d-seek.com/3DSeek/Update.aspx http://nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=105851&org=ENG http://nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=105851&org=ENG February 23, 2006 Working with support from the National Science Foundation's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, Imaginestics, a company located in West Lafayette, Ind., has created 3D-Seek: a new kind of search engine that lets users find items in an online catalog without ever needing to know the items' names, part numbers or keywords. Thanks to a major advance in practical pattern recognition, all the user needs is a freehand sketch--a doodle. The Purdue Research Park-based company developed 3D-Seek and its associated catalog mainly for manufacturing firms, which are constantly looking for hinges, bolts, conveyor belts, motors and a host of other products. For those firms, notes Errol Arkilic, the NSF officer overseeing the SBIR awards, "this search engine can help find the proverbial needle in the haystack. By allowing manufacturers to re-deploy and re-purpose parts from existing catalogs, the tool can make it easier for businesses to design complex mechanical systems." Eventually, however, the basic search engine could prove equally useful for ordinary shoppers: instead of having to go to the hardware store lugging, say, a specific plumbing joint, a customer could just sketch what he or she needed to find an exact match. The 3D-Seek software was built on top of technology created by Karthik Ramani and his colleagues at the NSF-supported Purdue Research and Education Center for Information Systems in Engineering (PRECISE) </cgi-bin/goodbye?http://tools.ecn.purdue.edu/~cise/> at Purdue University. Ramani, who is an NSF CAREER < http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5262 http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5262 > Awardee, the director of PRECISE and the chief scientist of Imaginestics, had led the way toward search algorithms that ranked among the world's fastest for a certain application: comparing the computer-aided design files and other 3-D images that are ubiquitous in industry. From there, further collaboration between university and company researchers resulted in a system that required only critical shape characteristics, not entire image files. This allowed even faster search speeds and protected the proprietary information held by parts suppliers loading their products to the online database. And as a bonus, the refined search could now glean important information from quick sketches, a favorite means of communication for engineers and designers. The public can try the freehand-search online at the 3D-Seek portal </cgi-bin/goodbye?http://www.3d-seek.com>. "In order to make such a search engine commercially viable we had to overcome the challenge of matching something as rudimentary as a doodle to a 3-D object - in seconds," said Nainesh Rathod, co-founder and President of Imaginestics. "This is important, as Web users have become accustomed to retrieving information instantaneously. Our shape-search engine processes data that are far more complex then those handled by the leading Internet search engines, and yet still finds results quickly." While researchers have been working for several years on software that can compare industry-standard 3-D image files to each other, the new method is faster than most and permits search "terms" that are far outside the norm. With the new tool, users can find in seconds what once took weeks of warehouse searches or even a complete part redesign. "It's the difference between describing a part over the phone and seeing it in person," added Rathod. "You can look at it visually instead of explaining it in words." The 3D-Seek catalog currently contains more than 6,000 parts and continues to grow as suppliers manually upload their files or as the system's i-crawler web spider discovers parts online. A related technology, i-prowler, hunts for image files on a user's computer and merges them with either the online database or an internal company catalog - critical for large companies that may not have simple mechanisms to search internal inventories. Even global corporations can have difficulty tracking supplies internally. According to Rathod, a Fortune 100 manufacturer recently estimated that lack of a proper search technology resulted in duplicate purchases for 10 to 16 percent of parts. One reason is that factories creating the same product, yet located continents apart, will go to different suppliers for the same component. Those suppliers may have to independently engineer the components from scratch, which can be costly. With an easily searchable company-wide database, even metric conversion would not stand in the way of a part search. -NSF - Thanks & Regards Hema Amble Librarian, ING Vysya Bank CDC

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