Here is some of the input from me about OA and OSS: Open Access: Open access, Open Source software, digital libraries are three concepts that have been receiving increased attention in the digital library world. Open access is to scholarly information scholars, and publishes over the last few years. Open access basically calls for scholarly publication to be made free available to libraries and end users. Digital libraries is an integrated set of services for capturing, cataloguing, storing, searching, protecting, and retrieving information, which provide coherent organization and convenient access to typically large amounts of digital information. All three of these concepts are important to libraries individually and they can be leveraged simultaneously. Willinski (2003 ) identified nine flavors of open access. The flavors are : 1.E-prit archive (authors self-archive-pre-or post prints), 2. un qualified (immediate and full open access publication of a journal, 3. dual mode (both-print subscription and open access version of a journal are offered, 4. delayed open access (open access in available after a certain period of time, 5. author free ( authors pay a fee to support open access, 6. partial open access(some articles from a journal are available via open access, 7. per-capita (open access is made available to countries based on per-capita income, 8.abstract (open access available to task of content /abstract 9. co-op ( institutional members support open access journals). Open access helps to ensure long-term access to scholarly articles. Unlike articles that are licensed in traditional article databases, libraries and other can create local copies and repositories of these resources. GNU web site offers the following defintion of OSS: The freedom to run the program, for any purpse (freedom 0). Thre freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs . Access to the source code is a precondition for this. The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. Access to the source code is precondition for this. (www.gnu.org/philosophy/free.sw.html). M.Krishnamurthy -- Dr.M.Krishnamurthy Librarian Indian Statistical Institute 8th Mile Mysore Road R.V.C.E. Post Bangalore 560059 Ph:91-80-8483002/3/4/4 Fax: 91-80-8484265