Hello LIS professionals, I reproduce below two mails one from Prof. Edward Fox, Director of NDLTD and another from Pete Celano of Open Thesis. These discussions give you a glimpse of not only the way NDLTD has been serving the cause of ETDs and also the issues involved and how a professional community can/should stand up to its values and beliefs. Happy reading! Shalini ---- Hi! Many thanks for your note, copied below, to the ETD listserv. I am glad that you have served the patent community, but patent documents are different from ETDs, calling for a different strategy. It is nice to hear that you wish to serve the ETD community. NDLTD is happy to work with partners, if we indeed can discuss and cooperate. John Hagen shared your draft announcement with me, and informed me that Gail, Thom, and he plan to talk with you about the press release and other matters. I am very glad they have been working with you, but was very concerned about your email today, and I'm rather unhappy with the tone of the press release, believing it mis-represents the current situation, and has other aspects that will be confusing and troublesome. Meanwhile, your recent action has, as was reported by R. Mutt, been harmful. As Executive Director of NDLTD I am writing to urge immediate action on your part to remove the full-texts ETDs that still appear from your site, e.g., http://www.openthesis.org/document/pdfView/22231.pdf As you have heard from others on our Board of Directors, you have taken a very unwise course of action, and may suffer serious consequences, even if you act now, but the situation will only get worse if you persist in illegal behavior. When you came to ETD 2009, I and others made it perfectly clear that we would be happy to discuss ways that you might assist the ETD community. But we never heard or saw any details about your plans until you put them in place in an inappropriate way. Reaching us was not hard, given information on our web site, and I personally gave you my contact information when we met in Texas (see also at the bottom of this message), so I am surprised and highly displeased by your failure to communicate your intentions, and by your unwise actions. Inviting the large number of subscribers to ETD-L to a phone discussion about this also seems very unwise. I hope people will not respond in numbers, complaining. I plan to call at 2pm EST tomorrow, though I already have another meeting at 2:30pm, so cannot stay long. But I am not sure how worthwhile it will be to talk now unless your actions demonstrate your willingness to cooperate. You launched your service 1/28, and though told on 2/2 about concerns, now, almost a week later, have not corrected the situation. The legal term is that I urge you to "cease and desist". I'd suggest after that a press release apologizing, and saying that you are exploring other types of services, which will be announced soon. We can work with you on your plan for services and on announcements, but I strongly urge you to delay those till after the dust has settled a bit. This note carries no commitment or endorsement, and in no way could be construed to protect your company from any legal action that others might bring to bear. My hope is solely to ensure that ill effects are reduced, and to help move things forward in a positive direction. Sincerely, Ed Fox (Edward A. Fox, Executive Director, NDLTD, fox@vt.edu, office +1-540-231-5113) On 2/8/2010 6:18 PM, Pete Celano wrote:
Ana and ETD professionals--
We're not going to display full-text from OAI; we heard you loud and clear; we'll make the change.
Still, it's 2010 and ETDs are largely inaccessible or hard to access (keep in mind the web today favors a lack of friction; fewer clicks to get what you want). Â Patents once were the same way-- the province of paid subscription databases, till we took up the cause in 2004. Â Back then, a few hundred thousand folks per year could access patents worldwide. Â Now we serve 10 million or so people per month with free patent info, worldwide.
With your help, we can expose ETDs to millions across the globe, in a way
that fits your charter. Â We hope to work together with you in pragmatic ways; clearly there's no lack of passion among your members.
We can drive a ton of traffic to your full-text links. Â And we will get ETDs you do NOT have, and will be sharing them via OAI. Â But how to work together in actionable ways, if you're willing?
Join our call tomorrow at 2 pm EST (Feb 9th) if you can: Â the call-in # is 218 936 7988, the code is 64131. Â And you know our email: Â u@openthesis.org.
We want yet more counsel and advice, and will tell you about a big new feature we aim to add.
We can radically accelerate the cause of free ETDs with you. Â
- Pete
Dr. Shalini Urs Executive Director and Professor International School of Information Management University of Mysore Mysore - 570006 Phone : + 91 821 2514699 Fax : + 91 821 2519209 www.isim.ac.in ISiM - Management School of IT. Technology School for IM -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.