Please forward this to all the members of the "Kalpana Joshi Committee". Thanks and best wishes. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] ----- Original Message ----- From: "Peter Suber" <peters@earlham.edu> To: "BOAI Forum" <boai-forum@ecs.soton.ac.uk> Sent: Friday, April 07, 2006 8:08 AM Subject: Re: [BOAI] 1950 Florence Agreement/ 1976 Nairobi Protocol
Dear Julia,
I share your sense that people who support open access will likely support the enforcement of these agreements. I can't be the only reader who was glad to learn that world leaders once made sensible agreements like these and sorry to learn that our current leaders are disregarding them.
So I hope that simply circulating your letter will have a beneficial effect, even if small. The readers of this list are OA proponents from over 100 countries. Many will undoubtedly be inclined to support your cause even if they rarely have a chance to discuss issues of this kind with their governments.
Let me make a two-sided decision as the moderator of the list. On the one hand, these agreements are a bit far from our topic here. I distributed your first message with my eyes open because of its strong interest and distant OA connection, but now that the issue has aired I want to return the discussion to issues with a stronger OA connection. On the other hand, if any forum readers learn about international efforts to shore up support for these agreements, please send information about them to Julie or me (or both). I'll look for a way to communicate that information concisely to the OA community. If I don't do it through the BOAI Forum, then I may do it through the SPARC Open Access Forum, which has a slightly wider scope.
Best wishes, Peter
Peter Suber Open Access Project Director, Public Knowledge Research Professor of Philosophy, Earlham College peter.suber@earlham.edu
At 11:02 PM 4/4/2006, you wrote:
Dear Stevan Harnad, I am retired and now run a library in Florence which is international and ecumenical. It was my own library as a professor and is intended as a gift to the world. I cause it to flourish on the principle that people can become members through giving it a book rather than paying dues. But most gifts to it of books from America are taxed by the Italian Dogana and Post Office working in collusion with each other, this money having to come out of my slim pocket/pension. The earlier versions of the Budapest Open Access Initiative had been UNESCO's 'Florence Agreement' (1950) and its Protocol known as the 'Protocol of Nairobi' (1976), which allowed cultural materials, books, films, electronic data, etc., to pass across international boundaries without paying customs duties. I spoke to this issue at the St Petersburg UNESCO Conference in May 2005 on the World Summit on the Information Society, where it was said that this constantly needs to be remembered and executed. Could the BOAI and Berlin Declaration signatories recognize the principle in international law, reminding their governments of the 1950 'Florence Agreement/Accord de Florence' and of its 1976 Nairobi Protocol? Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway, Professor Emerita Director, Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei 'English Cemetery', Piazzale Donatello, 38 50132 Florence, Italy juliana@tin.it http://www.umilta.net http://www.florin.ms http://piazzaledonatello.blogspot.com