Expect Resistance & Library Autonomous Zone

SCO attacks open-source foundation | CNET News.com
By Stephen Shankland. October 28, 2003.

No-Brainer
by David L. Kirp. The Nation, October 23, 2003.

“The blame game” is what is what the Chronicle of Higher Education calls it:

With the Higher Education Act up for renewal next year, the
White House is expected to join those who blame colleges and
universities for “making higher education unaffordable to
students from low- and middle-income families, as well as for
allowing too many students to drop out,” says David L. Kirp, a
professor of public policy at the University of California at
Berkeley.

But the recent rise in college tuition is primarily the result
of drops in state support for higher education, Mr. Kirp says.
Nevertheless, in a proposal to amend the Higher Education Act,
“Republicans are telling these cash-starved institutions to hold
the line on tuition or lose millions of dollars in federal
grants and loans,” he writes.

(from
ACADEME TODAY The Chronicle of Higher Education’s
Daily Report for subscribers.)

Setting the Record Straight: An Analysis of the Justice Department’s PATRIOT Act Website. Center for Democracy and Technology. October 27, 2003.

The PATRIOT Act continues to be controversial. While the administration has vehemently defended its actions under the act and the act itself, it arguments have not been convincing to many including the library community. The CDT describes their contribution to this dialog this way:

In an effort to correct some of the hyperbole associated with the PATRIOT Act, CDT has issued a new analysis of the Justice Department’s website defending the Act. CDT’s analysis notes that in large part the DOJ has failed to engage on substantive criticisms of the Act. Instead DOJ touts provisions no one is objecting to, while describing controversial provisions in misleading terms.

An increasingly common thread in the news is the future of the net. The technical political, and regulatory decisions made in the next few years will affect what digital libraries can do and how they can do it. Two recent stories and a couple of background articles are:

• The irony of ‘network neutrality’, News.com
  October 21, 2003, By Diana DeGette.
• Two Companies at Odds Over the Internet’s Future New York Times October 27, 2003. By Steve Lohr.
• The Paradox of the Best Network by David Isenberg and David Weinberger
• World of Ends
  What the Internet Is and
  How to Stop Mistaking It
  for Something Else. by Doc Searls and David Weinberger.
  Last update: 4.28.03

Launch of the IFLA/FAIFE World Report 2003

The The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions World Report 2003 from the Committee on Free Access to Information and Freedom of Expression has responses from 88 different countries.

The World Report 2003 focuses on libraries and the Internet. It discusses the digital divide, filtering and blocking of information, user privacy, financial barriers, intellectual freedom, and codes of ethics. It also considers the adoption and implementation of the IFLA Internet Manifesto and the Glasgow Declaration on Libraries, Information Services and Intellectual Freedom, which express vital principles for a free Internet supported by strong library and information services.

[Politech] Microsoft offers . This posting from Tim Bishop to Declan McCullagh’s excellent mailing list Politech includes an excerpt from an article in New Scientist
Microsoft offers ’self destructing’ documents by Will Knight. 21 October 03.
Bishop comments:

“While I suspect that people will quickly figure out how to break this first
generation DRM with the equivalent of a magic marker or using the shift
key, and of course the expired documents will still be on the (Windows)
server, this is probably a pretty good indicator of where governments and
corporations are headed…”

And so, yet another reason for libraries to be selecting and acquiring and preserving government information, rather than hoping governments will do it for us.

Liblog

They blog “informative and interesting web sites” in the categories of Current Affairs, Education, Environment, Government, and Web/Tech.

The monitor offers an RSS feed for this and many other topics including

Top Stories, World, USA, Commentary,
Work & Money, Learning, Living, Sci / Tech,
Arts/Entertainmentm, Travel, Books,
Entire Paper by Section,
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SciTechblog, and more!

beSpacific: New Survey Highlights Lack of Gov’t Website Accessibility

This posting on beSpacific includes links to a report from the
Taubman Center for Public Policy, Brown University
that reviewed more than 1,600 local, state and federal websites. Among the findings are that more than 100 million Americans are not online and that less than half of federal sites satisfied the W3C standard of accessibility.

Wired News: The Great Library of Amazonia
By Gary Wolf. Oct. 23, 2003;
This story will appear in Wired magazine’s upcoming December issue, 11.12.

Over the past spring and summer, the company created an unrivaled digital archive of more than 120,000 books. The goal is to quickly add most of Amazon’s multimillion-title catalog. The entire collection, which went live Oct. 23, is searchable, and every page is viewable.

Other stories include:
An overview at USA Today; and a couple of stories about authors’ views of all this:
Authors may challenge Amazon full-text search by
Matthew Broersma at
ZDNet UK on October 27, 2003;
and Amazon Offer Worries Authors
By David K. Kirkpatrick at NY Times on October 27, 2003.
Publishers Weekly adds this story:
Many Questions Aimed at Amazon Search Program
by Jim Milliot and Steven Zeitchik — 10/27/2003 which says in part:

Amazon, evidently concerned about industry complaints, provided publishers with a cheat sheet listing potential questions from authors or the media, along with suggested answers, such as “What is publishers’ reaction?” (A: “Very positive”).

Here’s an idea whose time has come: Open Access! Check out the Budapest Open Access Initiative. You can even sign the initiative.