Librarians hold the keys to a wealth of resources and techniques that can help faculty with teaching and research, and they’re sharing their knowledge in several workshops in a series titled “Beyond the Stacks.” Faculty are invited to learn more about Refworks (8/26) and Endnote (9/2), data and GIS resources at the Library (9/3), finding images and securing copyright (9/10) and making use of digitized and physical primary sources (9/14). All sessions are held in Bostock Library 023, and registration is requested.

Please join us for world-wide Open Access Day on Tuesday,  October 14.

Several events are planned.  Throughout the day there will be tables set up in the Perkins Library and the Medical Center Library to distribute information about how open access can benefit scholarly research, especially as new technologies are developed and adopted in higher education.

The big local event will be focused on OA @ Duke; from 2 pm until 3:30 we will gather in Perkins Library 217 to hear about what is being done at Duke and what opportunities are available for scholars.  Our keynote address will be by Prof. Jamie Boyle of Duke law school, and there will also be short presentations by Law Librarian Dick Danner, Dr. Ricardo Pietrobon of the Medical School faculty and Duke student Josh Sommer, a passionate and articulate spokesman for patients’ rights.

There is also an international webcast featuring Noble Prize Laureate Sir Richard Roberts and Prof. Philip Bourne, the founding editor of “PLoS Computational Biology” that will be recieved in two locations at Duke — the Medical Center Library and classroom 3 in the new LINK facility in Perkins Library.  This will be a wonderful opportunity to learn about the benefits and challanges of open access, especially in the area of health and medical information and scholarship.  More information about the webcast, which will take place at 7 pm on Tuesday, and the celebration of Open Access Day in general, is available at this website.

These events are specifically directed at university faculty members and academic authors.  We hope many people will turn out to listen and discuss the opportunities offered by the more open approach to scholarship that is made possible by the digital environment.

A Canadian archives of public domain sheet music, put together by volunteers, has been taken down by the owner of the site.  A German music company sent a “cease and desist” letter to the site’s owner, asking that protections be put in place to block access to some pieces that are still under copyright in some countries.  (Works in  Europe are protected for seventy years after the death of the composer and for fifty years in Canada.)  The site owner was unable to put such a system in place and has shut it down, offering up the domain name and materials to an organization that might be able to keep it running.

The incident is a good example that demonstrates how varying copyright laws need to be taken into account when posting public domain material online for projects.

article at The Register

The Creative Commons add-in for MS Office allows you to embed a CC license of your choosing in your Word document, Excel Spreadsheet or your Powerpoint show. A big advantage of doing this is to explicitly specify how you would like others to use your work. For example, a “Share Alike” license specifies that others may use your work as long as it for non-commercial purposes, you are given credit and anything they make with it has to carry the same license. You can get the add-in or read more about Creative Commons.

Wendy Seltzer, a scholar who has been active in debates on copyright issues, will give two talks tomorrow. The University Computer Policy and Law program at Cornell University will stream both the 2:55 pm and 7:30 pm talks live. Seltzer is a visiting assistant professor at Northeastern University School of Law, teaching Intellectual Property, Internet Law, and Antitrust, and a fellow with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

Protecting the University from Copyright Bullies – 2:55 pm, 9/27/07
How can the university foster intellectual exploration and creativity, protect students’ privacy, and educate responsible citizens of the networked world? Is it possible to support balanced copyright law and enforcement, without responding to every entertainment company’s demands for internet filtering and “pre-litigation notices”?

Righting the Copyright Balance – 7:30 pm, 9/27/07
Can the music go on by offering fans better ways to get music, while guaranteeing payment for its creators? Where have copyright law and its enforcers gone wrong, and what can students, music fans, and co-creators do to put the law back on track?

SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, invites faculty to help students showcase their views on the value of openly sharing information. Make a two-minute video, post it on the Internet with a Creative Commons license and enter the contest to win $1,000. The Internet gives us ways to discover, collaborate and create in unprecedented ways, the SPARC invitation states, and the free exchange of information is a tool for addressing world problems. Applications for the contest are due Dec. 2, 2007.

SPARC is an alliance supported and funded by hundreds of academic libraries and research institutions.