Advocate for Open Access Week: Google Doodle

Would you like to make a contribution to Open Access Week 2010 (October 18-24)? Here is something quick and simple you can do to raise awareness — send an email to Google advocating for a Google Doodle (you know those artistic “Google”s on their home page). If you are interested in making an OA Week Google Doodle a reality then follow these simple instructions, provided by the SPARC-OAForum:

To make a suggestion for the Doodle simply email Google at proposals@google.com.

Suggested email text:

The week of October 18th is international Open Access week, with events and activities taking place world-wide on university and research campuses. We believe that Open Access, researchers making their research articles available for free to all,  is an exciting and important shift in the availability of research for scholars and the public. We would like to support the idea of a Google Doodle on Open Access for this week.

See here for more information.

Regards,

Laura

University of Central Florida Theses and Dissertations to go full Open Access

Scholarly Communication at Texas A&M recently posted a blog regarding an Open Access ETD initiative at The University of Central Florida. An excerpt follows:

The University of Central Florida (UCF), a global public research university with comprehensive graduate programs at the master’s and doctoral levels, has announced that their students’ electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) will soon be made available “to a much wider audience”. Beginning in Fall 2010 UCF ETD’s will be contributed to freely accessible national and international databases including the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) and the Worldwide ETD Index. In addition, UCF ETDs will be made available to web crawlers to show up in search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

The post also addresses UCFs decision to move from mandatory to optional ProQuest/UMI submission, as well as to remove ProQuest/UMI processing from its standard ETD workflow. Further information about the University’s new ETD submission process are available from the Library website. Also, see the complete blog post for further details.

Digital Video Presentations from the University of North Texas’ Open Access Symposium

From Digital Koans blog:

The University of North Texas has released digital videos of the presentations at its 5/18/10 Open Access Symposium.

Here’s a representative sample of the presentations:

• Dwayne K. Buttler, “Copyright and Publication Agreements: Who Owns Your Work?“
• Stevan Harnad, “Designing the Optimal Open Access Mandate“
• David E. Shulenburger, “The Research University Imperative to Distribute Scholarly Research“
• Sanford G. Thatcher, “What University Presses Think about Open Access“
• Tyler O. Walters, “Advancing Open Access through Digital Services“

Baylor Libraries and Open Access Week Featured on TDL.org

The Texas Digital Library is currently featuring on its website  Baylor Libraries’ successful Open Access Week 2009 program and plans for Open Access Week 2010.  TDL also took this opportunity to announce resources it is making available to member institutions who might want to coordinate their own OA Week 2010, scheduled to take place October 18-24. According to the story, “the TDL will be providing materials intended for use by its members in observing Open Access Week; those materials will be located on the OA section of the TDL website at TDL.org/open-access.”

CNI Conversations – May recording available

The archived audio recording of the May 27 CNI Conversations session is now available (to subscribe to the audio feed add http://conversations.cni.org/feed to iTunes, or any podcatcher). This session includes: information about the symposium at the University of North Texas dealing with a campus policy on open access, an overview of Associate Director Joan Lippincott’s talk at the upcoming ETD 2010 symposium in which she will speak on how library and IT units can better support students at the thesis or dissertation stage, and more.

Open Access Week 2010 Planning

If you missed the June 2 Open Access Week 2010 planning webcast, you may want to catch up by reviewing some of the information from the online event. Slides from the meeting have been posted, key points have been bulleted, and the full recording will be available soon. The Open Access Week website is full of information and is being updated regularly with news, so you may want to keep close tabs using RSS feeds or visiting the site regularly.

Open Access 101, SPARC

Open Access 101 is an online video, from SPARC, that helps the viewer understand the concept of open access and its benefits in research. It takes only a few minutes to view and is a great resource for faculty, administrators and students alike. Check it out!

Get ready for Open Access Week with June 2 Webcast

From the TDL Blog:

It’s not too early to begin planning for Open Access Week 2010!

OA Week will take place October 18-24 this year. During this week, institutions of higher learning, libraries, and publishers all over the world will hold events to educate the academic and research community on the potential benefits of Open Access to scholarship.

On Wednesday, June 2, SPARC is holding a kick-off web conference that is free to attend. You can register for the webcast at http://www.arl.org/sparc/meetings/event_registration.shtml.

Visit the TDL blog to see the full post and read and excerpt from the SPARC announcement.

Choosing An Open License – the P2PU Experience

Those interested in learning more about creative commons and how to navigate an open license may be interested in the following article posted on the Creative Commons website. The resource being announced is focused more around project and open courseware than single authored works such as ETDs, but you may still find valuable information to be gleaned.

There are a lot of things to consider when it comes to choosing a CC license. The factors are different for everyone, whether you’re an individual creator or an institution. Usually, the decision is made and the process by which it was made fades into memory or only remains via word of mouth or blog posts. The Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) didn’t want this to happen so they decided to document their process when the community held its first workshop in Berlin. A Guide to CHOOSING AN OPEN LICENCE: The Peer 2 Peer University Experience is the result of their efforts.

See the original announcement for details.

UNT Open Access Symposium

The UNT Open Access Symposium has concluded and information is being made available via their website. Presentations were video recorded and will be posted online within a couple of weeks (as noted on their website); however, powerpoint material is available now. Please visit the website for more information.