There have been many reasons in recent years for librarians and the scientific community to look for forms of cooperation which could guarantee large, easy and long-lasting access to information, the possibility of exercising some form of control on the market and have a positive influence on the scientific communication system, through the implementation of the use of new technologies. Beside the existing Consortia, others have emerged, originally born as user groups and later organized in formal structures. The Library Committee of CRUI has caught the importance of cooperation as a strategy to face change; it has reinforced it, signing with the new Consortia an “Agreement for access to electronic resources in favour of Italian universities” (November 2005) and, through the creation of CARE (coordinating group for access to electronic resources) has started an experiment of negotiation on a national basis, which can be considered a testing of the effective cohesion among universities as well as the effectiveness of the complex mechanism required by this question. More recently CRUI Committee has approved the “Guidelines for the constitution of an Italian academic library system” that can be read as an attempt to supply a common view, at least in universities, on scientific information. Many questions arise from this context: the evolution of Consortia, the future of CARE, whose activity should be more oriented to proposal rather than management, the role of the library Committee of CRUI and its articulations, the possible relationships and interplay among the different entities.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/21/2008 02:33:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
