Elspeth Hyams, Moving beyond e-journals, Library and Information Update, October 2006. An interview with Paul Ayris, Director of Library Services at University College London. (Thanks to Martin Moyle.) Excerpt:
The open access movement represents ‘a tremendous revolution’, according to Dr Paul Ayris, Director of Library Services, UCL (University College London), and it is as important as the internet. ‘If the internet is about connectivity and the network and technical side, open access is about the content you access and use once you have the connectivity – the two go hand in hand.’For that reason, it’s not just a research concern, it’s a social issue, he says. It’s about ‘the cost of citizenship, including the cost of the information you need to get hold of to exercise your rights as a citizen’. And it is about freedom of information. For that reason, he is ‘puzzled’ why more isn’t made of it, as the key that unlocks access for everyone....
According to recent research by OCLC, only two per cent of students in colleges find material that the library purchases using the library’s catalogue. And that represents a real challenge: ‘If you don’t mobilise this revolution – which is here, happening now – the information that is available in libraries and information centres is going to be invisible to the general population. It’s not something you can stop. So how to harness it and make it available is the question.’ ...
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/03/2006 08:51:00 AM.
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.
