John Daly, Should UNESCO Promote the Development of a World Digital Library?UNESCO News, June 9, 2005. Excerpt: 'The most interesting idea discussed at this week's meeting of the U.S. National Committee for UNESCO was the creation of a World Digital Library that would be available worldwide via the Internet. The idea was proposed by James Billington, Librarian of Congress. Several of the subcommittees of the National Commission recommended that the Department of State further consider submit a proposal to UNESCO that it play a lead role in the creation of such a library....With the intervention and support of UNESCO, it might well be possible to expand these models [like the Library of Congress' OA American Memory project] worldwide. Every country could create a national memory website, populated with digital versions of key source materials from its own history. Each nation could provide a gateway for its students and citizens. The gateways would be two directional, providing access to the world's memory from within the country, and to the country’s memory to those in other nations. This is a truly "big idea". There would be important problems to be solved of technology, property rights, coordination, and indeed organization of the information so that it would be available to the users.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/09/2005 08:55:00 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.
