We have a clear mandate to engage with the new forms of publishing and particularly with the open access and subject repository movement, in the development of tools for virtual communities, and to ensure join up with data repositories and the creators of e-science. There is a quite clearly a role for the national library vis-à-vis questions of quality assurance in the Web environment, in navigation, and in facilitating seamless access across repositories. In terms of the British Library’s role of supporting innovation we have a particular responsibility to ensure support for those small and medium enterprises that do not have the same access to rich and deep collections of digital science as do researchers with well-funded university libraries....
For instinctively --researchers, scholars, libraries, Internet surfers alike-- we sense the potential digital gives us to make the world’s knowledge available to all --wherever in the world it is physically held. Our challenge is how to make this a reality. We need to be listening to our users to ensure we meet their needs. We need to be developing new skills and technologies to deliver added value to our scholarly communities—and sharing that good practice. We need to recognise the difficulties in international collaboration and work together to surmount them.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/01/2006 09:45:00 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.
