The Google Books Case; support for the OPEN act from LCA; launch for Project MUSE platform, Purdue signs with Elsevier to avoid possible cut off; and a new report by CIBER Research for Europeana.
Class Action Filed in Google Books Case
“The long- delayed lawsuit over the Google Book project took a significant step toward court action and potentially farther away from a settlement with the filing of a motion for Class Certification by The Authors Guild and several individual authors. With the filing, the authors are asking the court to move the case forward as a class action lawsuit, with the guild and authors representing a class of thousands or more individual authors. This could increase the possibility of significant damages against Google if they are found to have infringed on the authors’ copyrights. ”
LCA Writes in Support of OPEN Act Draft [PDF]
“Last week the Library Copyright Alliance (LCA)—ALA, ARL, ACRL—sent a letter to Senator Wyden (D-OR) and Representatives Issa (R-CA) and Chaffetz (R-UT), thanking them for drafting the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) Act, which is an alternative to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The draft of the OPEN Act was released on a public website along with a tool that allows anyone to make comments and propose edits to the text. (You can comment and collaborate to build a better bill on keepthewebopen.com by just signing up) LCA applauds the transparency of the release as well as the shift away from blocking and censorship as modes of copyright enforcement.”
New Project MUSE Platform Goes Live January 1, 2012
“Project MUSE’s redesigned platform, incorporating both books and journals in an integrated interface, goes live on January 1, 2012. A preview of the new platform is available on our beta site at http://beta.muse.jhu.edu. Over 300 free sample books remain accessible on the beta site through the end of 2011.” Two video tutorials; Search Books and Journals on Project MUSE and Browse Books and Journals on Project MUSE are now available and “additional instructional materials will be provided shortly after the platform launch.”
Purdue University Signs New One-Year, $2.9 Million Contract With Elsevier
INFOdocket reports that according to an article in The Exponent (Purdue University) “students and faculty could have lost access to the majority of scholastic research articles available online through Purdue libraries today. Purdue signed another one-year contract with a publishing company (Elsevier) that allows access to journal articles necessary for research for $2.9 million, after being threatened to be cut off in January if the contract was not singed by the end of the month.”
Culture on the Go: CIBER report says mobile browsing will transform the web
Culture on the Go, a new report by CIBER Research for Europeana “shows how access to information is changing as people search for, read and use information on the move. A growing proportion of web browsing happens on smartphones like the new Mac iPhone 4S and tablets like the iPad, and no longer on PCs and laptops in homes and offices.” The report predicts that “this shift will have a radical impact on the design and functionality of websites, and will inevitably reflect back to the desktop screen itself.”
Share
Advertisement
Advertisement
