Archive for the “Information Commons” Category
Information Commons, Copyright, Censorship and/or withdrawal of public information, Libraries: Digital and other

I get to welcome Dr. Weinberger to SILS and to UNC before his Henderson Lecture here on Thursday December 7 at 2 pm. I believe that Fred will to the introduction. I’m standing in for our Dean who has a conflict.
The best part is that I get to invite everyone to a reception at the end of the talk. You have to come to the talk to learn the location of the reception.
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J-school colleague Jock Lauterer alerts us to the new Carrboro online/offline news — the Carrboro Commons. The Commons is a lab production, completely with cracking electronics and bubbling liquids I suppose, of Jock’s Community Journalism classes.
He writes: “A 12-page tab print version will be out later this week. Then next month, the Web-based Carrboro Commons will be released every other week throughout the semester. Once we have the user registration system set up, folks will be able to sign in and comment about individual stories.”
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Kathy Sierra gives good insights on building User Communities over on “Creating Passionate Users.” Definitely New-you-can-use.
One, of the many, take-aways: Encourage users with intermediate skills to be answerers of inquiries; not just expertly skilled users. How to do this? Kathy outlines strategies in her article and her commenters expand on those from Kathy. Much on motorcycle support vs tech support ;->
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John Price Wilkin of the University of Michigan Libraries talks about digitizing libraries from the Michigan view point including the beginnings of JSTOR (1994 and beyond), the Making of American grant (with Cornell) as the start of the Digital Library Federation, the Michigan Digitization Project with Google, and the Distributed Proofreaders Project with Project Gutenberg with Jon Udell of InfoWorld in Jon’s podcast.
[Disclosers: ibiblio hosts Project Gutenberg. John P. Wilkin is a member of the Louis Round Wilson Knowledge Trust.]
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The semester is winding down, but the speaking and speakers keep coming on. Next week, we have these events to look forward to:
Wednesday December 5 at 6 pm – the recently mentioned “Wizard People, Dear Reader.”

Thursday December 7 at 2 pm
I get to welcome Dr. Weinberger to SILS and to UNC before his Henderson Lecture here on Thursday December 7 at 2 pm. Fred will to the introduction. I’m standing in for our Dean who has a conflict.
The best part is that I get to invite everyone to a reception at the end of the talk. Be there to hear that.
Friday December 8 at 2:30 pm “ibiblio.org at NCREN” North Carolina Research and Education Network Community Day.
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I exercised a bit of that wonderful privilege last night at Computer Science 380 talking about copyright. They taped and have it online.
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Event: Wizard People, Dear Reader
“It’s a Free Culture study break!”
What: Listening Party with Video
Host: Free Culture
When: Tuesday, December 5 at 6:00pm
Where: Murphey 104, UNC-CH
More details and RSVP.
[Disclosure : I am faculty advisor to Free Culture - UNC]
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All too human, Google Answers has now expired. The Answering service, which approximated a paid reference librarian service, never answered the question “Why should I get my answers here and pay when I can ask Yahoo! Answers for free?”
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I’m guest speaking at Jean Walsh’s and Diane Pozefsky’s combined CS 380 class this evening at 5 in 111 Carroll. I’ve put a few links etc on my wiki, we’ll be talking about innovation and intellectual property. They will have read, I hope, Chapters 1 and 8 of Eric von Hippel’s Democratizing Innovation. I think I need to do a little intro to the four areas of intellectual property in the US – copyright and patent (in the Constitution), trade secret and trademark (in the Code) then move on to how policy can encourage or deter democratization of innovation.
I asked the class to post questions etc in the comments here.
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Even out on Ocracoke you can’t get away from IP talk. One morning at the Ocracoke Coffee Company I struck up a conversation with a pleasant guy who was in the process of moving down to the island. Turns out that he’s Peter Vankevich of the Library of Congress’ Copyright Office. We had a great talk as two IP/Copyright geeks.
Peter told me to be sure to take a look at the announcement from LC about DCMA exemptions. I was finally getting around to that (having been mostly net-free on Ocracoke) when I found the EFF’s analysis of the exemptions (here).
Peter had convinced me that he was really a nature photographer specializing in birds. He was being far too modest. He’s a very very serious birder and photographer. Now I know how he could pick out a myrtle warbler so quickly and easily.
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Possibly the only time that I’ll be to the left of Eben Moglen is preserved on this video made at the “Owning the future: Ideas and their role in the digital age” conference in India. I’m on your right tho ;->
Can lawyers say yes? Eben says he can since he represents hackers. Much more here in this nicely produced, CC licensed video from Red Hat.
The road to Delhi with Eben Moglen and Paul Jones
Produced by Kristin Hondros
Ever wished you could be a fly on the wall when tech-savvy folks gather? We got the chance at this summer’s Knowledge Symposium in Delhi, India.
The official title of the conference was “Owning the future: Ideas and their role in the digital age.” In between the discussions and sessions, we sat in on a conversation between Eben Moglen and Paul Jones. Two of the open source movement’s big thinkers–the lawyer (and founder of the Software Freedom Law Center) and the curator of ibiblio.org (one of the Internet’s largest public repositories).
Moglen and Jones have an open and fast-paced discussion that touches on international labor dynamics, technology expansion, intellectual property, economics, capitalism, and freedom. (Just imagine what they could do in more than 8 minutes…)
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I will be speaking to Computer Science 380 classes on “Digital Rights and Innovation” soon. Andrew Chin spoke on November 14 about his part in the Microsoft anti-trust suit (the browser one) and I’m up on November 28 scheduled for 5:00 pm in Sitterson 014. now in Carroll’s large auditorium (after the flood in Sitterson).
I’ve asked the students to read Chapters 1 and 8 of Eric von Hippel’s Democratizing Innovation. Chapter 1 is an Introduction and a Summary of the book by chapters that will give a great overview. Chapter 8 “Adapting Policy to User Innovation” is the meat of our discussion from a policy and law point of view.
Both chapters and in fact the whole book can be bought or downloaded for free from Eric von Hippel’s site.
I’m also asking folks in the class that have questions and/or issues that they’d like discussed to post them here as comments.
I welcome your suggestions and comments as well.
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What: We the (Traditional) Media: As citizen media explodes, journalism organizations are finally beginning to understand — and use — the tools and techniques. We’ll look at how this is happening, how far it may go and why it matters.
Who: Dan Gillmor, Director of the Center for Citizen Media and author of We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People
When: Monday November 13 beginning at 4 pm
Where: Pleasants Family Room, Wilson Library, UNC-CH
Sponsor: ibiblio.org
Dan Lucas made a poster for Dan Gillmor here.
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