The DSpace Course

Congratulations to the JISC-funded Repositories Support Project for The DSpace Course initiative!  A colleague brought this to my attention today and I immediately took a look.

The DSpace course is a set of 20 modules that can be used to create a custom course.  Released with a creative commons “by-attribution share-alike” license, both pdfs and powerpoint/word files are released for easy remixing and resue.

The course modules cover topics such as configuration, customization and management.  It is an incredibly valuable training resource, especially for new hires that have the skills but are not familiar with DSpace.  It will save me weeks of training time in the future by quickly demystifying DSpace and making it more approachable.  To further enhance the learning experience, an accompanying live CD has also been released which allows DSpace to be run and used without having to install it on a server.

My thanks to Stuart Lewis and Chris Yates for all their hard work. My printer is humming in the background as I’m looking forward to ploughing through the course on my home commute.

National Research Council Canada adopts OA mandate

As introduced in Peter Suber’s Open Access Blog posting, National Research Council Canada (NRC) has adopted an OA mandate effective January 2009.

The NRC will be developing an OA repository called NPArC and will require as of next year that all NRC institutes deposit copies of all peer-reviewed publications and technical reports in the new repository.

It is most exciting to hear that NRC is following in the footsteps of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research with its open access policy that came into effect on January 1st, 2008. I hope that this will help keep the momentum going so that other Canadian granting agencies such as the Social Science and Humanities Research Council will follow suit.

Gratis and Libre Open Access

Peter Suber’s introduction and explanation of gratis and libre open access (OA) nommenclature in August’s Open Access Newsletter has given me a wonderful opportunity to discuss the nuances of open access with my colleagues.

To quickly clarify the terminology, Stephen Harnad and Peter Suber introduced in April 2008 the terminology “strong OA” and “weak OA”.  Strong OA was intended to describe the type of open access that removes price barriers and at least some permission barriers. The term weak OA could be used to describe open access that removed price barriers alone. After some thought, the term “weak” was deemed to not be neutral, which lead to the introduction of some new terms that I believe to be quite elegant.

Gratis OA replaces the weak OA terminology, while Libre OA replaces the strong OA technology.  This is very useful for me in daily conversations as I can introduce the terminology to a colleague without seeming like I am passing a judgment on the different models.  Furthermore, the act of introducing the terminology itself helps to open up discussion about the nuances of the different categories, helping to influence the colleague’s future choices regarding the selection of creative commons licenses or the evaluation of future copyright transfer agreements.

Student outreach and Open Access

SPARC just aired a webcast for librarians on student outreach. The Right to Research brochure was distributed as a preliminary reading. During the webcast, presenters discussed why it is important and appropriate to engage students, and discussed various strategies, ideas and resources available. The slides can be found here.

The SPARC Right to Research Website was highlighted as a portal to resources available. This website links to the Open Students website which is an excellent resource to promote student engagement.  It includes an area where new student journals can be introduced.

SPARC also informally announced the very first annual Open Access Awareness Day on October 14th, 2008! It will be held on October 14, 2008. SPARC plans to work with the Public Library of Science and Students for Free Culture and will host webcast events that feature prominent speakers. Videos will be released that showcase how Open Access is important from different viewpoints. More information to come soon when the announcement is officially made.