Open Access Week at the University of Michigan is “a week-long, campus-wide exploration of Open Access.” And a discussion sponsored by the Michigan Library on this topic couldn’t come at a better time; libraries are facing tough economic situations and the current political discourse around copyright and open access needs to be addressed. Featured Commoner…

If I hadn’t interned for Clarity Films one summer, I would never have learned most of what I know now about the apartheid, Nelson Mandela, and Desmond Tutu. I spent hours transcribing interviews and condensing documentary footage into some type of digital package that I don’t recall the name of (nor do I remember the…

Happy Inauguration Day! Following on the heels of Fred’s post, I’d like to point out a Seminar on open knowledge that will take place on February 4th and 5th at the National University of Bogota. Access 2.0: A discussion on intellectual property from the sciences, arts, library sciences, and education is being hosted and coordinated…

CC Australia writes about an important report that advises Australian governments to follow open publishing standards and recommends using a Creative Commons license for government material released for public information. Those interested in open access to public sector information will be excited to see the results of a recently released Australian Federal Government Review of the…

In April, ccLearn crossed telephone lines with Italy and Ukraine for the first time. Executive Director Ahrash Bissell spoke with eIFL.net, Electronic Information for Libraries, an international nonprofit organization whose interests, among many, lie in open access publishing and fair and balanced intellectual property laws for libraries. Below is a follow-up interview over email with…

October 13 was the 4th anniversary of the first issue of PLoS Biology, the first journal from the groudbreaking Public Library of Science. We’re incredibly honored that PLoS was a very early adopter of Creative Commons — we’ll only turn five in two months. See then CC Executive Director Glenn Otis Brown’s editorial in PLoS…

CC Salon San Francisco is going bi-monthly. The next Salon will be in February featuring speakers from Flickr and BitTorrent. There’s a close substitute in January. Check out NetSquared’s Net Tuesday featuring the Public Library of Science, Tuesday, January 9 from 6-8PM at Citizen Space, 425 Second St., #300 in San Francisco: This month our…

Not quite, but gorillas have been observed using tools (a category that includes licenses and sticks) in the wild, as described in the widely publicized PLoS Biology paper First Observation of Tool Use in Wild Gorillas. Congratulations to the Public Library of Science (and the gorillas). This would be a good time to note that…

The Public Library of Science is a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the world’s scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource. PLoS emerged in October 2000 through the effort of three dynamic and highly respected scientists: Nobel Laureate and former head of the National Institutes of Health Harold Varmus, molecular biologist Pat Brown…

Back cover of the inaugural issue of PLoS Medicine. Yesterday the Public Library of Science released the first issue of their second journal, PLoS Medicine. All articles are available under the Creative Commons Attribution License. Open Access News covers reactions to the new journal with several posts over the last few days. Also see our…