No. 29 - September/October 2007

1. eIFL-related News

Serbia features in latest eIFL country Spotlight

We are pleased to present Serbia and the amazing achievements of the national consortium KOBSON as a spotlight for this month. KOBSON is proud to support economic development through the provision of access to e-resources and the promotion of Serbian science both nationally and internationally. The story is already available on the homepage of our website. To read all the stories, please visit: www.eifl.net See the printer friendly format for the photos accompanying each story.

More about Serbia: feedback on GA preparations

Our upcoming 7th General Assembly will be held in Belgrade on November 8-10. eIFL is working closely with the KOBSON consortium in order to guarantee another successful and entertaining GA. You can already download some preliminary information about logistics from our website and soon the draft programme will also be available. We encourage participants to keep in regular communication with the eIFL office to avoid any unexpected last minute difficulties.

eIFL at IFLA

eIFL had a well visited stand in the exhibition area of the IFLA Conference in Durban when many eIFL coordinators, members of consortia in eIFL countries, friends and supporters stopped by. We were very pleased to speak to many librarians from non-eIFL countries who were interested in learning more. We thank you all for your visit to strengthen ties in our network and to explore potential partnerships in the future!

News about members’ library consortia

Azerbaijan We are glad to announce that Jamila Yusifova is the new country coordinator for Azerbaijan. She has replaced Lala Hajibayova, who has just enrolled on a PhD program in Information Science at Indiana University. Jamila is Head of Division at the Baku State University and has been involved in AZLIC consortium activities from the beginning. The Director of the American Center, Shahla Khudiyeva, has been nominated as new eIFL IP coordinator in the country.

We welcome Jamila and Shahla on board and wish Lala success in her new endeavour!

Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine Google Scholar representatives will be meeting local publishers from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine in the last week of September. The meetings will allow discussion on the next steps forward within the framework of the service agreement between eIFL and Google to enable the digitization of journal back files from eIFL member countries. The proposed digitization effort is similar to the Google Print Publisher Program where Google digitizes books provided by publishers, thereby avoiding the copyright controversies that have surrounded other Google digitization programs.

Kosova We would also like to welcome our new country coordinator for Kosova, Bukurije Haliti, Chief of Cataloguing Department at the National and University Library of Kosova. She sits on the board of the Consortium and has received training in library issues at Simmons College in Boston. She has replaced Besim Kokollari, currently on study leave as he has been awarded an Erasmus Mundus grant to join the International Master in Digital Library Learning (DILL) co-organised by Oslo University College (Norway), Tallinn University (Estonia) and Parma University (Italy). Welcome to Bukurije and congratulations to Besim!

Kyrgyzstan On October 1-5, the 8th International Conference "Issyk-Kul 2007: Libraries and Democratization of Society", with the support of the national Library and Information Consortium and the Ministry of Culture of the Kyrgyz Republic, will address issues related to equal opportunities and equal access to knowledge and information in Electronic Environment.

Laos We also want to congratulate Sithong Sikhao for being selected to join the International Master in Digital Library Learning (DILL), too. He has served as Head of the Academic and Technical Department at the Central Library of National University of Laos, as a second country coordinator for Laos and eIFL-IP representative. eIFL publicized this Master Program and we are very glad to see that some members of our network used the opportunity and were successful with their applications.

Lithuania On October 12, the seminar "Building up a cooperative digital information service - DigiAuskunft" will take place in Vilnius University Library. The speaker will be Hans-Christian Wirtz, Head of Information and Electronic Resources Department, Dortmund City and Regional Library, an active player in the establishment of a digital information service by the 180 academic and public libraries of North Rhine-Westphalia. He will explain "DigiAuskunft", compare it with other similar systems and will address the conditions for its implementation, the required technical equipment, training and marketing system.

Moldova The local consortium eIFL Direct Moldova will organise roundtables during the International Conference "The Competitiveness Growth and the Development of the Knowledge Economy" at AESM on September 28-29 to promote and expand the Consortium activities in Moldova and to optimize the Governmental and State support for it.

In addition, the consortium will hold training sessions for the improved use of electronic databases in the libraries of Cahul and Orhei on September 17-22. In addition, it will participate in two conferences: "Managing Dimensions in the Info-Documentary Institution's Activity: Concepts, Experiences, Approaches" at the Free International University of Moldova, on October 17, and "B.P. Hasdeu - 130 years of public lecture: Development. Progress. Partnership. Collaboration." at the municipal Library "B.P. Hasdeu" on October 19.

Nigeria With an eIFL.net grant, sponsored by OSIWA, the national library consortium NULIB will run two workshops to train librarians from the 52 university members in the management and usage of electronic resources. The workshops will be held in two local centres known for their outstanding ICT infrastructures, the University of Jos on October 14-17 and the Obafemi Awolowo University at Ife on October 17-20.

Syria During the first week of October, the University of Aleppo and Al-Baath University will host a library automation workshop, part of "SYReLIB", the EU Tempus project in which eIFL is also a partner. At the end of the project, the two universities will have automated their libraries and will serve as a models for other libraries in the country.

Slovenia and Tajikistan Mavluda Khaidarova, eIFL coordinator from Tajikistan, visited the Slovenian consortium COSEC in early August while she was on vacation, where she took part in a short practical session about consortium matters.

Ukraine At the end of September, Access to Knowledge activities in Ukraine will be presented at a meeting of Ukrainian universities participating in the "Autonomy" project. The speakers will be Rostyslav Khomyk from Lviv Catholic University, Olena Galeta from Lviv National University, and Iryna Kuchma, IRF, Kyiv.

At the end of September-beginning of October, the International Renaissance Foundation and the State Department for Intellectual Property are organizing a seminar on Exceptions and Limitations to Copyright in Kyiv. Urs Gasser will be the main speaker.

On October 2-5, the national consortium Informatio will hold "INFORMATIO 2007 International Conference on Electronic Information Resources Design, Use and Access", in Alushta, Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Ukraine.

On October 24-27, Open access projects and Creative Commons licenses will be presented at the Open Source Developers Network in Kyiv.

2. Upcoming eIFL Events in September-October 2007:

On September 24-26, Teresa Hackett, eIFL-IP, and Emanuella Giavarra, eIFL Legal Advisor, will give presentations at the workshop "Hot Issues in Copyright and Related Legal Matters in Digital Libraries", hosted by the National Science and Technology Library in Beijing, China. Other topics include copyright and digitisation, negotiating licences with publishers, open access and institutional repositories.

On October 1-5, Tigran Zargaryan will present the Armenian experience with library automation and will talk about the eIFL FOSS program during the 8th International Conference "Issyk-Kul 2007: Libraries and Democratization of Society" to be held in Issyk-Kul, Kyrgyzstan. You can find additional details at conference.bik.org.kg

On October 1-5, University of Namibia will be hosting regional training workshop on Greenstone software for building digital libraries.

On October 8-9, Susan Veldsman and Rima Kupryte will meet Leo Waaijers and team in SURF office in Utrecht regarding the eIFL federated repository and its way forward. Consideration is being given to bring a team of eIFL repository experts together at this meeting in order to discuss problems, issues and challenges for the next steps.

Susan Veldsman will be going to the Frankfurt Book Fair on October 11-12 to meet the relevant publishers for renewals and new offers.

On October 17, Teresa Hackett will attend the international seminar "Rights Dissolution or Rights Resolution? Administration of Access to Copyright Works in the Digital Arena", which is part of the 2007 General Meeting of the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations (IFRRO). The meeting will be held in Dublin, Ireland.

On October 26, eIFL will speak at a collective meeting of education program officers from the Ford Foundation in New York. eIFL representative to be confirmed.

3. Update on new Content

New agreements

After long negotiations, eIFL will this month be signing an agreement with Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) for a period of three years. The agreement will allow access to CSIRO journals presenting the latest research by leading Australian and international scientists and covering a broad range of scientific disciplines, including agriculture, plant and animal science, and environmental management. The agreements and the licenses will be soon available on the eIFL website in the MEMBERS ONLY section.

Today we reached agreement with Britannica Online and will be able to offer access to eIFL member consortia for the upcoming three years. Encyclopedia Britanica Online covers Arts and Literature, the Earth and Geography, Life, Science and Mathematics, Philosophy and Religion, History, Technology, Health and Medicine and Sports and Recreation. It is constantly refreshed and updated.

Renewals

1) IOP: this deal expires at the end of 2007 and a meeting is scheduled at the Frankfurt Book Fair to take this forward.

2) Integrum Techno: by the end of this month we will be signing a variation agreement for one year. The updated list of Russian databases and the new pricing will be available soon.

3) Oxford Journals: this offer will come to an end in 2007. eIFL will meet with them again in Frankfurt for an offer for 2008-2010.

New negotiations

We have previously reported on new negotiations underway via the eIFL coordinator list. The following vendors have confirmed their participation at the eIFL General Assembly: IBSS, Nature, Project Muse, APA, CSIRO, Britannica Online. There will be half an hour slot in the program allocated to new product presentations.

4. Update on eIFL-IP

WIPO commission library study

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has recently announced the commissioning of a study on libraries that will examine, amongst other issues, copyright exceptions for libraries in national legislation, case studies on a range of matters such as digital preservation and archival, and interlibrary digital supply. The study aims to help to identify policy issues related to, or affecting, copyright and related rights that Member States of WIPO may be called upon to address over the coming years.

The study will be undertaken by Professor Kenneth Crews, recently appointed Director of the Copyright Advisory Office at Colombia University, New York. Professor Crews' latest book, "Copyright Law for Librarians and Educators", is widely used as a guide to the legal issues. He also has experience of both legal traditions to be found in eIFL.net member countries (common law and civil law).

The study was commissioned in response to a written request to the WIPO Secretariat by the government of Chile in January 2007. It will provide an opportunity to raise awareness of the needs of libraries, especially in the digital age, in the important copyright committee of WIPO. This is the first time that such a study has ever been undertaken by WIPO and reflects the growing interest in libraries, access to knowledge and the public domain amongst its Member States. The driver is the increased presence of library representatives, including eIFL, our active participation at meetings and our many interventions and written statements.

eIFL has offered to provide Professor Crews with any information and assistance, in particular, in obtaining up-to-date copyright laws from eIFL countries. We hope that the study will provide authoritative guidance to librarians, policy makers and Member States of WIPO.

Please check Professor Kenneth Crews at www.columbia.edu and WIPO at www.wipo.int

Libraries, developing countries and reproduction rights organisations (RROs)

eIFL-IP co-organised a lively session of the IFLA Committee on Legal and other Matters during the recent World Library Congress in Durban, with an audience of more than 250. The topic was authors' and publishers' collecting societies, known as RROs. The session began with the RRO perspective by the President of the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations (IFRRO), followed by the experience of a librarian from Canada in dealing with RROs. After hearing case studies from libraries in Malawi and Australia, many hard-hitting questions were raised from the floor on a range of issues including the fairness of licences offered to libraries by RROs, the process of negotiations, the view of RROs on exceptions and limitations and the ethics of RRO anti-piracy campaigns.

Kondwani Wella from the Malawi Library and Information Consortium (MALICO) gave a well-received presentation, jointly authored by Diston Chiweza and Martin Thawani, which provided an insight into the experience of one library community in Africa dealing with its relatively new RRO. Wella appealed to IFRRO to assist that its members to engage in full and open consultation with libraries.

We are advising several eIFL members regarding licences for the copying of copyright material. Please contact us if you would like more information.

Read more about Collective Rights Management and RROs at www.eifl.net

eIFL and IFLA CLM

Congratulations to the newly appointed and re-appointed members of the IFLA Committee on Legal and other Matters (2007-2011). eIFL countries have fared well, with seven appointees out of a total of twenty-eight members and three representatives of eIFL-IP. We will pool our expertise and share our knowledge to ensure that library interests continue to grow!

a.. Emilija Banionyte, Director, Library of Vilnius Pedagogical University, Lithuania
b.. Assane Faye, Head Librarian Suffolk University, Dakar Campus, Senegal
c.. Teresa Hackett, Project Manager, eIFL-IP, Ireland
d.. Aleksandra Horvat, Head, Section of Librarianship, University of Zagreb, Croatia
e.. Albert Kakoma, Head, Client Access and Extension Services Division, National University of Lesotho Library
f.. Haiyan Lu, Director, Reference and Research Department, National Library of China
g.. Yakov Shrayberg, General Director, Russian National Public Library for Science and Technology
h.. Barbara Szczepanska, Library and Information Services Manager, Lovells International Law Firm, Poland

Knowledge Ecology Studies

KE Studies is a new online peer-reviewed journal that focuses on the creation, dissemination and access to knowledge goods. KE Studies offers new opportunities for authors and readers because unlike traditional journals, which focus primarily on lengthy scholarly articles in specific fields, it includes pieces of different formats -- articles, short research papers, commentaries written by experts in various fields about knowledge goods (broadly defined to include medical innovation policies, legal issues, educational issues amongst others). KE Studies also strives to be a publication with a fast turn around and is inclusive to non-published authors from all over the world.

The first issue has an interview with Professor James Boyle from Duke Law School, an article by Dr. Michael Geist from the University of Ottawa on the US "annual report card on intellectual property protection around the world" and opinion piece by Teresa Hackett, eIFL-IP on the WIPO development agenda. Check out the front page photo of Dick Kawooya, Uganda, at WIPO!

Please check www.kestudies.org

5. eIFL-OA/IR News and Useful Resources

eIFL Federated Repository

As previously reported, eIFL has harvested the metadata of 59 repositories in member countries. This pilot project allowed us to view the results, the problems, value and the possible continuation thereof. During harvesting it became apparent that a lot of work has to be done in terms of training, OAI-PH compliancy and standards.

A meeting is being considered to be held in SURF offices in Utrecht with several invited experts in order to resolve and discuss the results and the way forward for the repository. eIFL will also discuss possible co-operation between eIFL and Driver II during the meeting. We will report the results during the General Assembly

Account of Carnegie Research Library Consortium Workshops

eIFL was asked to put together the first workshop on IR in a planned series of workshops for Carnegie Research Library Consortium. Judging by the feedback from participants, they have gone back with a better understanding of the importance of IRs, DSpace software and its installation, copyright and metadata issues, sustainability, advocacy and the promotion of IRs. The issues and themes dealt with during the workshop have been considered by the participants as being appropriate.

As for the University of the Witwatersrand's participants, it was quite enlightening to cover all the issues from a theoretical perspective as it gave them insight into what is causing their current IR to not be very successful and what new strategies they should adopt to populate and sustain them.

Participants became particularly aware of their personal roles in advocacy, championing the project within their own institutions, getting support from their library and institutional management, planning, new roles for the library and making a success of the IRs.

It is recommended that when repeating the workshop one should reconsider the topics, their sequence, the proper mix of conceptual presentations and the hands-on sessions for the expected audience.

Anti-OA lobbying effort: PRISM

We want to inform you of a recent anti-open access lobbying effort, PRISM (the Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine), a coalition which was launched with development support from the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and specifically targets efforts to expand public access to federally funded research results.

The messaging on the PRISM website, which is aimed at key policy makers, directly corresponds to the PR campaign reportedly undertaken by the AAP earlier this year. As Nature reported in January, AAP publishers met with PR "pit bull" Eric Dezenhall to develop a campaign against the "free-information movement". By tracking closely the recommended PR strategy, the PRISM website highlights messages that include:

- Public access/open access will destroy the peer review system,
- Public access equals government censorship,
- The government is trying to expropriate publishers' intellectual property.

The reaction to the launch of PRISM by the academic research community has been immediate and quite strong. Of particular note are reactions by these important constituencies:

1) Some publishers have called for the AAP to post a disclaimer on the PRISM website, indicating that PRISM does *not* represent their views on the issues of open access and public access.

2) Some journal editors have also expressed displeasure with the initiative. For example, Tom Wilson, Editor (and Founder) of the International Journal of Information Management, resigned from that editorial board in protest of Elsevier's involvement with PRISM.

3) Researchers are also questioning how their choices may result in unwanted association with PRISM. Some are calling for colleagues to register discontent over publishers' involvement with PRISM by reconsidering submitting work, reviewing or editing for publishers who support the coalition.

6. eIFL-FOSS Programme

Feedback on the Greenstone Southern Africa Pilot Project

This project aims to establish a self-sustaining professional network for cooperation in the development and promotion of digital libraries in Southern Africa, by using the open source Greenstone package as the principal technical support.

The project website has been initiated by the University of Namibia (UNAM) as the sub-regional project centre ( www.sagreenstone.unam.na). Renate Morgenstern, the sub-regional coordinator at UNAM, organised and taught a basic Greenstone training workshop for participants from Namibian information centres in Windhoek on August 6-7. Stephen Visagie was the resource person.

Stefan Bodie of DL Consulting (Hamilton, New Zealand) undertook a 10-day mission to the three national project centres in Lesotho, Malawi and Zimbabwe to familiarise them with Greenstone and to advise on the initiation of digital library applications. John Rose, the eIFL project coordinator, presented the project at the IFLA Pre-conference in Dakar on August 16-17 where participants from West Africa and the Caribbean expressed interest in possible similar projects in their regions. Finally, a discussion of project leaders and advisors was organised by Rima Kupryte and Susan Veldsman at the IFLA International Conference in Durban on August 19.

The first half of the one-year project will be completed by an advanced Greenstone training workshop to be held at UNAM on October 1-5 for 5 specialists from the national project centres and 10 Namibian specialists. It will be taught by Ian Witten (Greenstone team leader, University of Waikato), Repke de Vries of the Netherlands National Library and Renate Morgenstern.

The second half of the project, a sub-regional user support service and a survey of potential and actual Greenstone users will be organised by UNAM, the national centres will be helped to evolve as digital library centres of excellence, inter alia by developing pilot digital library applications and organising training workshops for specialists from their countries and neighbouring countries, and the Greenstone users in Southern Africa will consider on the basis of the project achievements how to continue and reinforce their cooperation as a sub-regional network. A project report will be made available by eIFL by mid 2008.

The eIFL Team