No. 41 - September-October 2009

Attached file: eifl_newsletter_41_september-october_2009.pdf

6. Update on eIFL FOSS

1. eIFL-related News

Update on the eIFL.net 2009 General Assembly

Preparations for this year’s eIFL General Assembly to be hosted by the Library of Alexandria on November 19-21 are making good progress. This is a by-invitation only conference that gathers together eIFL Board members and team, local consortia representatives from the eIFL network, publishers with whom eIFL.net has signed license agreements and invited speakers with word-wide recognition for their contributions to the advancement of access to knowledge in a digital environment.

Participants are asked to visit the 2009 General Assembly section on the eIFL site regularly to keep informed of the latest news. A preliminary program is already available on the web.

eIFL.net 2008 Annual Report available

Last year was a very busy one for eIFL.net - as can be clearly seen in the new-style Annual Report: 2008. Throughout the year, we were involved with many events, workshops, conferences and other important activities.

With an introduction from eIFL director, Rima Kupryte, the 20-page Annual Report includes assessments of the key areas: Open Access, Free & Open Source Software (FOSS), Copyright (intellectual property), Licensing of e-Resources, and Growth of the Network. Each program sets out its highlights from 2008 and focus for 2009/10.

The report also features Mali’s Abdrahamane Anne, Armenia’s Hasmik Galstyan and Kenya’s Jacinta Were, describing how they feel eIFL.net has helped to make a difference in their countries.

Download your copy of the Annual Report: 2008 – www.eifl.net/about/

Account of eIFL.net 20th Advisory Board meeting

eIFL Advisory Board members and staff met in Milano on August 22 for an intensive one day meeting to discuss latest developments and accomplishments of eIFL work programs, finalise the agenda for the General Assembly 2009 and prepare the ground for new and exciting projects. Minutes of the meeting will be available on the MEMBERS ONLY section of our web site shortly.

Lithuania: Finger on the Pulse with eIFL - our New Spotlight Story

Over the last years, Lithuanian Research Library Consortium (LMBA) has been successful in becoming a weighty advocate for library interests in the country and a respected stakeholder with a good relationship of trust and cooperation with the Lithuanian Ministry of Education and Science and the Ministry of Culture. Backed by a well established infrastructure, paid professional staff and a growing agenda of activities, the consortium is offering many e-resources, provides a range of services to member libraries and is actively involved in large and ground breaking national initiatives to advance the knowledge economy and fair access to scientific research in a digital world.

So, after 10 years of maturity and achievements, why does LMBA choose to remain in eIFL? Find out the reasons why the consortium values eIFL membership and what unique services and benefits it gets by being part of the network at www.eifl.net/news/spotlight/

eIFL.net at IFLA conference in Milan

All the members of the eIFL.net team were very busy giving presentations, joining discussions and networking in numerous meetings during the IFLA conference.

eIFL was invited to join the panel of IFLA President-Elect Ellen R. Tise’s brain storming session on her presidential theme ‘Libraries driving access to knowledge’ – a theme that mirrors eIFL.net’s mission. Teresa Hackett attended on behalf of eIFL and her contribution is available at www.eifl.net/negotiations/meet-eifl/

Iryna Kuchma, eIFL Open Access Program Manager gave a paper “Open Access policies in developing and transition countries” www.ifla.org (in English) Translations: [Fran?ais] www.ifla.org and her updated presentation is here: www.slideshare.net/irynak/

Needless to say, one of the highlights of the IFLA conference was a sharing a pizza with those country and program coordinators who were able to come to Milan.

News about members’ library consortia

Kyrgyzstan - The Library and Information Consortium of the Kyrgyz Republic (KLIC) with the support of the Ministry of Culture and International and Civic Organizations will hold the 10th International Conference Issyk-Kul 2009: Libraries and Democratization of Society. Over the years the conference has become the unique annual forum of library and information specialists in Central Asia. Please read about the themes in this year’s conference www.eifl.net/country/kyrgyzstan/.

Ukraine - On October 7-9, the Association Informatio-Consortium will hold its 6th International Conference Informatio-2009 on Electronic Information Resources Design, Use and Access in Lviv, Ukraine. The conference this year will address issues related to the design, use and circulation of e-journals and e-books, electronic document delivery systems, international and local initiatives to enable access to e-resources as well as copyright and open access issues. More information is available at www.informatio.org.ua.

2. eIFL Events in September-October 2009

§ On September 13-16, Teresa Hackett joined Professor William Fisher, Director Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School and eIFL-IP librarians from the region at the East African School of Library and Information Science (EASLIS), Makerere University to present the forthcoming course “Copyright for Librarians” and to discuss its integration into library school curricula.

§ On September 18-20, 2009, the Mongolian Libraries Consortium will run a 3-day workshop in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, on the installation and use of Koha, a FOSS integrated library system (ILS).

§ On September 21-22, ZALICO library consortium will organise a workshop to discuss best strategies to make national library consortia strong and sustainable. Helena Asamoah Hassan, eIFL country coordinator for Ghana, will share views and experiences with Zambian colleagues.

§ On October 8-9, Irina Razumova, eIFL Advisory Board member and deputy director of NEICON consortium will present a paper at the conference in Belarus about the experience of local library consortium in Russia. More information about the conference is available at http://old.nlb.by/bibliology/.

§ On October 7-9 Iryna Kuchma will attend OA seminar at Information 2009, Lviv, Ukraine

§ On October 12-16, Iryna Kuchma, eIFL Open Access program manager, will give presentations about open access repositories at Scientific Information in the Digital Age: Access and Dissemination, ICTP Workshop, Trieste, Italy. Further details can be found at http://sdu.ictp.it/openaccess09/

§ On October 19-23, libraries from eIFL member countries will participate in the first international Open Access Week. The now-annual event, expanded from one day to a full week, presents an opportunity to broaden awareness and understanding of Open Access to research, including access policies from all types of research funders, within the international higher education community and the general public. Read on at the official site: www.openaccessweek.org

§ On October 20, eIFL.net will participate in the DRIVER Confederation Summit that will review highlights in DRIVER II and reflect on the uptake of DRIVER in national and international repository communities. The meeting will be held at Ghent University and will serve also to launch the new international organisation, COAR: the Confederation of Open Access Repositories, a significant association of content providers, international repository federations and affiliated organisations.

§ On October 22-23, University of Latvia, State agency "Culture information systems" and eIFL.net will organize the workshop Open Access: Maximising Research Quality and Impact at the University of Latvia, Riga, Latvia. The Higher Education Support Program (HESP) of the Open Society Institute is supporting eIFL.net in organising seminars about institutional repositories for the HESP supported institutions in Bulgaria, Latvia, Poland and Russia.

§ On October 29-30, Malawi Library and Information Consortium (MALICO), Malawi Research and Education Network (MAREN), Southern African Regional Universities Association (SARUA) and eIFL.net will organise the workshop Open Access: Maximising Research Quality and Impact in the University of Malawi. The workshop will be the first in the series of Wellcome Trust supported events to advocate for open access in developing countries.

3. eIFL Negotiations

New marketing initiatives to promote awareness and uptake of e-resources

Susanna Lob, an independent consultant with expertise in the marketing of e-resources, will join eIFL team on a part-time basis from September. She will plan a range of new initiatives designed to promote awareness of eIFL activities and to encourage uptake of e-resources which are available at high discounts through the eIFL Negotiations program.

2008 statistics now available to country coordinators

Useful documents including statistical information from 2008 are now available to country coordinators in the Members Only section of our website at www.eifl.net/members/statistics/

These include:

  • Savings achieved through the eIFL Negotiations program
  • Usage statistics per country and publisher
  • The cost per download of full text articles from selected publishers
  • The level of participation in the eIFL Negotiations program by country

Access to the Members Only section is by username and password and eIFL country coordinators have it.

Renewals of licences

We are in touch with Cambridge University Press Journals, Oxford Online Products and Britannica Online about the renewals of the agreements that expire later this year and with BioOne, with whom our agreement will come to an end in January 2010. We will keep you informed about developments.

4. Update on eIFL-IP

eIFL-IP Draft Law on Copyright available online

The eIFL-IP Draft Law on Copyright Including Model Exceptions and Limitations for Libraries and Consumers is a practical guide to assist librarians, as well as their legal advisors and policy makers, when national laws are being updated. It contains provisions that support access to knowledge and the public interest of libraries and consumers.

The eIFL-IP Draft Law reflects contributions from international library and archive copyright experts, and amends and improves the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Draft Law On Copyright And Related Rights (version 2005), previously available online. It contains:

  • a coherent set of definitions and exceptions and limitations to copyright for libraries and consumers;
  • basic, legal requirements for libraries serving the public interest, especially in developing and transition countries;
  • covers free uses only i.e. free of charge and without the need to ask for permission from the rightsholder;
  • applies fully to the digital environment. Contains important provisions for private copying purposes, educational activities in the electronic learning environment e.g. electronic course packs and virtual learning environments, inter-library document supply, orphan works and translations;
  • each exception and limitation is accompanied by a short explanatory note.

Available at www.eifl.net/ip_docs/draft-law/.
Read a review: http://library.duke.edu/blogs/.

Advocacy for Fair Copyright Laws in Moldova

eIFL-IP is a partner in a one year project “Advocacy for Fair Copyright Laws: the role of libraries” with eIFL Direct Moldova, the Library Association of Moldova and Freedom of Expression and Access to Information Promotion Center “Access-info”. Funded by the Soros Foundation Moldova, the goals are to organise an advocacy campaign to positively influence the copyright law so that it reflects the public interest and the real needs of Moldovan libraries and the people who use libraries, to empower the library community to advocate for a fair and balanced copyright law and to enable the participation of the Moldovan library community in international library discussions on copyright issues.

The activities include developing an information pack on library copyright issues and translating key resources into Moldovan, creating a poster and leaflet campaign on copyright and access to knowledge for libraries, evaluating the draft copyright law and making recommendations for its improvement. A seminar with key policy-makers and politicians responsible for copyright issues is planned for early November, following general elections in July 2009.

Link to Copyright: Enabling Access or Creating Roadblocks for Libraries? Chisinau, Moldova, November 2008 – www.eifl.net/eifl-ip/

“Advocacy for Fair Copyright Laws: the role of libraries” website (in Moldovan): www.abrm.md

First eIFL-IP Advocacy Survey

In May 2009, we undertook the first online eIFL-IP advocacy survey to measure impact, to identify where more resources might be needed and to assist with fundraising. We received 35 out of a possible 40 responses. The survey showed that eIFL-IP librarians have given presentations at over 180 events to over 6,800 people! Over 70% of respondents reported that they had made contact with their national copyright office concerning IP issues and the survey collected evidence that libraries are newly recognized as stakeholders in many countries including Armenia, Ghana, Malawi and Zimbabwe. This is very encouraging and we thank everyone who responded. We will share the full analysis which we will use to plan future activities.

5. Update on eIFL-OA

Plans for Open Access Week - October 19-23, 2009

This year, the Open Access Week organizers will highlight a growing suite of educational resources that you can use to design your own programs on Open Access, for your respective audiences. Scholars, students, libraries, publishers, individuals, and campuses everywhere are invited to adapt these resources as needed and to mark Open Access Week by hosting an event, distributing literature, blogging, or wearing an Open Access t-shirt.

Learn more about downloadable resources (videos and webcasts, handouts, posters, flyers, buttons, icons, banners, etc), sample program tracks, event in a box www.openaccessweek.org). The OASIS project (www.openoasis.org) features the resources for researchers, administrators, librarians, students, and the public - as well as different OA awareness levels - that will be the centerpiece of the 2009.

We invite you to:

  • list your organisation if you plan any events celebrating Open Access Week http://oad.simmons.edu. Please choose your region, e.g. Africa: Open Access Week 2009, Asia: Open Access Week 2009, Europe: Open Access Week 2009 and add your country if it's not listed. Or send us your information and we will fill in the wiki page for you.
  • give us feedback on whether our available and planned resources look useful to you and if not, how might we improve it?
  • let us know what resources we might have missed
  • what other samples would be useful to you for us to develop.

Thank you for your feedback!

Call for Entries for the DuraSpace SPARC Open Access Week Contest: Highlighting Repository Stories Worth Sharing

Would you like sharing your passion and knowledge of collecting, curating managing and sharing digital repository resources? Please consider entering the DuraSpace SPARC Open Access Week Contest and tell your story. The aim of the DuraSpace SPARC Open Access Week Contest is to celebrate your organization’s commitment to online development and dissemination of diverse–and often hidden–digital assets by describing unique cases and serendipitous uses that make remarkable things happen. Entries will be accepted at this http://duraspace.org beginning on Tuesday, September 1, 2009 through September 28, 2009. More information in the DuraSpace Blog - http://expertvoices.nsdl.org/duraspace/.

Evaluation of Institutional Repository Development in Developing and Transition Countries: t-shirt winners and call for more input

Thank you to the repository managers who have already filled in the survey, and congratulations to the three eIFL T-shirt winners: African Higher Education Research Online (AHERO), University of the Western Cape, South Africa; Orion@ISI, Indian Statistical Institute; and UNAMSpace, University of Namibia Library!

We welcome more input from repository managers in developing and transition countries. This is the first time that such data about digital repository activity in developing and transition countries has been collected, and we hope this will serve as important resource for promoting open access and repository development in these regions. Your answers will help contribute to a larger overview of repository activity, and will provide support to those who have just started building their repository! The survey will take approximately 30-45 minutes to complete. We plan to announce the survey results at the Open Access week.

This study is part of a cooperative program between eIFL.net, the University of Kansas Libraries, the DRIVER project and Key Perspectives Ltd., and aims at creating an inventory of current digital repository activities in developing and transition countries, at both the infrastructure and services level. This survey has been adapted from the DRIVER Inventory study into the present type and level of OAI-compliant digital repository activities in the EU by Maurits de Graaf and SURF, and from the European repository study by Alma Swan, Key Perspectives Ltd.

Link to the survey - www.surveymonkey.com. To help you prepare, you can view a PDF preview of the survey questions www.eifl.net/eifl-oa/.

We appreciate your cooperation!

Open Access: Maximising Research Quality and Impact, July 22-23, 2009, Kathmandu, Nepal

Presentations from the workshop Open Access: Maximising Research Quality and Impact organised by Nepal Library and Information Consortium (NELIC) and eIFL.net, supported by the Foundation Open Society Institute and held on July 22-23 in Kathmandu are now online http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/.

An overview of the workshop and information about open access projects in Nepal can be found at the eIFL OA section of our site - www.eifl.net/eifl-oa/.

Partner News and Calls for Collaboration

Open access developments worldwide in the DRIVER Wiki
The purpose of the DRIVER Wiki is to provide a home for community contributions and to create a dynamic and updatable picture of open access activity. You can read about Open Access in many EU countries, Non-EU Europe and worldwide and you can use the DRIVER wiki to share information about your open access developments (contact us if you want to add your country or to update information).

Read about OA news in the following eIFL countries:

  • Bulgaria (contributor: Georgi Simeonov, Institute of Mathematics and Informatics at Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)
  • Egypt (contributor: Mandy Taha, Library of Alexandria)
  • Ethiopia (contributor: Bezunesh Alemu, Addis Ababa University)
  • South Africa (contributor's: Ina Smith, Institutional Repository Manager, University of Pretoria South Africa, and Susan Veldsman, Director of Scholarly Publishing Programme and Unit, Academy of Science of South Africa)

Boloka, the first African repository registered with DRIVER
Boloka, the Research Repository of the North-West University in South Africa, can now be searched in conjunction with over 1 million other research papers harvested by DRIVER and made available through open access institutional repositories. To assist in improving data standards, and ultimately ensuring the interoperability of data in global information spaces, DRIVER provides support for repository managers in online Guidelines for Content Providers. Boloka was validated and registered smoothly, which speaks highly of the interoperability standards achieved. Congratulations are due to repository manager, Louw Venter, and his team at NWU.

To find out more on how repository managers could validate their own repositories and register with DRIVER, visit the project website: Register your Repository.

BioMed Open Repository – A leading hosted archiving solution
BioMed Central’s “Open Repository” is a leading hosted archive solution that allows organisations to build, launch, host, and maintain their own repositories. Open Repository can store a wide variety of data types and is built upon the latest version of DSpace, an open-source solution for accessing, managing and preserving scholarly works. The hosted solution allows administrators to focus their time on populating their repositories with content, rather than worrying about the day-to-day management of their systems. Hosted institutional repositories are increasingly being adopted as a highly effective method of archiving research output whilst providing a reliable, cost effective solution that complies with institutional mandates.

Visit the project’s website to find out more and read the full story from Claire Bundy, Business Development Manager, Open Repository, BioMed Central.

Free publishing and access opportunities with the Oxford Journals
The Oxford Open Initiative expands Oxford Journal's experiments with Open Access publishing models. A list of over 70 Oxford journals in every subject area includes full and optional open access and for each of these journals, authors in many developing countries can publish for free and readers can have free access to its articles.

The following eIFL countries can benefit from this free publishing and free access opportunity: Cambodia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Nepal, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Information for authors is www.oxfordjournals.org/for_authors/
Full list of eligible countries is www.oxfordjournals.org/access_purchase/

6. Update on eIFL FOSS

Change and Continuity

Randy Metcalfe, Program Manager of eIFL-FOSS, stepped down from his role at the end of August. Randy will continue to be a proponent of FOSS in libraries and shall always be a friend of the eIFL-FOSS program. He is currently engaged in non-software related activities in Canada. Randy said, “It has been a great honour to have been associated with the eIFL-FOSS program at eIFL.net. I leave with undiminished admiration for the incredible work that librarians across the eIFL.net community are doing with free and open source software. I am confident that FOSS will continue to find increasing use in libraries in developing and transition countries.”

The eIFL-FOSS program will continue to promote the understanding and use of free and open source software in libraries. The network of eIFL-FOSS country coordinators that has grown and is prospering as an integral part of the eIFL-FOSS program will continue to explore FOSS solutions, and to discuss and support each other’s deployment of FOSS.

Skills and Tools Workshops

Throughout July and August, Skills and Tools Workshops took place in Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Senegal and Zimbabwe. Each workshop has concentrated on IT skills and tools of primary interest to the local organisers and the national library consortium. The workshops canvas a wide range of skills and tools, from Debian GNU/Linux systems administration to workshops focusing on the Joomla and SPIP content management systems, MySQL database administration, and the PMB, Koha and Evergreen ILSs. Reports from each workshop, drafted by the workshop leader, have appeared in the eIFL-FOSS blog as well as being linked to www.eifl.net/eifl-foss/skills-tools/. It has been particularly heartening to see the outcomes from many of the workshops, which include setting up Linux User Groups within various national library consortia.

One workshop in the current series remains for September. On September 18-20, 2009, the Mongolian Libraries Consortium will run a 3-day workshop in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, on the installation and use of Koha, a FOSS integrated library system (ILS).

While this concludes the current series of workshops, it does not end the ongoing need for continuing profession development of library IT staff. It is hoped that further workshops will be organised pro-actively by national library consortia.

Further information on Skills and Tools Workshop, including links to workshop reports can be found in www.eifl.net/eifl-foss/ section of eIFL site.

Update on the eIFL-FOSS ILS Project

August saw the publication of case studies from the pilot sites of the eIFL-FOSS ILS project. For the past year, 6 libraries from Malawi to Nepal have been learning a great deal about free and open source software integrated library systems (ILS). Case studies of their investigations, successes, and learning points are now available. The participating pilot sites in this project range from the relatively small (50,000 to 70,000 volumes) to the very large (more than 4 million volumes). They also stretch from libraries with a single systems librarian to libraries with an entire IT team. This project was not merely about installing and using a FOSS ILS; it was about learning to engage with FOSS development and support communities. It's all about participation. We are delighted to report that the technical leads from each pilot site (and the teams they managed, where those existed) have taken engagement seriously.

So much so that eIFL.net libraries are now regular contributors to the Koha and Evergreen ILS development and support communities. With the publication of these case studies we hope many more libraries within the eIFL.net community will take up the challenges and opportunities that come with FOSS in libraries. The case studies can be accessed www.eifl.net/eifl-foss/ils/. The 6 participating pilot libraries are: Fundamental Scientific Library of the National Academy of Sciences, Armenia; Mzuzu University Library, Malawi; Library of the Faculty of Medicine Pharmacy and Dentistry, University of Bamako, Mali; Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya, Nepal; and Midlands State University Library, Zimbabwe.

LTSP: How to Set Up a Linux Terminal Server Project Installation

In July 2009 eIFL.net published LTSP: extending the life of older computer hardware in your library: How to Set Up a Linux Terminal Server Project Installation, The Birzeit University Library Experience by Dr. Wasel Ghanem, Head of Computer Systems Engineering Department and Mrs. Diana Sayej-Naser, Library Director, Birzeit University. An LTSP installation uses one powerful computer to serve as the operating system for many less powerful computers. It can enable apparently obsolete hardware to be brought back into useful service within a library. This guide has been produced, translated, and distributed with the support of UNESCO. It is made available for download (in pdf format) in English, Arabic, Russian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese and can be found www.eifl.net/eifl-foss/ltsp/.

The guide describes both the technical steps necessary to set up an LTSP installation as well as the story of Birzeit University Library that did just that. Other libraries have followed their example, such as the Library of the Faculty of Medicine Pharmacy and Dentistry at the University of Bamako (read the story www.eifl.net/eifl-foss/foss-blog/).

Update on the Southern African Greenstone Support Network (SAGSN) and South Asian Projects

The July SAGSN meeting of National Center representatives in Durban, South Africa was a success. To learn from other countries on shared issues proved both reassuring and encouraging Country reports and main challenges will be soon published on the SAGSN section of eIFL site (under construction, www.eifl.net/eifl-foss/greenstone/). In addition, each National Center will have dedicated web pages for digital collection highlighting, training announcements, contact information and the like. Websites of eIFL consortia will show pointers to these Centers in the future.

The July meeting welcomed Tanzania’s COSTECH as a new member of the Support Network. With Kenya as a very likely next extension, the SAGSN Steering Committee anticipates an Eastern African Support Network to keep regional meetings, workshop organising and support activities manageable.

The South Asian participants of the project already made Greenstone interface available in Kannada language and later in September the interface will be available in Tamil language.

As ever, please visit the eIFL-FOSS space on the eIFL.net website for the latest news and information from the eIFL-FOSS program.

The eIFL team
www.eifl.net

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