October 23 2009

Open Access at the Library

Location: All locations, Downtown Phoenix campus, Hayden, Music Library, Noble Library, Polytechnic campus, Tempe campus, West campus, architecture

Libraries have been some of the loudest voices in the Open Access movement – after all, providing access to information is one of our primary responsibilities. Here, Diane Graves, a librarian at UC Santa Barbara, covers some of the reasons librarians are so involved.

Diane Graves, Librarian from Open Access Videos on Vimeo.

Open Access Week builds on the momentum started by the student-led national day of action in 2007 and carried by the 120 campuses in 27 countries that celebrated Open Access Day in 2008. 2008 organizers SPARC(the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition), the PLoS (The Public Library of Science), and Students for FreeCulture welcome new key contributors for 2009: OASIS (the Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook); Open Access Directory (OAD); and eIFL.net (Electronic Information for Libraries), which will again spearhead events in developing and transitional countries.

Students, if you are interested in further fun open access activities, IssueLab is sponsoring a Research Remix Contest. Contestants will be asked to remix facts from one or more of the 300+ Creative Commons licensed reports on IssueLab with openly licensed video footage or openly licensed images and music. We prefer one minute pieces but will accept all submissions under three minutes. Entries are due by December 31st. There are some very cool prizes, so check it out! Go to Research Remix Contest for complete details about rules, prized, and how to enter.

Thanks to everyone who participated in setting up the exhibit, and special thanks to our three ASU faculty, who joined us for a podcast to discuss open access issues and projects here at ASU!

For more information about Open Access, check out our Scholarly Communication LibGuide.

If you missed the Library Channel earlier this week, see below for more Open Access Week videos!