Current Style: Standard
Online
Anne Frank House
http://www.annefrank.org/secretannex/
As part of the 50th Anniversary of the Anne Frank House Museum (03/05/10) a virtual tour of the Anne Frank's hiding place has been launched. It begins with the secret entrance behind a bookcase. The tour was developed by LBi Lost Boys international (http://www.lbi.co.uk/) in collaboration with the Anne Frank House. Funding was provided by the BankGiro Lottery, the Anne Frank Fund, the VSB Fund, the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport and the Mondriaan Foundation.
Digital Economy Act 2010
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/
The Digital Economy Bill was rushed into law late on the night of Wednesday 7th April as part of the “wash-up” normally intended to complete non-controversial business prior to a general election. Clause 17 (see Online January 2010) was replaced by a re-drafted Clause 18, which was subsequently dropped at the last minute, with a hasty amendment to Clause 8, which gives powers to the Secretary of State for Business to order the blocking of "a location on the Internet that the court is satisfied has been, is being or is likely to be used for or in connection with an activity that infringes copyright". Clause 43, permitting re-use of orphan works, was dropped following opposition from photographers, which will be a disappointment for the British Library, who continue to face extensive copyright difficulties before digitising orphan works. Clause 45 permits libraries to lend ebooks and audiobooks without infringing copyright. Ofcom has drafted a code of practice (http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/copyright-infringement/) as instructed by the Act in preparation for identifying and penalising persistent illegal downloaders, with a range of measures including stopping their Internet connections. ISPs will be expected to implement these measures or risk fines of up to £250,000. Ofcom has asked ISPs to start collecting data on illegal download activity (http://www.guardian.co.uk/28/05/10).
The Open Book Alliance have produced a report (http://www.openbookalliance.org/2010/05/the-gbs-makes-for-angry-neighbors/) that makes the case that the draft Google Books settlement would violate international laws and treaties. Intellectual property lawyer Cynthia Arato draws the conclusion that the US could be challenged by other countries through the World Trade Organisation, with the attendant risks of fines, trade sanctions and "diplomatic stress".
A new class action has been brought against the settlement by the American Society of Media Photographers, together with other creative organisations and individuals, challenging Google's right to digitise images in books without rightsholders' permission.
JSTOR
JSTOR have announced their new Business III collection, starting with seven titles and building to a minimum of 50 by the end of 2012. Three of the titles due to be included have enjoyed over a century of a publication: Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (1844), FinanzArchiv (1884) and VSWG: Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (1893).
Library of Congress
Accompanied by a rush of headlines: "How tweet it is!" (Library of Congress); "All your Twitter belongs to the Library of Congress" (Guardian); "OMG! Library of Congress acquires every Tweet ever Twittered" (LA Times); the Library of Congress announced that Twitter is donating the entire public tweet archive since 2006, comprising billions of tweets, to the Library of Congress. Librarian James H. Billington said, "Working with the Twitter archive will ... help the Library extend its capability to provide stewardship for very large sets of born-digital materials." Their FAQ (http://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2010/04/the-library-and-twitter-an-faq/) details what the archive will or won't include. Google have also announced their Twitter archive search tool called Replay.
Nature Publishing Group
The complete Scientific American archive May 1948 through December 2005 is now available online via institutional subscription, comprising more than 650 issues and 20,000 articles.
Meanwhile Nature Publishing Group (NPG) have announced open-access options for seven more journals, making a total of 25 including all 15 NPG-owned academic journals. Authors can choose to make their articles open access by paying an article processing charge (APC).
OUP
Free institutional trials are available for Oxford Bibliographies Online. The press release[1] describes OBO as, "an entirely new type of online resource offering a library of discipline-focused, online guides to the essential literature in subjects across the humanities and social sciences". The first seven subject areas covered are Classics, Islamic Studies, Criminology, Social Work, Renaissance and Reformation, Philosophy and Atlantic History, and each area is designed to guide researchers through the most important resources for that subject.
Paywalls
Following the introduction of The Times paywall (see Online March 2010) the Guardian has announced their free trial of Guardian Extra, "a membership scheme for Guardian readers", which will cost £25 pa from September 1st. It is currently marketing a different model from The Times, describing Extra as providing add-on features to existing content, online events and special offers, rather than ring-fencing premium content. Bloomberg (finance), Advertising Age (marketing and media) and Rolling Stone have all announced paywalls for some of their content (http://industry.bnet.com/ 20/04/10). Meanwhile Rupert Murdoch has announced a monthly, online "professional edition" of the Wall Street Journal priced at $49. WSJ Pro Consumer consists of WSJ Online and 17,000 Factiva publications. ResourceShelf noticed that the product is not dissimilar to WSJ Pro Enterprise launched in November (http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/04/08/packaging-sources-for-sale-wsj-factiva-wsj-pro/08/04/10).
UKSG
http://www.uksg.org/
The UK Serials Group (UKSG) and NISO (National Information Standards Organisation) have announced that Phase I of their joint project for "exploring data problems within the OpenURL supply chain" has been endorsed by the American Institute of Physics, Ex Libris, OCLC and Serials Solutions. The KBART (Knowledge Bases And Related Tools) Working Group published its first practical recommendations in January 2010, and encourages all content providers to submit a sample file for approval, so they can also join a public list of endorsing providers. Members of KBART Working Group for Phase II are listed in their press release (http://www.uksg.org/news/kbartmay10/).
[1] See Press Releases, below
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