Have you ever wondered why you have to “return” e-books from the library? Typically, libraries permit users to download and read e-books for a limited period of time. Moreover, libraries often limit the number of users who can simultaneously read e-books from their collections. When it comes to physical or […]
Copyright
14 posts
For those of you not already familiar with Bill C-30, also known as the “Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act” I highly recommend reading up on this legislation that is currently being debated in the House of Commons. In short, Bill C-30 would grant police the power to compel Internet […]
This is amazing. This afternoon, I read a 1854 petition written by William Lyon Mackenzie to the Legislative Assembly of Canada demanding £500 compensation for travel expenses incurred during his tenure as a government director for the Welland Canal Company. I read this bizarre and fascinating 157 year old historical […]
Last week the federal government tabled its long anticipated copyright reform legislation for first reading in the House of Commons. The Copyright Modernization Act or Bill C-32 attempts to overhaul many of the out-dated provisions of Canada’s copyright law that have fallen far behind major technological changes of the last […]
Cory Doctorow recently posted a link to a great short documentary called “When Copyright Goes Bad”. It explores, in brief, some of the implications of modern copyright law for consumers, artists, and educators. I thought this served as a pretty good resource for explaining some of the current debates surrounding […]
Historians know that our work is entirely dependent on access to and availability of sources, especially archival primary sources. Anyone who has spent months (and sometimes years) awaiting approval of a Freedom of Information Act request in Canada knows how frustrating limited access can be. It is a barrier to […]
Over the summer, I posted a quick story about the need for historians to take part in the Canadian copyright reform consultations. The Canadian Historical Association did just this with an excellent submission to Industry Canada and the Department of Canadian Heritage that outlined many of the main concerns for […]
I meant to write about this earlier in the summer, but there is still time. Industry Minister Tony Clement and Heritage Minister James Moore launched a public consultation process on copyright policy on July 20th. Following the government’s failed efforts to quietly revise Canadian copyright law last year through Bill […]
I really should have found this source sooner. Charles W. Bailey’s Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals is the best place to start for historians (or anyone else) looking to learn about open access and scholarly publishing. According to the description of the book, […]
As promised, I have put together some general reflections on the recent Public Knowledge Project conference held in Vancouver from July 8th-10th. I attended the conference as part of my work on the Notes on Knowledge Mobilization page on the NiCHE website. I went to the conference with the intention […]
Rowland Lorimer, director of the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing, announced the beginning of a new journal called Scholarly Research and Communication at the Public Knowledge Project conference this afternoon. Lorimer’s closing keynote for the conference was a pretty rousing tour of the history of scholarly publishing and the […]
This morning, I attended a very interesting session on the economics of open access publishing for scholarly communications at the Public Knowledge Project conference in Vancouver. The session began with a presentation from Heather Morrison, who spoke about the broad ideas and macroeconomic view of open access publishing for scholarly […]