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Open access champion to address privatization of knowledge at Oct 22 JSB Symposium
(Sep 2008) A leading proponent of open access to all knowledge will consider the consequences of the consolidation of information into the hands of a few private organizations when he delivers the keynote lecture at the fourth John Seely Brown Symposium on Technology and Society, to be held October 22 in Ann Arbor.
Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive → and director of the Open Content Alliance (OCA) →, has been a vocal critic of proprietary services like the massive Google Books project, which recently scanned its one-millionth volume from the University of Michigan libraries.
"We think they [Google] are doing great stuff," Kahle said in a 2006 interview with CNET. "If the materials would be made available for broad public search and educational use we'd be all for it."
Following the presentation, a panel of experts that includes U-M Dean of Libraries Paul Courant will comment on Kahle's ideas and discuss the possibilities of "Library 2.0" -- the next generation of libraries, which will capitalize on all that the digital age has to offer to benefit patrons, including social networking, 24-hour services, and user-created content.
Kahle's talk, titled "The Closing of Library Services ... The Opening of Library Services," will specifically explore the implications for libraries of the "closing" of content, and will consider "open" alternatives.
As print resources become databases, he says, libraries are moving away from selecting and organizing materials from a multitude of publishers and toward acting as collective bargaining agents with a small number of database vendors, resulting in ever fewer organizations controlling the information presented to library patrons. In some cases this has led to one or two corporations controlling a whole category of literature, such as Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw's effective control over U.S. law literature, and Elsevier's dominance in scholarly publishing.
While applauded as more efficient, this approach could, in Kahle's view, create an information environment with monopolistic pricing and single points of control. For instance, repurposing and bulk analysis of these resources is rarely allowed by commercial services, and a mistake or bias in one can become the bias for all readers.
This "closing" of library services is causing some entities to invest in alternative "open" ones. For instance the Public Library of Science offers open journal publishing and the Internet Archive offers open digital book services. These nonprofit services support free end-user and bulk services that are rare in commercial services. In his talk, Kahle will explore some of the characteristics of and differences between these two approaches to building library services in the Internet era.
"Brewster Kahle's ideas, writings, and actions have been influential and valuable for scholarship and preservation of the cultural record," says Paul Courant. "The issues that he is raising are of great importance to academic libraries and to society at large. I expect the symposium to be both educational and entertaining. Anyone interested in access to information -- which should be pretty much everyone in the university community -- should be interested in this symposium."
Kahle serves as digital librarian of the nonprofit Internet Archive, one of the world's largest digital archives and home to the "Wayback Machine." An inventor of the Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS) system, an early, landmark Internet search system, he has dedicated his career to finding and sharing large-scale text collections on the Internet and to revising law and policy in light of technical advances. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The John Seely Brown Symposium on Technology and Society -- a free event sponsored by the School of Information -- will be held from 3-5:30 p.m. Wednesday, October 22 in the Biomedical Science Research Building Auditorium, 109 Zina Pitcher Place. The symposium is named for John Seely Brown, a U-M alumnus and former vice-president and chief scientist of Xerox Corp. and director of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.
Brown will take part in the panel discussion that follows Kahle's talk. He will be joined by Paul Courant, university librarian, dean of the U-M Libraries, and professor of economics, public policy, and information; and Jessica Litman, professor of law and information.
After the panel discussion, a reception will be held for the audience to meet Kahle and the panelists.
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Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive → and champion of open, universal access to knowledge, is featured speaker at the 2008 John Seely Brown Symposium on Technology and Society, 3:00 - 5:30 p.m., October 22, 2008, Biomedical Science Research Building Auditorium, 109 Zina Pitcher Place, Ann Arbor. Kahle's talk will be followed by a panel discussion.
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