Cool New Legal Resources Online - Join Deirdre Benedict Judicial Council of California Administrative Office of the Courts and me for an Infopeople webinar update at Noon (PDT) http://infopeople.org/training/webcasts/webcast_data/412/index.html
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Cool New Legal Resources Online - Join Deirdre Benedict Judicial Council of California Administrative Office of the Courts and me for an Infopeople webinar update at Noon (PDT) http://infopeople.org/training/webcasts/webcast_data/412/index.html
(by Peter Hirtle)
A little over two years ago, I wrote a post entitled “Free the Founding Fathers!”. In it, I urged the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to take aggressive steps to make the papers of the Founding Fathers, which had already been heavily supported with Federal support, freely accessible online rather than only through costly subscription models.
It may have taken awhile, but NARA has finally taken some positive steps. Last week NARA and the University of Virginia Press, which has been selling access to the papers of the Founding Fathers via its Rotunda publishing platform, announced that in a year’s time a new web site that will offer the general public free access to some of the papers will be made available, with full access to all papers by June 2012. You can read NARA’s announcement here, and UVA’s companion announcement here.
This is overall good news. In this case, something is better than nothing. Of course, the press releases leaves me wanting to know more:
Fortunately Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero has appointed a high-powered external advisory group to work on the project. Mary Beth Norton and David Hackett Fisher know colonial history, and Edward L. Ayers knows how digital technologies enable radically new ways of working with historical materials. Progress has been made, and their is the hope of more in the future.
On 29 September, the U.S. Senate confirmed "Mary Minow, of California, to be a member of the National Museum and Library Services Board for a term expiring December 6, 2014."
Clearly the movement to restore sanity is already having an impact. Congratulations!
There was one other interesting tidbit in a note. Apparently the Copyright Clearance Center is paying for 50% of this legal action. It is disturbing to think that a portion of the administrative fees that libraries are paying to the CCC are being used to bring legal actions against those paying the fees. While the CCC may claim that it is serving the interests of those who use it, that doesn't seem to be true in this case.
UPDATE: In addition to Kevin Smith's analysis cited above, see theexcellent discussion on the ARL Policy Notes blog.