The White House has taken steps to make all data created and stored by the federal government openly accessible to the public. The president issued an executive order, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy established an open data policy, both of which require data generated by the government from this point on to be made available in open, machine-readable formats, while safeguarding privacy, confidentiality, and security as necessary.
White House Makes Government Data Publicly Accessible
May 10th, 2013U.S. Supreme Court Rules on “First Sale” Doctrine
March 19th, 2013The U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion this morning in the case of Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley and Sons, Inc., ruling that the doctrine of first sale applies to copies of works legally made abroad and imported into the U.S. The first-sale doctrine allows the owner of a book to legally resell it; in the case of libraries, it allows books printed overseas to be circulated to users.
Applications Being Accepted for UCLA Library’s Affordable Course Materials Initiative
March 15th, 2013The UCLA Library recently launched the Affordable Course Materials Initiative, which incentivizes instructors to use low-cost or free alternatives to expensive course materials. These can include open-access scholarly resources, Library-licensed and owned resources, and learning objects and texts that faculty create themselves.
Applications are now being accepted for courses to be taught during the the 2013-14 academic year. A total of $10,000 is available: Five awards of $1,000 each for instructors teaching courses with enrollments of fewer than two hundred students, and two awards of $2,500 each for instructors teaching courses with enrollment of two hundred or more students.
Further information on the application procedure and deadlines is available on the initiative website.
White House Issues Directive on Public Access to Federally Funded Research
February 22nd, 2013The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has issued a directive that aims to increase public access to the results of federally funded research. This policy memorandum directs federal agencies spending more than $100 million in research and development grants to develop plans that will make the published results of federally funded research freely available to the public and that will require researchers to better manage digital data resulting from federally funded research.
Public-access Legislation Introduced in U.S. Congress
February 15th, 2013Zoe Lofgren joined her House colleagues Mike Doyle and Kevin Yoder to introduce the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR), designed to increase the openness, transparency, and accessibility of publicly funded research results. The legislation, which has attracted wide bipartisan support, would require federal agencies with annual extramural research budgets of $100 million or more to provide public online access to manuscripts resulting from funded research no later than six months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Senators John Cornyn and Ron Wyden also introduced the bill in the U.S. Senate.
Judge Rules for UCLA Twice in Video Streaming Case
November 26th, 2012For the second time in just over a year, a federal judge has ruled in favor of UCLA in a copyright case involving video streaming for instructional purposes.
In October 2011 Judge Consuelo B. Marshall with the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles dismissed a lawsuit brought by Ambrose Video Publishing Inc. and the Association for Information Media and Equipment, which alleged that UCLA violated copyright by streaming DVDs of performances of Shakespeare’s plays. She allowed the plaintiffs to file an amended complaint but ruled against that as well; her second ruling was issued on November 20.
Compliance with NIH Public Access Policy to be Enforced
November 16th, 2012The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has announced that it will enforce compliance with its mandatory public access policy beginning in Spring 2013. At that point, the NIH will begin to hold processing of non-competing continuation awards if publications arising from the awards are not in compliance with the policy until the publications are in compliance.
Further information is available in an NIH Guide notice.
“Opening Up Campaign Archives” Panel Discussion Oct. 17
October 16th, 2012On Wednesday, October 17, the UCLA Library will host a wide-ranging panel discussion featuring political consultant Garry South, who has given the UCLA Library his campaign papers, and UCLA professors Jeffrey B. Lewis, Mark A. Peterson, and Lynn Vavreck. The panelists will offer inside details about “how the sausage is made” in political campaigns and discuss the importance of public knowledge about campaign operations in a healthy democratic society. It will begin at 2 p.m. in the Charles E. Young Research Library.
Admission is free, but RSVPs are requested to 310.206.8526 or rsvp@library.ucla.edu. The event is co-sponsored by the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, Center for the Study of Campaigns, and Department of Political Science.
Court Rules for HathiTrust, against Authors Guild
October 11th, 2012HathiTrust won in the lawsuit filed against it by the Authors Guild, according to the ruling released yesterday by a federal judge. The judge ruled for Hathi Trust and its fair-use arguments on almost every point.
Google and Publishers’ Association Reach Settlement
October 4th, 2012Google and the Association of American Publishers have reached an agreement in their dispute about the Google Library Project. The agreement settles a copyright infringement lawsuit and does not require the approval of the court. The settlement allows the publishers to make their books and journals available via the project or to remove them.
This settlement does not affect the litigation between Google and the Authors Guild.
