24 مايو 2009

هل سيكون الوصول الحر خيار للأزمات الاقتصادية


فيما نشهده هذه الأيام من توالي للأزمات الاقتصادية على كافة الاصعدة المحلية منها والاقليمية والعالمية، فهل سيكون الوصول الحر الذي يهدف للإتاحة المباشرة للمعلومات مع خفض التكاليف على المستفيد النهائي خيارً أمثل لمجابهة تلك الأزمات والحيلولة دون إنحصار المعرفة على دول القوى الاقتصادية.
أترككم مع هذا الخبر

40% of university libraries plan cuts to book and journal purchases next year

... [T]imes Higher Education reported in January that the drop in the pound's value was having a "crippling effect" on the budgets of UK university libraries, which faced huge increases in subscriptions costs for research journals from the US and elsewhere in Europe.

Now a new survey of 38 university libraries conducted by the Research Information Network (RIN) reveals just how serious the situation is.

Preliminary findings presented to Times Higher Education show that although the current academic year has been "financially challenging", it is in 2009-10 that the pinch will really be felt.

The survey shows that nearly 40 per cent of libraries plan cuts to books and serial purchases from next year. One in five plans to cancel one or more so-called big deals with publishing houses to access bundles of journals online. A single bundle can contain hundreds of titles.

Read the report on the following link:

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=406612&c=2


17 مايو 2009

إندماج يولد دورا سبايس DuraSpace

حتى في عالم المصادر المفتوحة هناك من النماذج الاقتصادية التي أصبحت رهان على صلابة وقوة تلك الجهات المزودة والداعمة لتلك المصادر. أعلن بتاريخ 12-5-2009 خبر إندماج كل من Fedora Commons and the DSpace Foundation واللتان تعدان أكبر مزودي برمجيات المصادر المفتوحة في مجال تنظيم وإتاحة المحتوى الرقمي. لتكون بدورا سبايس DuraSpace
هذا الخبر حقيقة أعتبره رداً قوياً لمن يقولون أن المصادر المفتوحة لن تسطيع الاستمرار والصمود، وكذلك هو رد عنيف لمن يتعلل بمقولة أن تلك النوعية من البرمجيات ضعيفة الدعم الفني المستقبلي، وأقول لهم لكم مع التحية والتقدير الخبر:

Fedora Commons and DSpace Foundation Join Together to Create DuraSpace™ Organization

Ithaca, NY, Boston, MA --- Fedora Commons and the DSpace Foundation, two of the largest providers of open source software for managing and providing access to digital content, have announced today that they will join their organizations to pursue a common mission. Jointly, they will provide leadership and innovation in open source technologies for global communities who manage, preserve, and provide access to digital content.

The joined organization, named "DuraSpace," will sustain and grow its flagship repository platforms - Fedora and DSpace. DuraSpace will also expand its portfolio by offering new technologies and services that respond to the dynamic environment of the Web and to new requirements from existing and future users. DuraSpace will focus on supporting existing communities and will also engage a larger and more diverse group of stakeholders in support of its not-for-profit mission. The organization will be led by an executive team consisting of Sandy Payette (Chief Executive Officer), Michele Kimpton (Chief Business Officer), and Brad McLean (Chief Technology Officer) and will operate out of offices in Ithaca, NY and Cambridge, MA.

"This is a great development," said Clifford Lynch, Executive Director of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI). "It will focus resources and talent in a way that should really accelerate progress in areas critical to the research, education, and cultural memory communities. The new emphasis on distributed reliable storage infrastructure services and their integration with repositories is particularly timely."

Together Fedora and DSpace make up the largest market share of open repositories worldwide, serving over 700 institutions. These include organizations committed to the use of open source software solutions for the dissemination and preservation of academic, scientific, and cultural digital content.

"The joining of DSpace and Fedora Commons is a watershed event for libraries, specifically, and higher education, more generally," said James Hilton, CIO of the University of Virginia. "Separately, these two organizations operated with similar missions and a shared commitment to developing and supporting open technologies. By bringing together the technical, financial, and community-based resources of the two organizations, their communities gain a robust organization focused on solving the many challenges involved in storing, curating, and preserving digital data and scholarship," he said.

New Products

DuraSpace will continue to support its existing software platforms, DSpace and Fedora, as well as expand its offerings to support the needs of global information communities. The first new technology to emerge will be a Web-based service named "DuraCloud." DuraCloud is a hosted service that takes advantage of the cost efficiencies of cloud storage and cloud computing, while adding value to help ensure longevity and re-use of digital content. The DuraSpace organization is developing partnerships with commercial cloud providers who offer both storage and computing capabilities.

The DuraCloud service will be run by the DuraSpace organization. Its target audiences are organizations responsible for digital preservation and groups creating shared spaces for access and re-use of digital content. DuraCloud will be accessible directly as a Web service and also via plug-ins to digital repositories including Fedora and DSpace. The software developed to support the DuraCloud service will be made available as open source. An early release of DuraCloud will be available for selected pilot partners in Fall 2009.

Key Benefits of the DuraSpace Organization

DuraSpace will support both DSpace and Fedora by working closely with both communities and when possible, develop synergistic technologies, services, and programs that increase interoperability of the two platforms. DuraSpace will also support other open source software projects including the Mulgara semantic store, a scalable RDF database.

DuraSpace is mission-focused. The organization will be associated with its broader mission of working towards developing services and solutions on behalf of diverse communities rather than focusing on single-solution product development. This change in orientation can be characterized as moving beyond the software and toward the mission.

DuraSpace will bring strength and leadership to a larger community and amplify the value brought by each organization individually. With both organizations working in unison, there can be significant economies of scale, synergies in developing open technologies and services, and a strong position for long-term sustainability.

Learn More about DuraSpace

DuraSpace will be represented at the Fourth Annual International Conference on Open Repositories (http://openrepositories.org/). Please check the schedule and visit the Fedora Commons and DSpace information tables at the conference to learn more. Also, initial information will be available at the DuraSpace website, with more information forthcoming in June 2009.

About Fedora Commons

Fedora Commons (http://fedora-commons.org/) was established in 2007 as a not-for-profit organization and the home of the Fedora repository software and related open source projects. Fedora is a robust, integrated, repository system that enables storage, access and management for virtually any kind of digital content. The Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture (Fedora) was originally designed by Sandy Payette and colleagues at Cornell University and was established as an open source project in 2001 by Cornell and the University of Virginia. Fedora has a large international user community and is installed worldwide at universities, libraries, research institutions, cultural organizations, and corporations. For more information contact Thornton Staples, Director of Community Outreach and Alliances at tstaples@fedora-commons.org or Chris Wilper, Technical Lead at cwilper@fedora-commons.org. Also see: http://fedora-commons.org/confluence/x/KINB

About DSpace Foundation

The DSpace Foundation (http://dspace.org/) was formed in 2007 to support the growing global community of institutions using DSpace open source software to manage scholarly works in a digital repository. DSpace was jointly developed in 2002 by Hewlett-Packard and the MIT Libraries. Today, there are over more than 500 organizations worldwide using the software to manage, preserve, and share their scholarly output. To learn more about DSpace and its community of users visit www.dspace.org or contact Valorie Hollister, Community Outreach Manager at val@dspace.org.

الخبر على الرابط التالي:

http://www.duraspace.org/pressrelease.html

05 مايو 2009

الوصول الحر و انفلونزا الخنازير

ها هي أحد منافع الوصول الحر تبرز للحد من الأزمات العالمية لتفعيل مستوى الوعي والمشاركة المعرفية بين المهتمين وذوي الاختصاص، وتزيل أحد ابرز المعوقات المتمثلة في الجوانب المادية والفكرية والزمانية.
حيث أعلن الناشر الشهير إيبسكو ومحرري ديناميد عن إتاحة مجانية على نمط الوصول الحر للكل ما يتعلق بانفلونزا الخنازير.

الخبركاملاً هنا: http://www.ebscohost.com/dynamed/h1n1/

Due to the recent global outbreak of H1N1 flu, EBSCO Publishing and the DynaMed Editors have made the main elements of the DynaMed clinical summary for H1N1 flu free to health care providers and institutions throughout the world. The DynaMed topic on H1N1 flu consolidates information from multiple sources for health care providers to stay current with recommendations for monitoring, diagnosing, and treating patients with flu-like illnesses during this outbreak. The editors have also added a clinical management highlights summary. DynaMed Editors will continue to monitor information and update this topic as needed throughout this global crisis.