Open Sesame!(and other open movements)

Dorothea SaloLiaison Forum

June 2010Photo: Reinante el Pintor de Fuego,http://www.flickr.com/photos/reinante/4484083990/

Goals• Disambiguate jargon

• ... there’s a lot of it, and it’s often used wrongly• (including by librarians, which makes us look uninformed)

• Point out the plays and the players• especially here at UW-Madison, and in the Libraries

• Explain what I do and why• “What do you do all day?” I get that a lot.• This is a problem for me, because I can’t do what I do

effectively all by myself. I need help!

• Suggest opportunities

Photo: Daquella manera, http://www.flickr.com/photos/daquellamanera/355061741/

Points to ponder• What opportunities do these movements

present us?• ... to educate• ... to collect• ... to preserve• ... to help ourselves and our patrons?

• What obligations do we have?• ... to educate• ... to support• ... to collect• ... to preserve

• What actions should we be taking?

Photo: striatic, http://www.flickr.com/photos/striatic/2144933705/

For each “open”

• What is being made open?• as opposed to what?• and why?

• How?• What intellectual-property regimes are implicated?• What obstacles present themselves?• What different kinds of open are there in this space?

• For you to decide: why do we care?

Photo: indigoprime, http://www.flickr.com/photos/indigoprime/2425393185/

Open source

Image: Patrick Hoesly, http://www.zooboing.com/

Open source SOFTWARE• “Source code” is the human-readable

programs that humans write.• Computers can’t directly understand most

source code. It is therefore “compiled” into “binary code,” which is computer-readable but not human-readable.

• If all you have is binary code, you can’t tell what the programmer did.

• Moreover, most software sales conditions forbid “reverse-engineering” binary code.

How to open your source

• License it (why? copyright!)• GNU General Public License (GPL): has a share-alike

sting in its tail• BSD License: share-alike not required• Others: Mozilla license, Artistic License, more

• Make the source available online• It’s polite to provide compiled binaries too, but you don’t

have to.

• That’s it!• ... sort of. Most serious open-source projects have

organizations (and their overhead) behind them.

Open source here• Desktop

• Firefox/Thunderbird

• Library-specific• Forward: built on Ruby, Solr, Lucene, Blacklight• MINDS@UW: runs on DSpace, Postgres• The new digital library: will run on Fedora Commons• Anybody use MarcEdit?

• Infrastructure• Websites: Apache web server• Databases: MySQL, Postgres• Programming languages: Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP

• There’s probably more. What did I miss?

Open standards

Photo: idealisms, http://www.flickr.com/photos/ponderer/4356051336/

Specs, not source!

• A STANDARD way of doing things, like...• ... cataloging books and journals• ... making web pages• ... making fasteners, railroads, electrical connections

• An open standard, ideally:• can be read and implemented by all• does not fall afoul of patents or copyrights• is created by consensus of interested parties

Library-related standards• MARC, of course, and RDA

• ... but RDA is pay-to-read!

• Dublin Core• Built on XML: MODS, METS, EAD, etc.• PDF, sort of

• there is an ISO standard for PDF, but not all PDFs conform to it

• EPUB: for ebooks• We also use other people’s standards

• When feasible, using a standard is ALWAYS preferable to building one’s own. Why? Interoperability.

Open access(this is what I do all day)

Free the literature!• Authors aren’t paid to write journal articles.

Peer reviewers aren’t paid to review them. Most editors aren’t paid to acquire them.

• So why do they cost so much to read?• Maybe, now that we have the Internet,

there are other ways to create, manage, and disseminate the journal literature without making everyone pay to read it.

• This is the core of the Open Access idea.

Green and gold

• Green: Repositories• Discipline-based: arXiv, SSRN• Institutional/consortial: MINDS@UW

• Gold: Open-access journals• Library examples: D-Lib, Ariadne, JEP, RUSQ, JoDI• (Interesting halfway-point: C&RL posting preprints)• Various ways libraries can support these! Memberships,

help with author fees, in-house publishing platforms, including them in library catalogs, promoting them, etc.

Gratis and libre

• Gratis: You can read it for free. Anything else, you better ask permission.

• Libre: With credit given, OK to text-mine, re-catalog, mirror for preservation, quote, remix, whatever.

• Most OA is gratis. You get to “libre” via Creative Commons licensing, usually.

Challenge: sustainability• Green OA

• What faculty post to the web has a bad habit of disappearing. Or being illegal. They’re not preservationists or copyright lawyers.

• In the last year or so, two disciplinary repositories folded: DList and Mana’o. Neither had contingency plans.

• arXiv is looking for monetary support.• Some IRs (including MINDS@UW) have been threatened

with defunding or closure.

• Gold OA• Who pays? From which budgets?• Who gives in-kind support?

Open access here• OA author-fee fund• OA memberships and other support

• PLoS, BioMed Central, etc.

• OA journal platform• Illuminations, Journal of Insect Science, Screen Dance

• MINDS@UW• I would LOVE MINDS@UW to move past its current

passive collection model. I can’t do that alone.• So, what digital materials are produced by your

departments that we should collect and preserve? • This is not a question that I can or should answer for

you. I am not a liaison librarian or collection developer!

A challenge

• What do we want?• How are we going to get it?

• I am here to help answer the technical aspects of this question! That’s my job!

• Be aware that I don’t have digitization capacity, however. I’m looking for the born-digital!

Some similar “opens”

• Open educational resources• e.g. MIT Open CourseWare, iTunes U• “Gratis” vs. “libre” very salient here; few want to reuse

educational resources unchanged• Creative Commons cuts through the tangle!

• Open textbooks• “Open content” generally

• cf the “Free Culture” movement

Open data

Image: Juhan Sonin, http://www.flickr.com/photos/juhansonin/3047499844/

Open research data• Some disciplines have always been data

sharers: e.g. astronomy.• Others are coming to it: e.g. genomics.• Some journals and grant funders are

starting to insist on open data.• Reproducibility, fraud avoidance• No more Climategates!• Faster, better, more collaborative science• Sustainability? Standards? Preservation? Good question.

Open government data• Governments produce a LOT of data.

• GIS• Demographic• Economic

• They’re starting to release it into the wild.• Many levels, not just federal!

• Mashups, mashups everywhere!• Tremendous research potential

• ... if researchers know where to find it• ... and if reuse privileges are clear• ... and they know what to do once they’ve found it

Techie bits• Intellectual-property situation

• Data, as facts, are not copyrightable in the US...• ... but as compilations, they MIGHT be...• ... and images probably are...• ... and the situation is different overseas. ARGH.• Best recommendation: waive all applicable rights.• http://pantonprinciples.org/

• “Linked data”• In essence, publishing data in such a way as to make it

easier for other people to work with.• For now, linked data = RDF

Open data here

• WisconsinView aerial/satellite photos: http://wisconsinview.org/

• Lakeshore Nature Preserve project• Oral histories• There’s probably more. What did I miss?

Open notebook science

Photo: mrbill, http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrbill/3483411540/

Opening the process• Experiment records have been kept in

notebooks on paper. Which is fine, but...• Where can you store them, and for how long?• How easy is it to find records from years back?• How auditable and complete are they?• How does this even WORK in collaborative science?

• So even lab notebooks are moving online.• Yes, in the teeth of “scooping” fears.• Additional functionality and ease of collaboration are

major drivers.• Extra attention doesn’t hurt either!

The table!Open... Source Access Data Notebook

Science

What?

What kinds?

How?

Software Journal literature Research and government data

Scientific process

GPL-style vs. BSD-style licensing

Green/GoldGratis/Libre

License copyrights to all

comers (GPL, BSD, etc.)

Open-access journals

Open-access repositories

Licenses

Waiving rights where applicableProducing “linked

data”

Web-based lab notebooks

Thank you!

This presentation is available under a Creative Commons 3.0 United States license.

All photographs from Flickr, via CC-BY licenses. If you use these slides, please keep the photo credits!

Points to ponder• What opportunities do these movements

present us?• ... to educate• ... to collect• ... to preserve• ... to help ourselves and our patrons?

• What obligations do we have?• ... to educate• ... to support• ... to collect• ... to preserve

• What actions should we be taking?

Photo: striatic, http://www.flickr.com/photos/striatic/2144933705/