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Open Society Information
Programs Forum
OSI Center for Publishing Development
Budapest, 17 November 2000, Issue
57
This issue can also be
found at <www.osi.hu/cpd/spf/57_’00.html>
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In this issue:
Projects and Initiatives of the OSI/Soros Foundations Network
The
Digital Nations Project and Open Society Institute
The Books-in-Print Seminar at the Frankfurt Book Fair
The Balkan Association of Publishers
The Translation Project - competition results
East Translates East - competition results
New from CEU Press
Information Sector News
Questia: Online service for academic research
e-brary: The way to deal with copyrighted content
Free Software Foundation: A different view on software property
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Projects and Initiatives of the OSI/Soros Foundations Network
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THE DIGITAL NATIONS PROJECT AND OPEN SOCIETY INSTITUTE
'Digital Nations' is a research consortium that was launched this month by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab in conjunction with the Harvard Center for International Development (CID). The launch brought together potential members from both the private and the not-for-profit sector, as well as governments from across the world. The Digital Nations Research Consortium has been created to bring new partners to the Media Lab in an effort to develop new 'socially' focused technologies and applications. This unprecedented initiative is ambitious in its aims to foster projects that will address the impact that technology can have on current major social issues such as improving health care and education and empowering communities. The main research themes include transforming learning and education, multicultural computing, learning communities, rethinking health care, new economies and new strategies.
The Media Lab has traditionally worked with corporate partnerships and consequently the question of how to partner with governments or, to use their term, 'nations' is an issue they are grappling with. They are also seeking partners from the not-for-profit sector although they still need to develop their vision of how this could work further. I believe that the involvement of the not-for-profit sector is important. Whilst some of the projects carried out so far successfully became the exemplary projects they were intended to be, on the whole the Media Lab students and indeed the projects themselves would benefit greatly from an 'on the ground' perspective'. Non-profit organisations like the OSI with its varied experience and local networks would add a valuable dynamic to not only the Media Labs projects but also in shaping their research agenda.
One of the greater values for the not-for-profit sector potentially lies in the ability to partner with technological companies (e.g., Motorola, Compaq, IBM, Phillips, etc.). Such partnerships would give non-profit organisations the freedom to stimulate technological developments for their concerns whilst luring the technology development companies into projects they would not normally invest in. Digital Nations is a bold and welcomed effort by the Media Lab. Its focus on the development of 'socially oriented' applications of technology and the partnership with Harvard to work on the research and policy implications, is a first. Symbolically, the Digital Nations initiative signifies a new undercurrent emerging both in philanthropy and in the corporate sector alike and should be seen in that context. One can only hope that the example set by the Media Lab in taking developing technologies for the non-traditional, 'non-commercial' markets seriously will spark a series of valuable initiatives and model partnerships in the government, commerce, organisation triangle.
More information on Digital Nations is available from the MIT web site <http://www.media.mit.edu>
Stephanie Hankey <shankey@osi.hu> Special Projects Developer, OSI Electronic Publishing Development Program, <www.osi.hu/ep>
THE BOOKS-IN-PRINT (BiP) SEMINAR AT THE FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR
The seminar “Books in Print Agencies in Central/Eastern Europe and Central Asia” was organised jointly by the Open Society Institute – Center for Publishing Development (OSI CPD) and Metapress Ltd. (a Warsaw-based advisory company specialising in publishing and multi-media industries). The event took place on October 20, 2000 at the Frankfurt Book Fair. 40 participants from 25 countries of Europe, Central Asia and the USA attended.
Darius Cuplinskas of OSI chaired the meeting following the following agenda: Grzegorz Boguta of Metapress described the situation with book information systems in Central/Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Francis Bennett of BookData spoke about book information standards in the Internet age, a topic also discussed by Brian Green who presented the new standard for communicating book information (ONIX International). Bakur Sulakauri of Bakur Sulakauri Publishers, Georgia reported on the situation in the Caucasian region, especially Georgia. A model for a successful BiP operation was proposed by Simon Wratten, while Peter Dmochowski Lipski of Metapress described his vision of the shift from Books in Print to Book Information Systems. Ashley Shemain of Xerox proposed a plan of business solutions for the Internet Age. The Discussions that followed the reports showed the importance of access to book information and its reproduction.
The principal outcome of the seminar was the conviction, shared by all of the speakers and the majority of the participants, that the only way to build and sustain Book Information System agencies in the region is to organise commercially viable enterprises. A set of steps starting with pilot projects and business plan development efforts should be undertaken. One of the tasks that was agreed upon in principle is to launch a WWW-based “Book Information Club”, i.e. a multilingual site for the region’s professionals for exchanging ideas and information as well as an education platform.
If you have any interest to co-operate on this project please contact Dr. Grzegorz Boguta.
Dr. Grzegorz Boguta<gb@metapress.com.pl> President, Metapress Ltd, <http://www.metapress.com.pl>
E PLURIBUS UNUM: PRESENTATION OF BALKAN ASSOCIATION OF PUBLISHERS
"Diversity is not ground for disintegration" was the slogan of the Conference for Reconstruction of Cultural Co-operation in the Balkans held in Sarayevo in 1999. One of results of this conference was the decision to create a joint organisation of publishers in the region. In the year 2000 the Balkan Association of Publishers (BAP) was founded by independent private publishers from the former Republic of Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, and Albania. The main goal of the BAP was defined as intensifying activities in joint cultural and business co-operation. One of the first steps of the BAP was creation the corporate site at www.balkankult.com, which has been designated to become the informational portal for the publishing field in the region.
The BAP’s first international presentation took place in Frankfurt. Taking into account the importance of the BAP mission in the Balkan region, the Open Society Institute - Center for Publishing Development (OSI CPD) decided to support the visit of BAP members (publishers from Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia and Yugoslavia) to the Frankfurt Book Fair. The goals of this visit were to establish contacts with their colleagues outside of the region, to take a marketing survey and launch new publishing projects. The trip was an important step towards international recognition of the Association.
For more information please visit <www.balkankult.com>
TRANSLATION PROJECT COMPETITION RESULTS
BULGARIA
(Average grant per author’s sheet: $93)
CROATIA
(Average grant per author’s sheet: $200)
ESTONIA
(Average grant per author’s sheet: $189)
LATVIA
(Average grant per author’s sheet: $248,33)
ROMANIA – first round of the Translation project competition
EAST TRANSLATES EAST COMPETITION RESULTS
POLAND
(Average grant per author’s sheet: $173)
'The Paradoxes of Unintended Consequences'
Edited by: Lord Dahrendorf, Yehuda Elkana, Aryeh Neier, William Newton-Smith,
Istvan Rév
417 pages
ISBN: 963-9241-09-1 Hardback
This book is a Festschrift dedicated to George Soros.
Please note CEU Press's e-mail has changed address:ceupress@ceu.hu
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Information Sector News
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QUESTIA: ONLINE SERVICE FOR ACADEMIC RESEARCH
Questia is a company that creates online service to provide access to the full text of thousands of books, journals and periodicals, as well as tools to easily use this information. The Questia service will enable millions of college students to research and compose their papers at any time, from any connected corner of the world.
Questia’s goal is to provide a service that will transform the way in which academic research is done. The Questia service enables professionals and students to search, access and interact with thousands of important books and journals through an Internet connection. The Questia service will be live in early 2001 with at least 50,000 of the most valued volumes in the liberal arts from the 20th and 21st centuries (not including textbooks). An entire collection will be searchable by word, phrase or concept so that, users can instantly find the most relevant paragraphs. It will be possible to compose and save papers online. Footnotes and bibliographies will be hyperlinked across books and journals, enabling you to seamlessly consult several books in seconds.Anyone can search Questia to locate books and journals free of charge, but to use the resources and service users must subscribe.
For more information visit the following web site: <http://www.questia.com>
e-BRARY: THE WAY TO DEAL WITH COPYRIGHTED CONTENT
Why should copyrighted content on the Internet be hidden? Currently, Internet users access content of value on the web in one of two ways: through paid subscriptions or by purchasing sight-unseen. Both methods restrict content exposure. e-brary’s proprietary technology tries to maximise content exposure by allowing unrestricted viewing access while prohibiting unpaid reproduction (pasting, printing, and downloading).
ebrary.com aims to enable publishers to enable them to maintain copyright protection of their content on the Internet and to provide Internet users with the tools to research, analyse, and acquire copyright-protected information.
Thanks to the e-brary users can view content true to its original physical format with no restrictions, pay to securely download whole documents to disk or into e-book readers, pay to have documents printed on-demand and delivered, as well as purchase books and documents from one of the e-brary partners.
For more information please visit: <http://www.ebrary.com>
FREE SOFTWARE FOUNDATION: DIFFERENT VIEW ON SOFTWARE PROPERTY
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is dedicated to eliminating restrictions on copying, redistribution, understanding, and modification of computer programs. The ultimate goal is to provide free software to do all of the jobs computer users want to do, and thus make proprietary software obsolete. The FSF does this by promoting the development and use of free software in all areas of computing. In contrast to those organisations that distribute whatever free software happens to be available, the Free Software Foundation concentrates on development of new free software, and on forming that software into a coherent system to eliminate the need to use proprietary software.
The GNU Project was conceived in 1983 as a way of bringing back the co-operative spirit that prevailed in the computing community in its early days, as well as to make co-operation possible once again by removing the obstacles to co-operation imposed by the owners of proprietary software. By the 1980s, almost all software was proprietary, which means that it had owners who forbid and prevent co-operation by users and thus necessitated the GNU Project. Since its creation the FSF developed a completely free software system named "GNU" that is upwardly compatible with Unix. The word "free'' above pertains to freedom, not price. The GNU software has three specific freedoms attached to its use. Firstly, the freedom to copy the program and give it away to friends and co-workers; secondly, the freedom to change the program by having full access to source code; thirdly, the freedom to distribute an improved version and thus help build the community.
For more information - and free non-pirate software - please visit <http://www.gnu.org/fsf/fsf.html>
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Recommended Reading
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- Bell, David, and Kennedy, Barbara M. (editors):
The Cyberculture’s Reader.
London, New York: Routledge, 2000. - 768 p.
It is a gathering of articles written by well-known authors that are founders
of Internet studies. Among them Michale Benedict, Shawn Wilbur, Arthur and Marilouise
Krokers and others. This book covers all topics related to Cyberculture issues
and beyond.
- Dyer-Witheford, Nick : Cyber-Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High-Technology
Capitalism.
Univ of Illinois Press. - 415 p.
In this book Nick Dyer-Witheford has synthesised the seemingly incomprehensible
theories of the so-called 'information society,' as well as of 'cyber-space'.
He shakes loose the stranglehold of myths that fortify their existence from
above and reminds us of its appropriation by labouring subjects who resist the
ubiquitous oppression of global capital.
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Descriptions and projects of Open Society Institute information programs can be found at their websites:
Center for Publishing Development www.osi.hu/cpd
Network Internet Program www.soros.org/internet
Network Library Program www.osi.hu/nlp
Open Society Information Programs Forum is published by the OSI Center for Publishing Development in collaboration with the OSI Network Library Program.
Archive of back issues: <www.osi.hu/cpd/forum.html>
Contact person: Mykhailo Minakov <mminakov@osi.hu>
Requests to be added to and removed from the mailing list: Monika Horvath <mhorvath@osi.hu>
You can also contact us at:
Center for Publishing Development
Open Society Institute
1397 Budapest
PO Box 519
Hungary
e-mail <cpd@osi.hu>
tel (36 1) 327 3014
fax (36 1) 327 3042
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