Evergreen 1.4

It has been nearly one month since I came back to school for my final term in the MLIS program. I have purposely front-loaded my schedule so that I can get as many assignments out of the way in the first half.
Because of this, I’ve missed a few things. Notably, the release of Evergreen 1.4 [...]

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Canadian DMCA Still in Play

Today’s Speech from the Throne didn’t contain a direct reference to “copyright reform”. However, it did state that “our government will also attend to the other important priorities that it set out in the speech from the throne to open the 40th Parliament.” That previous speech did, in fact, include DMCA-like “copyright reform” as a [...]

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“We’re kind of a recession sanctuary”

Today’s Globe and Mail contains this story about Canadian public libraries during the economic downturn, titled “A new chapter begins for libraries as economy sinks”
“Crowds flock in, not for musty books, but for free CDs, DVDs, Internet access — and help finding a job”
“At the Toronto Public Library, the biggest in the country with 99 [...]

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Speech from the Throne Tomorrow

Tomorrow, a new Parliamentary session will open for Canada’s 40th government. The Speech from the Throne that will kick things off will be mostly about the state of the economy and what the government plans to do about it.
Among the billions of dollars of promised spending, I’ll be looking to see if this Speech from [...]

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Audio from Access 2008 is now available

I just checked the Program page for the Access 2008 conference and it now includes audio files of each of the talks.

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Whitehouse.gov moves to a CC license

Michael Geist has posted a comparison between the fine print on the new whitehouse.gov website, the content of which is either in the public domain or under a Creative Commons license, and the Canadian Prime Minister’s web site.
For the White House’s new copyright policy:
Pursuant to federal law, government-produced materials appearing on this site are not [...]

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Layoffs at OLPC

Nicholas Negroponte has posted a grim message on the OLPC Wiki:
Like many other nonprofits that are facing tough economic times, One Laptop per Child must downsize in order to keep costs in line with fewer financial resources. Today we are reducing our team by approximately 50% and there will be salary reductions for the remaining [...]

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Ed Felton and Co.’s 2009 Predictions

Ed Felton and Friends have posted their predictions for 2009. The first one is unchanged from last year. Among the 36 others there are many relating to open source software and web 2.0:
(6) Questions over the enforceability of free / open source software licenses will move closer to resolution.
(28) Facebook will be sold for $4 [...]

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Back to real life

I’m back from a week in Jamaica. The Missus and I went down for a wedding and had a great time. Now we’re back and being hit with snow and the realization that I’m leaving to finish my MLIS in six days’ time. Time flies when you’re having fun.
It looks like we missed a lot [...]

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