Liquid+Books+-+Open+Content


 * Liquid Books: New forms of publishing - **

“Scan This Book!” by Kevin Kelly, // New York Times Magazine; // May 14, 2006 NY Times Kevin Kelly article on publising.pdf

** “In the universal library, no book will be an island. … **
“Turning inked letters into electronic dots that can be read on a screen is simply the first essential step in creating this new library. The real magic will come in the second act, as each word in each book is cross-linked, clustered, cited, extracted, indexed, analyzed, annotated, remixed, reassembled and woven deeper into the culture than ever before. In the new world of books, every bit informs another; every page reads all the other pages. In recent years, hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic amateurs have written and cross-referenced an entire online encyclopedia called Wikipedia. Buoyed by this success, many nerds believe that a billion readers can reliably weave together the pages of old books, one hyperlink at a time. Those with a passion for a special subject, obscure author or favorite book will, over time, link up its important parts. Multiply that simple generous act by millions of readers, and the universal library can be integrated in full, by fans for fans. … Once a book has been integrated into the new expanded library by means of this linking, its text will no longer be separate from the text in other books. … When books are deeply linked, you’ll be able to click on the title in any bibilography or any footnote and find the actual book referred to in the footnote. … At the same time, once digitized, books can be unraveled into single pages or be reduced further, into snippets of a page. These snippets will be remixed into reordered books and virtual bookshelves. … the universal library will encourage the creation of virtual “bookshelves” – a collection of texts, some as short as a paragraph, others as long as entire books, that form a library shelf’s worth of specialized information. And as with music playlists, once created, these “bookshelves” will be published and swapped in the public commons.”


 * Open content**, [analogous to "open source"] describes any kind of creative work published in a format that explicitly allows copying and modifying of its information by anyone, not exclusively by a closed organization, firm or individual. The largest open content project is [|Wikipedia]. (Quoted from Wikipedia)

"University Council Approves Open Access Plan: BU to create free archive of faculty research" by Art Jahnke and Jessica Ullian, Feb. 17, 2009: [] "Boston University took a giant step towards greater access to academic scholarship and research on February 11, when the University Council voted to [|support an open access system] that would make scholarly work of the faculty and staff available online to anyone, for free, as long as the authors are credited and the scholarship is not used for profit. //[|Click here] to download the full pdf."// “This vote sends a very strong message of support for open and free exchange of scholarly work,” says Hudson. “Open access means that the results of research and scholarship can be made open and freely accessible to anyone. It really has increased the potential to showcase the research and scholarship of the University in ways that have not been evident to people.” “**Open access is an irresistible tide**,” says David Ozonoff, a professor of environmental health at SPH and an editor-in-chief of //Environmental Health//. “The publishers see this. They’ve been trying to prevent it, but it’s impossible.”
 * Open Access:**

[|**http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/**] A list of colleges and universities worldwide whose faculty members have adopted an open access policy for their research.
 * ROARMAP (Registry of Open Access Repository Material Archiving Policies) :**

"MIT Professors Approve Campuswide Policy to Publish Their Scholarly Articles Free Online" __Wired Campus__, March 23, 2009 []


 * Activities:**
 * Go to: Connexions ([]) — global open-content repository started by Rice University. “A place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, //etc//. Anyone may view or contribute.” Search for an existing module on a subject of interest to you.


 * Examples of open content materials: **
 * Wikipedia: [|http://www.wikipedia.com]
 * Wikibooks: []
 * [|OpenCourseWare Consortium] — portal linking to free and openly licensed course materials from hundreds of universities worldwide
 * [|MIT OpenCourseWare] — free and openly licensed course materials from more than 1,800 MIT courses: []
 * [|OER Commons] — network of open teaching and learning materials, with ratings and reviews
 * [|Google Directory – Open Content]
 * [|OpenLearn] — free and open educational resources from The Open University
 * (Retrieved from "[]")