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The report Harnessing Openness to Improve Research, Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (A Report by the Digital Connections Council of the Committee for Economic Development Committee, 2009 ISBN #0-87186-184-7) has some very relevant sections dealing with Open Access and Open Data in the context of higher education and the research process: Chapter 5. Openness in Higher Education: Changes in Research a. Resistance to Greater Openness b. Openness and Open-Access Journals c. Digital Repositories d. Educating Faculty Members on Their Intellectual Property Rights e. Openness and Commercial Support of Research f. Access to Government-Funded Research Results g. Openness and University Libraries h. Openness and Academic Presses i. Openness and Technology Transfer Of particular interest to those who - perhaps at a more general level - are working on getting better access to government funded research , are the following recommendations on this particular issue: f. Access to Governme...

Two books have recently been published on open source technology for education: Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning (2009) George Siemens, Peter Tittenberger, University of Manitoba. 61p. Free-as-in-beer, creative commons license. Wiki for book . Open Educational Resources: Conversations in Cyberspace (2009) Edited by Susan d'Antoni and Catriona Savage, UNESCO. 172p. 12 Euro!! [ OK, if UNESCO wants to sell dead-tree books, fine I guess, but they definitely should be giving away the digital versions of the books too. ] These new releases both deal with Open Educational Resources (OER). For more in OER, see the Resources list below. The tables of contents of these two books are farther below. Resources: Open Educational Resources (Wikipedia entry) Open Educational Resource Commons Open Educational Resources (OER) and Libraries (2009) Paula J. Hane. InfoToday Open Educational Resources in India’s national development (2009) MSV Kumar. Open Learning: The Journal of Ope...

A collection of excellent Open Access papers (somewhat Germany/EU-oriented, but with some good international and canonical content) has just been published: Open access: opportunities and challenges: - A handbook (PDF). 2008. The European Commission and the German Commission for UNESCO, translated from the original German edition published by the German Commission for UNESCO. Its table of contents: Chapter 1: Definition and Origin of Open Access The Concept of Open Access. Norbert Lossau Open Access – A Historical Survey. Peter Schirmbacher Chapter 2: An Introduction to Three Publication Models The Edoc-Server at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin: An Example of an Open Access Repository. Susanne Dobratz The New Journal of Physics as an Example of Open Access Journals. Eberhard Bodenschatz The Example of a Hybrid Model: Springer Open Choice. Jan Velterop Chapter 3: Implementing Open Access Models Financing Open Access Models. Stefan Gradmann Open Access and (German) Copyright. Karl-N...

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting discussion on the increasing convergence of university libraries and IT organizations. It is a Q&A session with Eugene Spencer, an independent consultant to U.S. colleges. The discussion describes possible mergers of university IT and library organizations. I think one of the important questions to many of the people concerned, is which of the two cultures will dominate in the new structure? I am aware of examples in Canada where the CIOs of universities have been librarians.