For the past two years, Catherine Mitchell, Director, Publishing, California Digital Library, has been involved in an effort to coordinate the services of the library and University Press in order to better support and manage the University of California’s scholarly output. The goal of the initiative—the University as Publisher—is to help the university reclaim its core intellectual asset (i.e., the knowledge it produces) and assert itself more powerfully in the marketplace of scholarly communication. In the process, the university shores up its values, and its value.
“Despite the daunting complexity of the task, universities must take responsibility for managing their own scholarly output or risk losing control of that core intellectual capital,” she says. “If we don’t, someone else will. And it won’t be pretty. We’re talking about our institutions’ major asset.
“If we miss the boat on this, we hand off opportunities to partner with our faculty around issues of intellectual property, curation and preservation standards, and transformative models of scholarly communication. We simply become the ‘buyer.’ And, we risk getting locked into untenable licensing agreements in order to gain or regain access to the very research that our own faculty are producing.”
Nigel Robertson on 18 Aug 12Article from John Egenes at Otago Uni on remix culture. "The internet and our digital convergence are rapidly transforming long-held views regarding the traditional relationship between performer and audience ("creator" / "consumer"). This change is giving a new voice to the audience, literally bringing them into the mix. With unprecedented access to the creative process, and with an audience for their creations, consumers of music are also its producers, and are reshaping concepts of creativity, individuality, and intellectual property. This paper examines fundamental shifts in the way the "Folk Process" works within this context. Remix culture, once a bastion of beat-driven dance mashups, is expanding to include all styles of music, film, theatre and art. I will argue that its long-term significance lies in the notion that it blurs lines between the traditionally separate roles of creator and consumer, and challenges long-held concepts of intellectual property and copyright. Over the protests of many traditional folk musicians and devotees, folk music is entering this new digital arena, where the Folk Process is changing from gradual to immediate, from slow to rapid, adapting to fit the new digital paradigm."
