The ALA Washington Office has released digital videos of the Panel Discussion on Life after the Google Book Search Settlement at ALA Annual.

Here's an excerpt from the panel announcement:

The ALA Washington Office is hosting the ALA ad hoc Google Task Forces' breakout session titled "Panel Discussion on Life after the Google Book Search Settlement (GBS)" which will explore the possible court rulings – approval, denial or permutation there in – and how libraries would be impacted.. . .

Jonathan Band, intellectual property attorney and counsel for the ALA, will lead the discussion and pose questions to an expert group of panelists. Invited panelists include a representative from Google (Johanna Shelton-confirmed), a professor from the New York University Law School (James Grimmelmann-confirmed), a representative from the U.S. Copyright Office and a librarian from a GBS participating library.

Springer will offer new open access science, technology, and medicine (STM) journals.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Springer is expanding its open access offering to all disciplines. SpringerOpen will cover all disciplines within the science, technology and medicine (STM) fields and will be offered in cooperation with BioMed Central. The entire content of SpringerOpen journals—including research articles, reviews, and editorials—are fully and immediately open access, and are accessible to anyone with an internet connection. No subscription is needed.

"We are seeing an increasing interest from our authors and from funders in all areas for open access publishing options and have responded to a need in the current market," said Wim van der Stelt, EVP Business Development, Springer. "We are happy to serve our authors and editorial boards with the publishing options they want and are also pleased to supply universities, research institutions and our other patrons with the ability to use this content online freely and conveniently."

SpringerOpen journals are e-only journals. Springer is committed to delivering high-quality articles and ensuring rapid publication as with its traditional journals, from online submission systems and in-depth peer review to an efficient, author-friendly production process. The final articles are not only published in a timely manner on Springer's online information platform SpringerLink, but are also distributed to archives such as PubMed Central and to institutional repositories as requested.

SpringerOpen journals are published under the Creative Commons Attribution license, which facilitates the open distribution of copyrighted work. According to this license, Springer will not reserve any exclusive commercial rights. The journals ask the authors to pay an article-processing charge, in accordance with market standards.

Dan S. Wallach, Associate Professor at Rice University's Department of Computer Science, has made an eprint of "Rebooting the CS Publication Process" available.

Here's an excerpt:

Many computer science academics have been grousing about failures in our publication process. This paper catalogs many of the specific complaints that are raised and proposes some radical new solutions based on the assumption that, by eliminating physical paper entirely and going with a centralized system to manage papers, we can rethink the entire process: paper submission, revision and publication. Furthermore, having all of the metadata standardized and easily available, ranking algorithms can be easily conceived to aid in tenure cases and departmental rankings.

In June 1989, I launched PACS-L, a LISTSERV mailing list. PACS-L was one of the first library-oriented mailing lists, and, at the time, it was unusual in that it had a broad subject focus (public-access computer systems in libraries, such as online catalogs) rather than a narrow focus on a specific library automation system. Although PACS-L's greatest contribution may have been in raising librarians' awareness of the importance and potential of the then fledgling Internet, it was also the platform on which my initial scholarly digital publishing efforts were based.

In August 1989, I began my scholarly digital publishing efforts, launching one of the first e-journals on the Internet, The Public-Access Computer Systems Review. This journal, if it was published today, would be called a "libre" open access journal since it was freely available, allowed authors to retain their copyrights, and had special copyright provisions for noncommercial use.

Aside from Public-Access Computer Systems News (also "libre" open access), my subsequent digital publications, such as the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, were "gratis" open access until 2004, when all new versions of existing publications and new publications became "libre" open access under various versions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

To date, my major open access publications have been:

• The Public-Access Computer Systems Review, founder and Editor-in-Chief, 37 issues, 1989-1996.
• Public-Access Computer Systems News, co-founder and co-editor, 39 issues, 1990-1992.
• Library-Oriented Lists and Electronic Serials, 25 versions, 1990-1994.
• "Network-Based Electronic Publishing of Scholarly Works: A Selective Bibliography," 26 versions, 1995-1996.
• Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, 77 versions, 1996-present.
• Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog, over 500 posts, 2001-present.
• DigitalKoans, over 3,000 posts, 2005-present.
• Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography, 4 versions, 2005-present.
• Google Books Bibliography, 6 versions, 2005-present.
• Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals, published by the Association for Research Libraries, 2005.
• Tout de Suite Series, (Author's Rights, Tout de Suite and Institutional Repositories, Tout de Suite) 2008-present.
• Institutional Repository Bibliography, 2 versions, 2009-present.
• Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography, 1 version, 2010.

Here are some use statistics for selected publications:

• There were over 4.2 million Gopher or Web file requests for The Public-Access Computer Systems Review files from January 1994 through December 2006 (LISTSERV use data is not available. Neither is Web data after December 2006.)
• There were over 9.5 million Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography Web file requests from October 30, 1996 though December 31, 2009.
• There were over 399,000 Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals Web file requests from March 3, 2005 though December 31, 2009.
• There were over 25.6 million Digital Scholarship Web file requests from April 20, 2005 though December 31, 2009 by over 5.1 million visitors from 225 countries. This includes over 3.2 million Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography Web file requests and over 370,000 Open Access Bibliography Web file requests.

For a chronology of my open access publishing efforts, see "A Look Back at 21 Years as an Open Access Publisher."

The International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) has updated and reissued its "Statement on the Global Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Consortial Licenses."

Here's an excerpt:

The ICOLC is reissuing its Statement on the Global Economic Crisis to update information providers on the state of library and library consortia budgets in 2010. The updates below reinforce the ICOLC Statement in three substantial ways.

1. ICOLC did not overestimate the severity of cuts to library and library consortia funding levels in its original Statement. Furthermore, we believe the worst may still be before us, as US state governments suffer the loss of stimulus funds and continued weak regional economies. All parts of the world are facing negative economic repercussions from the European debt crisis. The need for pricing restraint and options remains paramount.
2. Fifty ICOLC member groups from around the world have participated in an anonymous survey to measure 2009 to 2010 price changes from over 30 major vendors and publishers of electronic databases and journals. This survey reveals that 38% of the price changes provided price control in the form of 1% increases or less. Seven percent (7%) of the price changes provided price reductions. We wish to commend those suppliers who have worked with libraries and consortia to contain prices. However, significant room for improvement remains. Some suppliers have done a much better job of containing prices than others. We call upon the full range of suppliers to show price restraint in 2010-2011 to enable customers to sustain as many information resource licenses as possible.
3. We take this opportunity to highlight the added potential negative impact of exclusivity on prices, as well as access. A new Principle 3 on page 3 of this document expresses the strongly held belief of ICOLC members that, over the long-term, multiple distribution channels for licensed content provide the most affordable and suitable options for access across diverse library communities.

The Swiss National Library has launched eBooks on Demand.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Swiss National Library (NL) now offers a digitisation on request service for out of copy-right books. This new paid service is known as "eBooks on Demand" (EOD). The NL already lists more than 100,000 books available for digitisation, which can be provided as a PDF to customers. . . .

To date, more than 100,000 books (mainly older publications, since only they are not under copyright) are available on request in digitised form, and can be delivered to users as an e-mail attachment, or by post on a CD.

Such works are marked in the online catalogue Helveticat (www.nb.admin.ch/helveticat) with the EOD symbol, which serves as a link to the order form. Submitting a form triggers an invoice; once this is paid, the reader receives the eBook. On request, for a small supplement, a paperback may also be supplied.

"eBooks on Demand" is a project of the NL and over 20 other libraries in ten European countries (www.books2ebooks.eu).

Information Today has published "Interview with Sarah Pritchard: The Changing Face of Academic Presses." Pritchard is the University Librarian at Northwestern University.

Here's an excerpt:

Q: The model that many advocate for OA books is making the text freely available online but sell the print version, so that etext will drive print sales. Do you see it as a viable model for NUP [Northwestern University Press]?

A: Absolutely, I see that as a very logical model, and I would envisage us moving to that model before we move to a totally OA environment. By the way, we are currently in the process of moving one of our journals to OA, which we are very excited about . . . TriQuarterly.

Daniel J. Gervais has self-archived "The Google Book Settlement and the TRIPS Agreement" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

The proposed amended settlement in the Google Book case has been the focus of numerous comments and critiques. This "perspective" reviews the compatibility of the proposed settlement with the TRIPS Agreement and relevant provisions of the Berne Convention that were incorporated into TRIPS, in particular the no-formality rule, the most-favored nation (MFN) clause, national treatment obligations, and the so-called three-step test, which constrains the ability of WTO Members to provide new exceptions and limitations to copyright rights.

BroadbandBreakfast.com has released a digital video of the Intellectual Property Breakfast Club's the Google Book Search Settlement and E-Book Licensing session on May 11, 2010.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The panelists included:

• Jonathan Band, Counsel, Library Copyright Alliance
• Michael Capobianco, Vice President, Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America
• Sherwin Siy, Deputy Legal Director, Public Knowledge

Cynthia S. Arato, a Partner at Macht, Shapiro, Arato & Isserles, has sent an eighteen-page memo on the Google Books Settlement to the Open Book Alliance that summarizes "the objections and argument that we lodged against the proposed settlement of the 'Google Books' lawsuit on behalf of leading foreign publishing and authors' associations, foreign publishers, and foreign authors."

Here's an excerpt:

Numerous provisions of the proposed Google Books settlement would, if approved, violate the treaty obligations of the U.S. For this reason, and because of its myriad other defects, the settlement should not be approved by the court. If the settlement is approved, it may give rise to legal action against the U.S. before an international tribunal and will certainly expose the U.S. to diplomatic stress.