Tag Archives: access

NZ considers changes to copyright law as part of promise to help end global ‘book famine’

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Most written works are not available in accessible formats, and this barrier affects about 168,000 New Zealanders.
from http://www.shutterstock.com, CC BY-NC-SA

Lida Ayoubi, Auckland University of Technology and Melanie Johnson, University of Auckland

The New Zealand parliament seems closer to adopting a bill to amend copyright legislation to make it easier for visually impaired people to access published works.

An estimated 90% of all written works published worldwide are not available in formats accessible to people with a print disability. This barrier affects an estimated 168,000 New Zealanders.

The 2013 Marrakesh Treaty, which New Zealand joined in 2017, would help end the “global book famine” by allowing access to more written works in formats such as Braille, large print or audio. Bringing the treaty into effect in New Zealand requires changes to the Copyright Act 1994, and the amendment bill is due to go through its final reading this week.



Read more:
Australia’s copyright reform could bring millions of books and other reads to the blind

Copyright law and the right to read

Currently, creating accessible formats from existing works is only possible with the permission of the copyright owner or if there are exceptions limiting the copyright owner’s rights. Combined with a lack of infrastructure and the high cost of producing accessible works, this has created a global “book famine” for visually impaired people.

This affects not only those who read for leisure but also students and researchers, especially in developing and least developed countries. This lack of access to books and other copyright material is a hurdle to the realisation of several human rights, including the right to education, access to information, the right to participate in culture and to enjoy scientific progress, as well as the rights to health and employment. This is reflected in the Marrakesh Treaty’s focus on human rights and equality for the visually impaired.

The treaty’s provisions are designed to address problems such as long waits for authorisation or accessible format copies from a copyright owner, unreasonable restrictions imposed on accessible formats, and barriers to cross-border exchange of available accessible works that often result in duplication of production efforts.

Access to copyright works and higher education

Australian research found that when universities provided their visually impaired students with access to essential or prescribed texts, students generally obtained readings late. For instance, only 50% of print disabled first-year students had access to prescribed textbooks before the semester started.

Some universities reported far more substantial delays. In such cases, students would receive their essential readings only very late in the semester or after the semester is over. The reasons for delays vary, with some students not notifying the university that they require assistance. Additionally, reading lists are often not finalised until the first week of semester and publishers fail to respond to requests to provide accessible texts in a timely manner.

Publishers generally require students to buy a print copy of the work before they will provide access to an electronic version. Some are willing to provide download links, while others, particularly in the United States, often prefer to mail disc copies. Sometimes works are only available as preprint versions, which require a considerable amount of editing before they can be provided to students. This is a drain on university resources.

Consequently, not all students who would benefit from accessible formats currently obtain them. This means their chances of demonstrating their full potential are often compromised.



Read more:
It’s designers who can make gaming more accessible for people living with disabilities

New Zealand’s Marrakesh Treaty implementation bill

The bill is part of a broader review of New Zealand’s copyright legislation to ensure “the copyright regime keeps pace with technological and market developments” since its last significant amendment in 2008. It expands the reach of section 69 of the Copyright Act 1994 that addresses the reproduction and distribution of accessible works.

One of the main changes is to broaden the scope of current exceptions and improve access for visually impaired New Zealanders. The bill also introduces measures to facilitate international sharing of accessible works. These changes help realise visually impaired people’s “right to read”.

A contentious issue for the implementation of the treaty in New Zealand and elsewhere is the so called “commercial availability test”. The test is currently a requirement in New Zealand for an “authorised entity” to make reasonable efforts to obtain an accessible copy at an ordinary commercial price. By far the cheapest, fastest and most convenient means of obtaining accessible format works is if they are available for sale through the normal channels.

But in the absence of easily available accessible copies, the test creates uncertainty and imposes an administrative burden on institutions that provide the visually impaired with accessible copies. This is why after hearing submissions on the bill, a select committee recommended the removal of the test.

The proposed changes to copyright legislation would allow people with a print disability to make accessible format copies or to receive those made by an authorised entity in New Zealand or elsewhere, without infringing copyright. While broadening the scope of the current exceptions, the bill has checks and balances in place that protect reproduced accessible formats, contrary to a misconception of allowing free-riding on copyright works.

This is of significance to university students as some may self-declare disabilities while others are reluctant to disclose an impairment. Universities emphasise that they provide a safe place for disclosure, but speedy provision of services remains an issue.

The increase in the availability of electronic texts has helped to meet needs, but it is not keeping pace with student demand and expectation. As part of an increasingly technology savvy student population, students with impairments now request electronic versions of texts and use technology to adapt them to their needs. Students no longer want enlarged or scanned material as this is much harder to manipulate. The amendments in the bill would enable them to create their own accessible formats, or source them without having to identify as print disabled.

Overall, the proposed law change is a positive step towards improving access to copyright works for visually impaired New Zealanders. It also helps New Zealand maintain its good global citizen status by allowing an exchange of accessible works with other Marrakesh Treaty members.The Conversation

Lida Ayoubi, Lecturer, Auckland University of Technology and Melanie Johnson, , University of Auckland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

What to believe in the new world of open access publishing

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Virginia Barbour, Australian National University

It’s never been easy for readers to know what to believe in academic research. The entire history of science publishing has been riddled with controversy and debate from its very beginning when Hobbes and Boyle, scientists at the Royal Society in London, argued over the scientific method itself.

Even a cursory glance at academic publishing since then shows articles contradicting each others’ findings, papers subsequently shown to contain half truths (even in the serious matter of clinical trials) and yet more that are simply fabricated. Shaky and controversial results have been a part of science since it began to be documented.

Enter a new apparent villain – “predatory open access” publishing, now claimed by some to be overwhelming the literature with questionable research. As highlighted in the recent documentary on Radio National, and subsequently discussed in The Conversation, there has been a proliferation of dodgy new journals and publishers who call themselves “open access” and who eagerly court academics to be editorial board members, to submit their articles and to attend and speak at conferences.

These activities have led to concern over whether any open access publications can be trusted. Librarians in institutions in Australia and elsewhere attempt to keep abreast of all these “predatory” journals and publishers.

In a more positive endeavour, an organisation of legitimate open access publishers (OASPA) has come together and they and other journal associations and the Directory of Open Access Journals have produced ways to assess journals.

Academic publishing has changed since the advent of the internet.

Although the extent of the problem is not known (and may even be exaggerated by ever-expanding blacklists), some academics still submit to questionable journals, newspapers give publicity to bizarre articles from them, and non-academic readers rightly wonder what on earth is going on.

It’s worth remembering how new this all is. Whereas scholarly publishing is 350 years old, it is only 25 years since the web began; academic online publishing followed about 20 years ago. Open access – a part of the wider open scholarship movement (which seeks to enhance integrity and good scholarship) – is barely 15 years old.

What we are witnessing is the oft-repeated story of what happens when any new technology appears. Alongside an explosion of opportunities for good, there will always be those that seek to exploit, such as these predatory publishers.

But just as no one ever assumed that everything in print was trustworthy, neither should that be the case for open access content. And in the end the content is what matters – whether delivered by open access, subscription publishing, or a printed document.

To complicate matters further, alongside this revolution in access, the academic literature itself is evolving apace with papers being put online before review and revisions of papers made available with peer review histories alongside.

Even the format of the academic paper is changing. Datasets or single figures with little explanation attached to them can now be be published. The concept of an academic paper that is a definitive statement of “truth” is finally being laid to rest.

It was never a realistic concept and arguably has led to much confusion about the nature of truth, especially in science. Science evolves incrementally. Each finding builds on evidence from before, some of which will stand up to scrutiny via replication, and some not.

As the amount of information available increases exponentially, the challenge for everyone is to learn how to filter and assess the information presented, wherever it is published.

For scientists, one way of deciding how important an article is has traditionally been which journal it has been published in. However, even prestigious journals publish work that is unreliable. Hence there are initiatives such as the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment which discourages judging papers only by where they are published.

For non-academic readers, understanding what to trust is even more challenging. Whether the article has been peer-reviewed is a good starting point.

Most important of all perhaps is the need for a modicum of common sense – the type of judgements we apply every day to claims about items in our daily lives: can I see the whole paper or am I just seeing an exerpt? How big was the study being reported? Do the claims seem sensible? Is the result backed up by other things I have read? And what do other experts in this area think of the research?

The Conversation

Virginia Barbour is Executive Officer, Australasian Open Access Support Group at Australian National University.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Posts for the Time Being

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I thought I’d post a quick update on what is currently happening with me and posts to my Blog. It is a short story really. I live in a town which is a massive tourist destination during the holiday season – especially at this time of year. What this means for me – being reliant on wireless access to the Internet – is real difficulty gaining Internet access. There are so many people in the area, using so many gadgets and the like, that the Internet is locked into a constant traffic jam. It is practically impossible to get Internet access most of the time. You do get the odd time where you can get access, but it is so slow that it is pointless to try and use it. For example – it takes minutes and minutes just for one page of the Blog to load.

I’ll keep trying to access the Net every so often, but it is likely I’ll be unable to post much for the next couple of weeks. There is good news – the number of tourists in the shopping centre here have diminished, which probably means we are heading back to some form of normality.

Feds say Apple must give access to Amazon and Barnes & Noble e-bookstores

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Gigaom

The Justice Department is calling on a federal judge to force Apple(s aapl) to allow competitors in the ebook market to provide prices and links to their e-bookstores within apps on Apple’s devices, a move that is likely to anger the iPhone maker and increase the stakes in an anti-trust investigation that has already produced a damning judgment against Apple in early July.

In a press release and court filing on Friday, the government set out a series of proposals to fix what it says are Apple’s “brazen” efforts to orchestrate price-fixing among major publishers.

The remedies would come in the form of a final judgment to be entered in a high-profile trial between Apple and the Justice Department that concluded in July when U.S. District Judge Denise Cote ruled that Apple had been the ringleader in a conspiracy with five publishers to increase prices and wrest control of the…

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Book Review: Phantoms on the Bookshelves, by Jacques Bonnet

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‘Phantoms on the Bookshelves,’ by Jacques Bonnet was translated from the French original by Sian Reynolds and has an introduction by James Salter. The copy I have is a Kindle edition. It was first published in Great Britain in 2010 by MacLehose Press. It is a relatively short book at 123 pages in length, so it won’t take too much to get through it.

Phantoms on the Bookshelves, by Jacques BonnetThe introduction to the book by James Salter is a good, brief read concerning the author of the book and his book collecting ways. It could easily describe me, though I have nowhere near as many books as Bonnet, even though I have thousands myself in traditional form and/or digital format. I see similarities between the description given of Bonnet by Salter and myself, with my far fewer volumes. I too struggle now to find room for them all, with my virtual bookshelves requiring expansion in the near future to accomodate my book collecting ways into the current century and digital age. Traditional books have long run out of room in this house, as I suspect they have in Bonnet’s apartment.

Bonnet is a man who loves books and his thoughts on what is normal in a home, the presence of many books, is something I can relate to. I also find myself in wonder when I see homes with no books, particularly in some of the circles in which I move or have moved. How can they get by without books? Mind you it is probably not as easy a situation to read (no pun intended – truly not) these days, with books now being able to be stored by the thousands on a home computer and/or on an external hard drive or two. Still, I have wondered this for many years and I think Bonnet would probably agree with me. Relating to others is made easier when discussing books for Bonnet and I find this an agreeable thing also. It is the way of Bibliophiles, whether we use that term or not (perhaps for some Bibliomaniac is a better term).

I did not find Bonnet’s chapter on cataloguing and organisation helpful at all, though I expect it would help some. This is probably because I have developed my own system which closely resembles that of the Dewey to almost certainly be called a Dewey system. The Bonnet decsription horrified me and I thought it would become far too confusing and disorienting for me. He is certainly right about the Internet making a major impact on libraries and the need to have as many books as he has in his collection. It is not only the storing of works on the World Wide Web, in the cloud and on other digital storage systems like computers, external drives, etc, where libraries are changing and/or have changed, but also in the cataloguing and organisation of books. I have a large number of books stored on digital devices and by digital means, but I also have access to far more over the Internet from vast libraries that I can access online. But I also have both offline and online digital methods for assisting me in cataloguing and organising my books, which I use as best I can and with great relief for being able to do so. Yet it boils down to individual choice and comfortableness, being able to manage these resources in a way that allows the individual to harness them to the greatest effect, which is indeed something of an indiviual matter and process.

The Bonnet method of reading will not be everyones cup of tea, but that’s OK too, because that is also a very individualistic thing. Bonnet likes lying down to read, I prefer sitting at a desk. Bonnet likes to underline and write in his books as he reads, I prefer to highlight and collate quotes via other media. There is no one rule for all, but many different rules for many different people. The thing is to retain what one reads in some way, that I think is the key to reading. It is certainly not a requirement to read each and every book from cover to cover, but to take a dip in each one to some extent and to achieve some purpose when doing so is required if you wish to say that you read your books and they aren’t just display items.

The manner in which Bonnet has collected his books is almost baffling to someone who has not done so in the same manner. He seems almost obsessed with completing lists and collections of books, of following every author/book line that comes up in what he reads or experiences. It seems any book mentioned must be obtained for his library. This is the way of a Bibliomaniac, that is for sure. His obsession with collecting ‘picture’ books is another seemingly crazed hobby which almost seems to be a driving force for him. I too collect books, but this insight into how another book lover and lover of reading goes about collecting his books is one that is beyond my experience. It is a fascinating world of book hunting and gathering if ever there was one. Something about one book leads to another which leads to another, or some conversation leads to a book which leads to another, etc.

Bonnet’s reflections upon his books shows someone who truly absorbs what he reads and imbibes the being of those written about. He seems to feel them, to know them, far better than any creator of them. Authors of books, whether fictional pieces or biographical/autobiographical works fade with the passing of time, if indeed a true reflection of them is left in the pages of the books they write or in the annals of history. However, those created and placed within the realms of literature remain the same and can be known almost completely. There are places to visit, whether real or ethereal, people to meet and to greet. Books bring a whole world to one’s home and experience, and even beyond that one travels into the realm of fictional lands and peoples. A plethora of experience that is only exaggerated when the library is swollen by multimedia resources. What an amazing world the library can become – is.

Buy this book at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Phantoms-Bookshelves-Jacques-Bonnet/dp/1590207599/

Website: Booki.sh

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Social networks and web applications are rapidly multiplying all over the web and it should come as no surprise that a large number of such sites are dedicated to books in one way or another – as well as being useful to those that read books, offering ways to save and share quotes, words, etc. At the BookShelf will be bringing these types of sites to the notice of its readers, as I think they can be of tremendous use and benefit. Some will be useful to most and maybe others to very few, but they are all useful to someone, with the possible odd exception of course.

Booki.sh is a site that allows you to store your ebook library in the cloud, meaning that you can access it wherever you are, provided you have Internet access and the necessary device to do so. Your device only needs a modern web browser in order to use Booki.sh. Booki.sh provides it own software, so it will work in your device in a similar way to an ebook reader (the website explains how to use the software when reading a book).

Do you really need Booki.sh? Well that is another question – if you have a Kindle for example, you probably do not as you already have your library handy (or a very large selection of it on your device) and an ebook reader. However, if you do not have an ebook reader as such on your device (lap top, etc), Booki.sh could be very handy and useful. Either way, it won’t hurt to have a look and decide for yourself.

For more, visit:
https://booki.sh/

Book Review: Currently Reading – Print is Dead, by Jeff Gomez

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I have been reading ‘Print is Dead – Books in our Digital Age,’ by Jeff Gomez. Having just read chapter two, ‘Us and Them,’ I must say that his point in that chapter is well made. The demise in traditional book sales has not been because ebooks have taken the world by storm – at least not at this stage – but because other areas of the digital world have. Generations of younger people have turned away from books in all their forms and have sought entertainment in other things, such as the Internet and video games, to name just a couple. It is reading itself that is being passed by, so the advent of the ebook is not that which is killing off the traditional book and by extension the bookseller/bookshop, but rather ‘dumber’ forms of entertainment.

Books will always be around in one form or another (at least I believe that), whether they remain as prolific as they now are is quite another thing, it is the habit of reading that may fall away dramatically and cause books to be cast aside – at least in the wider community. I think there will always be a group or community of diehard book readers, who eventually will have ebooks as their primary source of books and reading material. There are those who will not be lost entirely to less intellectual forms of entertainment, though perhaps some of these other forms of entertainment may play a role in the ‘reading’ of the future in the digital world (linked to videos, etc). Reading is a great skill that is being lost and the medium for ideas through the ages faces its greatest threat from a lack of it.

The next chapter, ‘newspapers are no longer news,’ deals with newspapers as a source of news and book reviews, or rather, how they are rapidly loosing their ascendency to online applications and tools. In a world that is rapidly changing and access to news as it happens online, newspapers are becoming a too infrequently updated source of news and information. Online access to news and events as they happen are so readily accessible, that the traditional source of news is fading away. As for book reviews, the avenues of discussion about books on the web via social networking, Blogs and the like, opens the opportunity for all to join the discussion. Book reviews in newspapers, like movie reviews, are opportunities for the reviewers to pontificate and/or push their own views onto a public unable to respond – online however the avenues of discussion are legion and varied. All may be involved – or not at all. The decision as to how one may be involved is left to the individual, which also translates to news stories in a similar manner. Interaction with the news and books has never been so simple and as rich an experience.

See also:
http://www.dontcallhome.com/books.html (Website of Jeff Gomez)
Podcast (Excerpts from the Book)
Google Books
Amazon

Changing the World: December 3 – Improving Disability Access

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The suggestion for today is about working to improve access for disabled people to facilities and services that other people have access to. This is a great cause and is one I support – though I don’t participate in the actual group being promoted in the book. I certainly don’t have any problem with the group being promoted, but do believe in improving access for disabled people.

A response to reading ‘365 Ways to Change the World,’ by Michael Norton

LIFE AT THE BOOKSHELF: A Life Around Books

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I have spent a lot of my time around books. I love books. I can’t have enough books – at least it certainly seems that way. I’m always on the lookout for books. I don’t buy a lot of new books these days, however, if there is a good one – well, I just have to buy it.

I’ve always read a lot. Early in life I probably read more out of necessity in order to pass subjects and exams. It wasn’t until I left school that I really got a passion for books. What spurred my passion for books was my growing interest in Christianity and my subsequent embrace of it. I just wanted to learn and to learn as much as I could. So I started to buy books

Somewhere along the track I became interested in reading books of other subjects as well, especially books to do with history. I also read novels, but for me to read a novel it has to have a great plot. One of my favourite authors is Tom Clancy, which probably gives you some idea of the type of novels I read.

Of course I collected books on horticulture (I trained as a horticulturist), cooking, computers, travel, wilderness and other areas that I was interested in. However my real passion in books has always been theological and historical.

At the moment my life is in a ‘treading water-like’ situation. I’m probably still another 6 months away from moving into another home to rent (I currently live in a caravan park in a cabin), so the vast majority of my books are in storage and I can’t get at them because they are quite some distance away and I don’t have a car. There probably isn’t a day that goes by that I wish I had access to some book or another. I am longing for the day when I’ll be able to make use of all my books again.

I’ve probably managed to collect another couple of boxes of books in the time I have been away from them and I am slowly accumulating a collection of them in the cabin. They are enough to get me by at this stage, but my various interests are crying out for the books to assist me in them.

I have begun to place a listing of the books I own on my web site at particularbaptist.com and will eventually add them to my Shelfari presence as well. A look at the list (which is nowhere near complete) soon gives an idea of the number of books I have.

See the list at:

http://www.particularbaptist.com/kevins/kevinslibrary.html

See my Shelfari Profile at:

http://www.shelfari.com/particularkev

I have also started accumulating books online at both the particularbaptist.com website and the Kevin’s Family – History Site. These two virtual libraries encapsulate the two main areas of my passion for books – theology and history.

It is for these two libraries (other than my own interest of course) that I am buying out of copyright theological and historical books. Gradually I am building up my collection of online books in these libraries, sharing my passion for books and the wealth in books with a much wider audience.

Visit the libraries at:

http://particularbaptist.com/library/libraryindex.html

http://particularbaptist.com/matthewshistory/library/articles.html

Not only do these libraries contain the works that I have collected and put online, they also have many links to others works that others have placed online. In short, these two virtual libraries have an enormous amount of resources in them – enough to keep the most avid reader going for a life time.

I have now started the ‘At The BookShelf’ Blog and the ‘Reformed Reading Group’ at Shelfari to provide another aspect to sharing my passion for books, especially in the two areas I have mentioned – theology and history. With these two latest sites I will be able to interact with visitors and discuss various books, what we have learnt, questions and issues raised, enjoy fellowship, etc. So I am really hoping that my visitors will join the Reformed Reading Group (I am thinking especially of Reformed Christians here obviously – though others are most welcome) and get involved in the discussion, as well as having visitors interacting via the comments provision here at ‘At The BookShelf.’

Visit the Reformed Reading Group at:

http://www.shelfari.com/groups/36946/about

What I intend to post here in the Blog are reviews of the books I have read and possibly some quotes from some of the books also. I will probably also be posting URLs for new books (old books) I post in the two virtual libraries also.

What else is left to say but please get involved at some of the sites I have mentioned? You won’t regret it.