A stealth attack on U.S. freedoms—intellectual, academic, and personal—came to a halt in early April, at least for the time being, when quick action by librarians restored the term abortion to the search function of a health database.
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Section 108 Study Group Issues Report on Copyright Exceptions for Libraries Andrew Albanese - 04/02/2008
The Section 108 Study Group has delivered its long-awaited report, but it remains unclear how quickly, or if, the group's carefully-worded, conditioned recommendations for updating the Copyright Act will ever make it into law.
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OverDrive Breaks the iPod Barrier for Downloadable Audio Norman Oder - 03/19/2008
For years, librarians and patrons have complained that the most popular digital audio player, the iPod, is incompatible with the Windows Media Audio (WMA) files, the format for library downloadable audio titles. Now OverDrive will offer at least 3000 titles—about 15 percent of its catalog—in MP3 format, which means compatibility with nearly every MP3 player and mobile phone, including iPods.
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Supreme Court Declines To Hear Orphan Works Case Andrew Albanese - 01/16/2008
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal of Kahle v. Ashcroft, brought by Internet Archive and Open Content Alliance founders Brewster Kahle and Rick Prelinger in 2003, which challenged the constitutionality of the current copyright regime.
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Congress Backs NIH Access Policy, But Publishers Resist Andrew Albanese - 07/23/2007
After two ineffective years of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) policy that requested researchers deposit copies of their final papers in PubMed Central, both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate have included provisions in their 2008 appropriations bills that would require deposit of NIH-funded researchers’ final papers within one year of publication. But a roadblock may await.
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Google Scan Plan Expands, Gaining the 12 CIC Universities Andrew Albanese - 06/06/2007
Two members of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation were already part of Google's digitization initiative, but the number of participating libraries has now jumped from 15 to 25.
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