Acting quickly, Germany's Prometheus image archive launched a special OA collection, Das digitale Historische Archiv Köln, to host and protect digital copies of documents from the Köln (Cologne) city archives, which collapsed on March 3. The new archive is calling for help in collecting documents on the history of Cologne.
The Creative Campus Initiative is a project by several UK universities to organize activities for the Cultural Olympiad, inspired by the London 2012 Olympics. The proposal includes the "creation of a lasting and open-access repository of new digital content and evaluation and audience reception research associated with the Cultural Olympiad".
Stuart Weibel, Are Data Repositories the New Institutional Repositories?, Weibel Lines, March 3, 2009. Comments on the future of data repositories and data curation, including the NSF DataNet solicitation.
The presentations from The Changing Landscape of Scholarly Communication in the Digital Age (College Station, Texas, February 11-13, 2009) are now online. (Thanks to Charles Bailey.) See also our past posts on the conference (1, 2, 3).
Opening Access to Knowledge in Southern African Universities is a new report published by the Southern African Regional Universities Association.
On March 5, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) became the fifth co-sponsor of the Conyers bill, and the first to add her name since the bill was re-introduced on February 3. She's also the first co-sponsor from outside the House Judiciary Committee.
Allyson Mower and Lisa Chaufty, Do something no one has imagined: The 2008 SPARC Digital Repositories meeting, College & Research Libraries News , March 2009. (Thanks to Garrett Eastman.)
Michael Eisen, John Conyers Tries [and Fails] to Explain His Position, It is NOT Junk , March 7, 2009. Excerpt: PS: Mike also has an abridged or concise version of this response at the Huffington Post. Also see my own response to Conyers.
Cian O’Donnell, The Price of Knowledge, EUSci , January 2009. Scroll to p. 12. (Thanks to Neuronism.) An introduction to OA.
Stevan Harnad, Rep. John Conyers Explains his Bill H.R. 801 in the Huffington Post, Open Access Archivangelism , March 7, 2009. Excerpt: PS: Also see my own response to Conyers' defense of his bill.
The EC has set up a six-member panel to evaluate the European Research Council (ERC). From the February 24 announcement: Comments If you recall, the European Research Council (ERC) launched in February 2007, having already pledged to adopt an OA mandate in December 2006. It's the only funding agency I know which committed to OA before its own launch.