The latest episode (March 3, 2009) of Radio Berkman is an interview by David Weinberger with Peter Suber on OA. (Thanks to Open Education News.)

Heather West, Sen. Lieberman to Congress: Free the CRS Reports, PolicyBeta, March 4, 2009. See also our past pasts on CRS or Joe Lieberman.

On February 27, in conjunction with signing the Berlin Declaration, the University of Salamanca adopted a new OA policy. The policy mandates OA through the university's IR (to be launched soon) for doctoral dissertations, master's theses, and publications resulting from research funded by the university. If you know more, please contact me.

Ian Davis, Why Open Data Is More Important than Open Source, Internet Alchemy, March 4, 2009.

JISC, 20,000 photos from 150 years of polar exploration available online, press release, March 4, 2009.

The Biolibrarian Proposal to create "new positions at university libraries around the world" to "act as a liason between researchers and [biological] databases to facilitate retrieval of information and entry of curated information by local researchers", starting with the University of Oslo. (Thanks to Francis Ouellette.) Here's the OA angle: A survey on the proposal is also available.

Bryn Nelson, Something wiki this way comes, Nature, March 4, 2009. (Thanks to Garrett Eastman.) See also our past post on Sage.

The University of Rochester has released an alpha version of its new repository software, irplus. From the announcement: See also our past posts on the study that led to the development of this software.

Interagency Working Group on Digital Data, Harnessing the Power of Digital Data for Science and Society, report to the National Science and Technology Council, January 2009. See also the full report. (Thanks to Clifford Lynch.) See also our past post on the IWGDD. The recommendations were also discussed at the National Academies' Board on Research Data and Information meeting, which we blogged about previously.

Jon Marcus, Publishers struggle to cope with open-access tide, Times Higher Education, March 5, 2009. Comments. It's hard to find an interpretation of "Boston University has become the first major US higher education institution to post its academics' research online" that would make it an accurate statement. Dozens of IRs for U.S. institutions are listed on OpenDOAR or ROAR.

The Polar Information Commons: A Framework for Long-term Stewardship of Polar Data and Information, press release, February 23, 2009. See also our past posts on CODATA.