Open Bibliography, the Democratisation of Knowledge and the Scottish Enlightenment at RLUK

#jiscopenbib #okfn #rluk2010 #edinbib2010

WARNING. READING THIS POST MIGHT COMMIT YOU TO DOING SOMETHING.

I have been invited to run a session at the RLUK’s (Research Libraries UK) conference in 2010 (http://www.rluk.ac.uk/node/597 ). It’s in Edinburgh , Scotland, which is still part of the UK, but also has the distinction of having helped lead the Enlightenment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Enlightenment ). I had the privilege of helping start Scotland’s new University (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Stirling ) and worked there for 15 years. So I am excited to be back in the land to which I and we owe so much.

My session is not on the programme yet – it’s on the Thursday at 1115-1230 in parallel or series with the advertised plenary session.

I shall be asking a commitment from the delegates – and possibly from those of you who can’t go. I generally now don’t “give lectures”. A “lecture” is an old-fashioned way of communication – uni-directional, inefficient. So I try to develop sessions where all of the “delegates” – including remote ones – are involved. All that is required is a good internet connection and hopefully a Twitterfall or similar.

So we will have a practical session on the Democratisation of Knowledge. Since one of my current driving forces is Open Bibliography I will be pursuing that. The goal is simple:

Let’s use the session and the event to make a measurable contributable to the democratisation of bibliography.

The great thing about an event like this is that it gives us a fixed deadline to aim at. There is no slippage allowed. The event will happen. The session will happen. Therefore we have to plan to make it useful.

We have about 25 days from today to make this work. This is an excellent time. It is also a zero-cash project (but not zero-cost). I have done two other such events and both have “succeeded” and I’m hopeful here. It has features of a Sprint (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_%28software_development%29 )or Hackathon but is different in that much of the work is done remotely and then brought together in a single hour of frantic integration.

We did this with the Green Chain Reaction at Science Online (http://www.scienceonlinelondon.org/programme.php?tab=abstracts#breakout11 ) where volunteers worked for about 4 weeks to bring together software and data into an integrated knowledge resource. This was slightly dented by the Department cutting off electricity to our servers (planned) during the actual session at the BL, but the volunteers copied significant amounts to other servers. We collected data from over 100,000 patents and came to a sort of conclusion. We have probably done about 70% of the work and are retooling to make it automatic.

We are also in the middle of a project to collect the world’s computational chemistry data (ca 5 million data sets per year) and our pilot – Quixote – http://quixote.wikispot.org/Front_Page meets in Cambridge on Thursday about 28 days after we hatched the idea. We’ve had to write some software but it’s primarily integration. I’m optimistic that we can succeed where 30 years of dithering haven’t.

The Open Bibliography project for RLUK will be simpler. We need a name – I am sure one will emerge. For now let’s use the tag #edinbib2010. As with all these 1-month projects the goals can change. But they must be realistic. I am going to start off with some now, but please suggest your own. The OKF has all the infrastructural support required (Wikis, blogs, TRAC, Etherpad, servers, etc.) so you shouldn’t have to take time to set up infrastructure (it may, of course, need customising). Note that nothing here is limited to Research Libraries and I have got the impression that public libraries are often ahead of the universities in their democratisation. Also, where I use “participant” that can and often should be remote. We intend to have a Twitterfall so that everyone can contribute during the session.

• Participants to get at least one signature from their institution supporting the OKF Open Bibliography Principles. (If these are new to you, read the last week on this blog and also http://openbiblio.net/ ). All it does is ask you to agree that Open Bibliography is a Good Thing. If you can get a vice-chancellor or a head librarian that’s great. But if not, just sign it yourself. [OKF – TODO we need a signup list]. This can, of course, be done worldwide
• It would be really great to get a Scottish commitment to Open Bibliography. Scotland has recently prided itself (rightly) on adopting Openness more rapidly than England, and I think this could be done. I can’t tell you how to do it, but if it seems achievable, please have a go.
• Each participant should write to one primary publisher asking for their commitment to Open Bibliography. Again the OKF has pioneered this type of request mechanism with its IsItOpen(Data) for asking about the Openness of scientific information. We’d hope to develop this during the month. In principle (since Bibliography is de facto Open) every publisher should be glad to sign up as it would mean more exposure for their publications. But we shall suggest you choose the most favourable first
• [UPDATE – how could I have failed to think of this] A communally produced Open Bibliography on the Democratisation of Knowledge.

If we are successful – and we shall be since it depends on YOU – we shall then have:

• A large and compelling list of institutions worldwide which are committed to (or have at least employees committed to) Open Bibliography
• A united stance from Scotland
• A growing list of publishers who have asserted that their bibliography is Open.
• A world-class Open Bibliography on the Democratisation of Knowledge

If You – at Edinburgh and elsewhere – commit, then within a month we shall change the face of Bibliography.