ContentMine at IFLA2017: The future of Libraries and Scholarly Communications

ContentMine at IFLA2017: The future of Libraries and Scholarly Communications
 
I am delighted to have been invited to talk at IFLA (https://www.ifla.org/annual-conference), the global overarching body for Libraries of all sorts. I’m in a session 232 (see http://www.professionalabstracts.com/iflawlic2017/iplanner/#/grid ) with
Congress Programme, IASE Conference Room 24.08.2017, 10:45 – 12:45
Session 232 Being Open About Open – Academic & Research Libraries, FAIFE and Copyright and Other Legal Matters
 
What’s FAIFE? It’s https://www.ifla.org/faife
The overall objective of IFLA/FAIFE is to raise awareness of the essential correlation between the library concept and the values of intellectual freedom  …
“Monitor the state of intellectual freedom within the library community “
“Respond to violations of free access to information and freedom of expression”
I share these views. But freedom of access and freedom of expression is under threat in the digital world. Mega-corporations control content and services and are actively trying to claw more control, for example by controlling the right to post hyperlinks to scholarly articles – even open access – (“Link Tax”)
 
https://www.communia-association.org/2016/05/12/ancillary-copyright-publishers-right-link-tax-bad-idea-name/
And recently
https://openmedia.org/en/link-tax-slammed-major-spanish-newspaper-el-pais
 
I have spent 3-4 years on the edge of the political arena and I’ve seen how hard companies fight to remove our rights and to give them control.
 
And we need your help.
If you are a librarian, then you can only protect access to knowledge by actively fighting for it.

That means you. Not waiting for someone to create a product that you can buy
 
By actively creating the scholarly infrastructure of the future and embedding rights for everyone.
Now, for the first and possibly the last time we have an opportunities for libraries to make their own contribution to freedom.
 
I’ve set up the non-profit organization https://contentmine.org  which promotes three areas for fighting for freedom:

• Advocacy. Challenging for our rights, as LIBER does with http://thehaguedeclaration.com/ . As SPARC has done in championing my mantra TRTRTRTM https://sparcopen.org/news/2015/the-right-to-read-is-the-right-to-mine/
• Tools. Freedom will be won not only with words but with practical actions. If we build better tools than the mega-publishers (and we already have) then we show that Open is right because Open is better.

• Community. The community deserves better from academia, and the community is willing to help, if given the chance. The biggest communal knowledge creation is in Wikimedia and we are working with them to make high-quality knowledge universally created and universally available.

 
 
We now have tools which can create the next generation of scholarly knowledge – for everyone.
 
But YOU can and must help.
 
IFLA has very generously given us workshop time for a demonstration and discussion of Text and Data Mining (TDM)
 
Imperial Hall 23.08.2017, 11:45 – 13:30
Session 199 Text and Data Mining (TDM) Workshop for Data Discovery and Analytics – Big Data Special Interest Group (SIG)
 
We’ll be giving simple hands-on web demonstrations of Mining , interspersed with the chance to discuss policy and investment in tools, practices and people. Especially young people. No future knowledge required.
This is (hopefully) the first of several blogs.