[open-bibliography] comprehensive bibliographic database of "open" resources?

[Peter Murray-Rust]

On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 6:33 AM, Jim Pitman <pitman at stat.berkeley.edu>wrote:

> Karen Coyle <kcoyle at kcoyle.net> wrote:
>
> >
> Thanks Karen for the pointer and prompt.
> I have been offline a few days and only just read Peter's post.


It was only sent a few hours ago!


> Of course, it was precisely
> his sentiments exactly which motiviated the BKN project. We've been trying,
> but its been a struggle, and
> our proposals for grant renewal were denied by NSF. Elements of these
> proposals could easily be recycled into
> other potentially more successful efforts.


I agree. We have much of the planning done. We understand the data/metadata


> We have some limited funding left, and I expect to
> get continuing trickles from various sources. But I am a professional
> mathematician not a professional librarian or software developer.
>

And I'm a professional chemist!


> I'd rather spend my time doing math research (or even math biblio research)
> than biblio infra development. So I'd love to see someone more mainstream in
> the
> library community pick up this theme with some spurring which the likes of
> Peter and myself could gladly provide.
>

Yes. I hope we can get enough people interested. There are a few librarians
like Harvard who occasionally put their heads over the parapet and say "we
mandateX be Open" - and then they disappear. It's actually trivial (and
completely safe) for librarians to start working in this area. They won't go
to jail. If the universities are sued - and they probably will be for
challenging monopolies - the cases can be defended.


> Moral/legal support and provision of a fiscal shell for coordination of
> activities by a non-profit like OKFN would help.
>

And although I am only one of OKFN I think the input is good and continuing


> I think I've learned some lessons from how difficult it has been to make
> progress in this area.
> I'll collect my thoughts on potential strategies, of which there are many,
> and be glad to share with this group
> if there is suitable encouragement.
> Anyone interested in contributing to this effort, please contact me
> directly, and if there is enough interest maybe Jonathan you could
> organize a suitable communication forum beneath OKFN?
>

Agreed.


> many thanks
> --Jim
> ----------------------------------------------
> Jim Pitman
> Director, Bibliographic Knowledge Network Project
> http://www.bibkn.org/
>
> Professor of Statistics and Mathematics
> University of California
> 367 Evans Hall # 3860
> Berkeley, CA 94720-3860
>
>
It's a pity I didn't know to look you up when I was in Berkeley last month
for the Open Science Summit.

How do we get through to librarians? Because they have the network and the
resources and the implicit power to solve this in months. I've tried
everything. I've cajoled, built systems, ranted, etc. The normal response is
total apathy. I am particularly appalled by those who say that they can't do
anything. And then there is a small fringe who attack me.

There is all this money going into Institutional repositories. That's
potentially an ideal place to work for collecting bibliography. Do they have
a bibliography of the stuff they've got in there? The academics own papers?
They SHOULD have. I bet most of them haven't. My grants are topsliced to pay
for libraries.I'd like to see some public return.

But I will be castigated for attacking libraries.

We *can* do it without libraries. It's much more work. It'll be messy.

But I am continuing with this. The Green Chain Reaction is mainstream.

P.


C;lever

-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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