remix global research for a global civilisation: GRL 2020

Stuart Weibel has a detailed writeup summarising Global Research Library 2020:

GRL-2020: advocacy for a digital civilization of the future?

The phrase I liked the most in these discussions is advocacy for the digital civilization of the future (Peter Young).  Many global problems require support for the research enterprise that transcends political boundaries, and demands new infrastructure and cooperative frameworks.  These aren't palliative abstractions, but rather important elements for addressing the clear and present dangers of global climate change, world-wide health threats, and daunting economic problems.

...

What's next?  Perhaps the best indicator of success in our two days of effort was the eagerness of many among us to contemplate a follow-on meeting.  Arun made the point that our too-safe, too-comfortable deliberations just can't be taken very seriously in the third world.  Next time?  A riskier venue, with riskier ideas.

Sidebar: There are serious problems with our search-based discovery system.  I ran across Weibel's post on Lorcan's Facebook blog friends.  When searching "grl2020", it doesn't show up in Technorati, nor on the 1st page of Google, nor in Google Blog Search.  What's up with that?

I actually feel bad sometimes because I have such Google mojo that when I write about things they often show up in the top results, whether I've written anything useful or not.  Technorati is similar.  Meanwhile trying to get Technorati to index a new blog seems almost impossible.  END SIDEBAR

A search did turn up Jon Udell's presentation Remixing the library

Since 2002, this LibraryLookup idea has spread slowly and steadily. It's no mystery why. If the book you're reading about on Amazon or Barnes and Noble is available in your library, you can read it for free -- and sooner, probably, than a retailer could ship it to you.

I've done a bunch of variations on the LibraryLookup theme. Several of them take advantage of a great little service provided by OCLC called xISBN, which expands an ISBN to the set of ISBNs representing a work, and makes an ISBN-based lookup much more reliable.

Comments

[Subbiah Arunachalam]

I agree that advocacy for the digital civilization of the future should be a top priority item in the follow-up to GRL2020.

As is evident from history, different parts of the world would adopt anything new - including digital litearcy - at different speeds. As I have said at the workshop we should make conscious efforts towrds inclusiveness. We shouldn't leave behind any country.

Bringing about digital civilization is not as easy as we may think. I speak from personal experience. I have been advocating open access (in India) for the past six or seven years. Apart from writing about the great advantages of OA in articles and in electronic discussion lists, I have also written hundreds (or even thousands) of mails to key researchers and policymakers including heads of government departments of science, technology, biotechnology, medical research, etc,; Presidents and Fellows of science academies, vice chancellors, professors, deans, librarians, and so on. I have conducted workshops with international faculty on electronic publishing and institutional archives. I have held sessions at the annual meetings of the Indian Science Congress Association. And yet there are only about thirty IRs in India today. The mere knowledge that OA is good and beneficial is probably not enough to goad people to action. Similar to the mere knowledge smoking is injurious to health is not enough in many cases to stop the habit.

If persuading folks to set up IRs - elementary stuff - is so difficult, imagine how difficult it would be to persuade them to set up the whole array of e-infrastrucure (for e-Science).

We need to win friends outside of science. Fortunately, development agencies such as IDRC, Canada, and GKP have come forward to support OA (and possibly e-infrastructure) initiatives in developing countries. And eminent scientists such as Prof. Bruce Alberts have pleaded for not only making the litearture easily accessible but also to provide high bandwidth Internet connections to scientists in poor countries (especially in Africa).

E-infrastructure has the tremendous potential to make the playing field level, and we should not miss the opportunity. We should plan our steps carefully so the advances we make reach the whole world in an inclusive manner.

About my observation that the discussions we hold in advanced countries are not having much of an impact in most parts of the developing world is no exaggeration. It is very true. I suggest two steps: We should work closely with scientific bodies such as TWAS, InterAcademy Council and InterAcademy Panel and keep them informed of our deliberations and views and suggest to them points of action. We should examine how best we can take efforts made in the advanced countries such as e-infrastructure, DRIVER, to the rest of the world at low cost.

The second step I suggest is that we should hold the next GRL2020 workshop in a developing country. Several venues can host it: Bibliotheca Alexandria (Ibrahim Serageldin), UNECA at Addis Ababa, Rio or Sao Paulo in Brazil. I would personally invite all of you to have the meeting at Chennai, India. Hotels here are modestly priced. And if we hold in December participants can get a taste of classical Indian music; there will be more than a thousand concerts in about three weeks! Chennai (or Madras) is also home to a well-known IIT, two of India's better-known universities, several research labs and of course, MSSRF, where I am a volunteer working in rural development. We could seek funding from Microsoft, European Union and NSF.