Terence Love wrote:
> Isn't there a copyright issue?
There is only a copyright issue if somebody wants one. So on the one
hand can you think of anybody who would be interested in enforcing
copyright on these old conference proceedings? I am sure that Bruce
Archer would have wanted his work to be widely available.
On the other hand I feel we have a duty to preserve useful scholarly
materials, its quite obvious that the original publisher is not trying
to do that, that Bruce Archer's work was paid for by taxpayers (I was
paying UK taxes at that time) and they have a right of access to the
research and scholarship they have funded.
In recent times that has been the principle enshrined in the Budapest
Open Access Initiative funded by arch-capitalist George Soros. It's also
the principle behind the open-access archiving mandates agreed by many
universities, governments and research funding organisations round the
world which put an obligation on researchers to make their work openly
accessible. It's the reason why the majority of academic publishers have
(grudgingly) agreed to open-access archiving as you can see at the
Sherpa website <http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/> which is one of the many
initiatives set up to promote open access and sharing of research
publications.
So, as I have done with other materials, I'll be putting a copy of the
Archer paper on archive.org (another initiative to ensure that useful
materials are not lost to future scholars) and including a link from my
own website and I hope others will take similar actions whenever they
can on the LOCKSS principle (Lots Of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe)
Also I see Bruce has an entry in wikipedia, I suggest that if anybody
does wikipedia editing they might like to start putting in a
bibliography of his work with links to his publications where they are
available. That seems to be an ideal use of that particular medium.
very best
Chris
...............................................................o^o
Professor Chris Rust FDRS
Head of Art and Design
Sheffield Hallam University, S1 2NU, UK
+44 114 225 6772
[log in to unmask]
http://chrisrust.wordpress.com/
Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the
future of the human race. - H. G. Wells
|