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Thursday, December 20, 2012
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The Fight for a Free and Open Internet
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by Paula J. Hane
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Vinton Cerf is worried. Cerf is credited with helping to develop the protocols and structure of the internet and the first commercial email system. Now he fears forces are at work that threaten to undermine the free and open nature of the net. He notes that, "The internet has become one of the motors of the 21st century economy, allowing all of us to reach a global audience at a click of a mouse and creating hundreds of thousands of businesses and millions of jobs." But he cautioned, "Today, this free and open net is under threat. Some 42 countries filter and censor content out of the 72 studied by the Open Net Initiative (ONI). This doesn't even count serial offenders such as North Korea and Cuba. Over the past 2 years, Freedom House says governments have enacted 19 new laws threatening online free expression." Cerf and many others worry that a meeting that starts today (Dec. 3, 2012, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates) could prove problematic.
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Summon Service to Index Content From German Publishers
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Serials Solutions, a ProQuest business, announced that the company is working with several German publishers to index their scholarly content in the Summon discovery service. This German-language content is among the most widely subscribed to by academic institutions in Germany, as well as many libraries worldwide, and includes resources covering law, life sciences, and the humanities.
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OhioLINK Chooses EBSCO to Provide Discovery Layer
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The Ohio Library and Information Network (OhioLINK) and its Library Advisory Council selected EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) to provide EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) as a shared service to OhioLINK libraries. The agreement with EBSCO will offer member libraries a powerful tool to improve searches for patrons.
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The Open University Launches Futurelearn to Offer Free Online Courses
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Students from the U.K. and around the world will have free access to some of the country's top universities thanks to Futurelearn Ltd, an entirely new company being launched by The Open University (OU). The universities of Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, East Anglia, Exeter, King's College London, Lancaster, Leeds, Southampton, St Andrews and Warwick have all signed up to join Futurelearn.
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Chemistry Files on Dialog
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by Robert E. Buntrock
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I've been a Dialog subscriber for decades, both before and after going solo. However, I haven't used my Dialog password in some time. Therefore, I've been out of the loop on a lot of the happenings in the greater world of information and was unaware of the demise of chemistry files from Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) on Dialog and on Questel. NewsBreaks Editor Paula Hane had received a heads-up from a contact in Europe and asked me for more details.
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