Newsletters/8

[okfn-announce] Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter No. 8 Tue Oct 28 12:50:16 GMT 2008

Welcome to the eighth Open Knowledge Foundation newsletter!

Contents:

* Lots of open knowledge events in London in November! * Public Domain Calculators - towards the first ten? * What can you do with Open Shakespeare? * Where Does My Money Go? * Open textbook virtual meetings * New open science mailing list * Other news in brief * Thanks to our volunteers! * Support the Open Knowledge Foundation * Further information

LOTS OF OPEN KNOWLEDGE EVENTS IN LONDON IN NOVEMBER!

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We're pleased to announce a handful of events in London this November, including:

* Workshop on Finding and Re-using Public Information - Saturday 1st November 2008, London Knowledge Lab - http://okfn.org/wiki/PublicInformation

* Open Everything London - Thursday 6th November 2008, The Roundhouse - http://openeverything.wik.is/London

* Workshop on Finding and Re-using Open Scientific Resources - Saturday 8th November 2008, London Knowledge Lab - http://okfn.org/wiki/OpenScience/Workshop

The workshop on public information is presented by The Open Knowledge Foundation, the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI), the Power of Information (POI) Taskforce and mySociety. Open Everything is presented by The Open Knowledge Foundation, Open Business, the Shuttleworth Foundation and the Young Foundation.

More details for each event are on the relevant wiki pages above. We look forward to seeing some of you there!

PUBLIC DOMAIN CALCULATORS - TOWARDS THE FIRST TEN?

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Back in June we solicited for assistance in a project to build a series of calculators to 'map' the public domain in different jurisdictions, by showing which works are out of copyright. There are now individuals and groups keen to contribute to the calculators in over 10 countries, including: Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Italy, Norway, Philippines, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States.

Ultimately we'd like to see the formation of loose-knit groups to create, maintain and review charts representing relevant legislation in different countries. These charts would be converted into code, and combined with metadata about works to give a sense of what works are in the public domain in each jurisdiction.

At the 3rd COMMUNIA Workshop in Amsterdam the OKF gave a presentation on the project, and there is now a new COMMUNIA Working Group, which will include work on the calculators across Europe!

We've set up a mailing list for interested parties to discuss developments and to share experience in creating flow charts to represent the law. If you know someone who might be interested in getting involved, please drop us a line!

Public Domain Calculators - Wiki Page http://okfn.org/wiki/PublicDomainCalculators

Public Domain Calculators - Mailing List http://lists.okfn.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pd-calculators

'Public Domain Calculators: updates and a new list!' http://blog.okfn.org/2008/10/17/public-domain-calculators-updates-and-a-new-list/

'Third COMMUNIA Workshop - Marking the public domain' http://blog.okfn.org/2008/10/22/third-communia-workshop-marking-the-public-domain/

WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH OPEN SHAKESPEARE?

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We recently updated Open Shakespeare. The project was started a while back as an open knowledge 'exemplar project' - i.e. as a simple 'hello world' type open knowledge package. It aims to:

1. Provide the complete works of Shakespeare, along with textual apparatus (introduction, notes) and tools (concordance, search etc.) all in an open form. 2. Deliver this material as a knowledge package that allows for easy deployment, redistribution and reuse.

Recent changes include:

* Major refactoring of internal code to be cleaner and simpler * A new cleaner and reorganized web interface * Search support via Xapian: http://www.openshakespeare.org/search/ * Statistical analysis and graphing - By word: http://www.openshakespeare.org/stats/word/love/ - By text: http://www.openshakespeare.org/stats/text/hamlet_gut * Start on Open Milton

As it says on openshakespeare.org, the site itself is only a small part of what the project is about. We actively encourage you to take and modify the Shakespeare package to do things we haven't yet done – or even thought of!

If you've re-used the package, you have an interesting idea for how it could be built upon, or you’d like to help out with anything from developing the code to growing the content - we’d love to hear from you!

Open Shakespeare http://www.openshakespeare.org/

'What can you do with Open Shakespeare?' http://blog.okfn.org/2008/09/26/what-can-you-do-with-open-shakespeare/

WHERE DOES MY MONEY GO?

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Since early 2007 we've had a project dubbed 'Where Does My Money Go?' on the backburner. In a sentence, the project would be a web application that interactively represented UK government budgetary information using maps, timelines, and best of breed visualisation technologies.

We recently announced the project and entered it to the Show Us A Better Way and Building Democracy competitions. The Guardian's Free Our Data campaign has set up a poll to help gather people's opinions on the best entrants for the Show Us A Better Way competition. If you think 'Where Does My Money Go?' is an interesting idea, please consider voting for it!

Vote for 'Where Does My Money Go?' http://suabw.uservoice.com/pages/general/suggestions/33574

'Where Does My Money Go?' http://blog.okfn.org/2008/09/22/where-does-my-money-go/

OPEN TEXTBOOK VIRTUAL MEETINGS

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In September we held a virtual meeting for anyone interested in open textbooks - including students, educators, authors, activists, funders, policy makers, distributors and publishers. The event was intended to be an opportunity for people who work in this area to present projects, to solicit for feedback, to find collaborators, to propose projects and to keep abreast of new developments.

People who came in September expressed an interest in having monthly meetings. If you are interested in joining in, please add your name to the wiki page, where you will also find details on how to participate!

Open textbook virtual meetings http://okfn.org/wiki/opentextbooks

'After the open textbook virtual meeting' http://blog.okfn.org/2008/10/02/after-the-open-textbook-virtual-meeting/

NEW OPEN SCIENCE MAILING LIST

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After discussions with Cameron Neylon of Open Wetware and Kaitlin Thaney of Science Commons we set up an open science mailing list. As far as we could tell, there wasn't a general mailing list for people interested open science. Hence the new list aims cover this gap, and to strengthen and consolidate the open science community.

We hope it will be a relatively low volume list for relevant announcements, questions and notes. We also hope to get as full as possible representation from the open science community - so please forward this to anyone you think might be interested to join!

Open science mailing list http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-science

OTHER NEWS IN BRIEF

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- A Map of Openness? http://blog.okfn.org/2008/08/28/map-of-openness/

- Open Data in Iceland http://blog.okfn.org/2008/09/12/open-data-in-iceland/

- Some Agricultural History via Open Economics http://blog.okfn.org/2008/09/15/some-agricultural-history-via-open-economics/

- Clearer Climate Code http://blog.okfn.org/2008/09/17/clearer-climate-code/

- Open organisations, need for two more definitions! http://blog.okfn.org/2008/10/05/open-organisations-need-for-two-more-definitions/

- Open Access Day 2008 http://blog.okfn.org/2008/10/16/open-access-day-2008/

THANKS TO OKF VOLUNTEERS!

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As usual, a big thank you to our volunteers and to our extended virtual community for their help with our projects and activities!

SUPPORT THE OPEN KNOWLEDGE FOUNDATION

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A donation to the Open Knowledge Foundation would greatly help us with our overhead costs, including hosting (currently around £1000/year) and project development. To find out more about supporting our work, please visit:

http://www.okfn.org/support

FURTHER INFORMATION

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If you would like to know more about what we are up to, please take a look at our active projects page.

http://www.okfn.org/projects/

If you are interested in participating in any of the OKF's projects, please see our participate page, or join the OKF discuss list.

http://www.okfn.org/participate/ http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss

For further news and comments, see our blog:

http://blog.okfn.org

The Open Knowledge Foundation is a not-for-profit organization. It is incorporated in the United Kingdom as a company limited by guarantee with company number 5133759. The registered office is 37 Panton Street, Cambridge, CB2 1HL, UK.