Copyright & A2K Information Service launched!

10 February 2009

For several years, Denise Nicholson, Copyright Services Librarian at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, has been providing a free online information service on copyright and access to knowledge issues to individuals and organizations in South Africa and around the world.

How and why did this service begin?

It commenced when Denise, as Convenor of a Copyright Task Team mandated by the SA Vice-Chancellors’ Association (SAUVCA) and the Committee of Technikons (CTP), was lobbying to challenge the restrictive Draft Regulations published by the Department of Trade & Industry in 1998. She started a distribution list to alert educational institutions and libraries to the proposed amendments which were very restrictive to education and libraries and which failed to address digitization and the needs of persons with sensory-disabilities. She continued this medium of communication as Convenor of a second SAUVCA/CTP Copyright Task Team in 2000, when proposals to amend the Copyright Act were published by the Government. Through their efforts, the two Copyright Task Teams successfully challenged both sets of proposals and they were removed from the legislative process.

Denise continued providing information on a distribution list called “Denise Nicholson’s Information Service”. Recipients of this service included librarians, educators, institutions, NGOs, Government departments, IFLA, eIFL and national Library Associations and Consortia, representatives of WIPO, South Centre, UNESCO and other international organizations; publishers, corporate firms, A2K initiatives and individuals interested in copyright and access to knowledge issues.

Why the new mailing list?

This new mailing list “Copyright & A2K Issues” has now superseded her distribution list, to enable archives to be created online. The topics covered in this Service include copyright, plagiarism and other IP matters, Open Access, open publishing, open learning resources, institutional repositories, scholarly communication, digitization and library matters, issues affecting access to knowledge (A2K), particularly in developing countries; WTO and WIPO treaties and matters; Free Trade Agreements and TRIPS Plus; useful websites, conference alerts, etc. Anyone interested in receiving this Service is invited to subscribe online at: http://lists.wits.ac.za/mailman/listinfo/copyrightanda2kinfo). The Archives can be found at http://lists.wits.ac.za/mailman/private/copyrightanda2kinfo/ . The list will also have its own blog, which will automatically update itself, as soon as the technical issues with it are sorted out.

Attribution credits

The book with lock image from http://flickr.com/photos/liroi/2265609722/ Uploaded on February 14, 2008 by __Dori__ under a BY-SA Creative Commons License.