[LINK] Fwd: [aliaACTive] 2011 Review of Electronic Resources Australia (ERA)

[Tom Worthington]

On 06/09/11 04:23, Antony Barry wrote:

> Begin forwarded message ...
>
>> 2011 Review of Electronic Resources Australia (ERA)

That was interesting, but it did not explain what "Electronic Resources 
Australia" was.

As far as I can work out ERA is a buying consortia of Australian 
libraries, headed by the National Library of Australia, which buys 
on-line information services, mostly from overseas: 
http://era.nla.gov.au/product_list/

Submission to the ERA review close 12 September 2011: 
http://era.nla.gov.au/for_libraries/ERAReview.html

One interesting aspect of the review is that three out of five of the 
members of the committee are from the education sector (school, TAFE and 
University).

One aspect the ERA review terms of reference does not seem to cover is 
how to publish Australian works on-line at low cost. I suggest that 
Australian libraries and educational institutions should look at how to 
foster on-line publishing, including free and open access, as a way to 
reduce costs (as well as boost Australian culture and commerce).

Yesterday I was contacted by an award winning Australian author asking 
about how to publish their new book on-line. They do not particularly 
want to make a lot of money, they mostly want to get there book out there.

Australian libraries could provide facilities for Australian authors to 
publish their work at low cost. Some universities do this, where they 
provide e-books and e-journals on-line for free. An example is ANU 
e-Press, which sells copies of book by Australian National University 
authors on paper, but also allows free access to the web versions of the 
books: http://epress.anu.edu.au/

There are some open access journals from Australian universities, most 
using the Canadian "Op-en Journal System" (OJS) software, but these tend 
to last only an few issues, due to lack of support: 
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aedu.au+ojs+%22open+access%22


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Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
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Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science,
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra