Yahoo has announced that they will attempt to succeed where Google Print failed by putting digitized books online while at the same time satisfying the copyright demands of the publishing industry. The University of Toronto is on board, along with Adobe Systems Inc., Hewlett Packard, the University of California, O’Reilly Media Inc. and the Internet Archive.
The Open Content Alliance will put copyrighted material online only with permission, and it will be indexed and searchable by all major search engines, including Google. Google Print, which began digitizing books a year ago, prompted lawsuits over copyright infringement. See www.opencontentalliance.org for more information.
-ALLISON MARTELL
Canadians snubbed in egghead “beauty contest”
Foreign Policy and Prospect Magazine have put together a list of the world’s “Top 100 Public Intellectuals,” from Chinua Achebe to Slavoj Zizek. But only two Canadians, activist (and former Varsity editor) Naomi Klein and returning U of T prof Michael Ignatieff, made the list, and Canadian academe is sharpening its claws.
Critics can’t seem to decide between dismissing the list, criticizing Klein and Ignatieff, and proposing substitutes. In a National Post article, Dane Rowlands of the University of Ottawa called Ignatieff’s work “light”, and “largely devoid of anything substantive.” Klein’s work, he said, is “mindlessly short of anything that would constitute being persuasive at an academic or intellectual level.” Ouch. Rowlands suggested Janice Stein, head of U of T’s Munk Centre for International Studies, instead.
“Why don’t we just make Truman Capote or Paris Hilton [part of the list?] How do you separate notoriety from contribution?” said Douglas Owram, past president of the Canadian Federation of the Humanities and Social Sciences, in the same article.
-AM
