News 10-18-2002
MIT, Elsevier, Wiley Sue Coursepack Producer
MIT Press, Elsevier Science Inc., and John Wiley & Sons Inc., three major publishers
of scientific, technical, and medical materials, filed suit against Gainsville,
Fla.-based Custom Copies Inc., charging the company with unauthorized mass photocopying
of material from the publishers' books and journals. The complaint alleges that
Custom Copy produces coursepacks for sale on the campus of the University of
Florida at Gainesville, without authorization from the copyright holders. "When
a coursepack producer engages in mass photocopying of rightsholders' materials
for its own profit, without clearing rights … [it] severely harms both the creators
and the publishers of those materials," said Mark Seeley, general counsel of
Elsevier Science. The suit is being coordinated by Copyright Clearance Center
Inc., a licenser of text reproduction rights.
For more information, visit: http://www.copyright.com
Sponsor: James Oliverio Featured Keynote Speaker at Syllabus fall2002
James Oliverio, Professor and Director of Digital Worlds Institute at the University
of Florida, will lead off the first day of Syllabus fall2002's main conference
as keynote speaker on November 4. Oliverio's interest in immersive collaboration
and the use of visualization and multi-modal technologies to increase understanding
and retention promises to be an enlightening, thought-provoking session. Syllabus
fall2002 will be held November 3-5 at the Boston Marriott Newton Hotel in Newton,
Mass. with pre-conference seminars on November 3 and a vendor fair scheduled
for November 4. For further conference details and to register, go to http://www.syllabus.com/fall2002
Six Southern Schools Team on Info Tech Services Buy
The Board of Trustees of the Institutions of Higher Learning (IHL) of Mississippi,
representing six state universities, has signed a deal with e-education vendor
SCT Inc. to consolidate six separate contracts for product maintenance and services.
Under the agreement, IHL will be a central point of contact for distributing
SCT services to the schools, Alcorn State University, Delta State University,
Jackson State University, Mississippi Valley State University, Mississippi University
For Women and Mississippi State University. The services include product enhancements
for the schools’ SCT Banner applications. “The IHL's main purpose is to administer
a shared vision through the value and services we can provide for the Mississippi
institutions,” said Allen Lind, assistant commissioner for technology for IHL.
For more information, visit http://www.ihl.state.ms.us.
Webmasters, League, Team on Security Summit
The World Organization of Webmasters (WOW), a non-profit dedicated to supporting
and educating Web professionals, and the League for Innovation, a consortium
of community college leaders, said they would collaborate on a computer security
conference next month.
. The Cyber Security Summit would take place Nov. 16,
from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in conjunction with the League conference in Anaheim,
Calif., the week of Nov. 16 – 20. The summit is free to anyone interested in
computer security careers or developing educational programs of their own. In
a recent letter to League board members, Miami-Dade Community College president
Eduardo Padron urged support for the upcoming Cyber-Security Curriculum Consortium
headed up by the school’s Emerging Technology Center of The Americas.
Online Nurse Ed Service Accredited in 50 States
eMedicine Inc., an online service for health care professionals, said it received
approval to offer accredited nursing continuing education in California, and
can now offer accredited nursing continuing education courses in all 50 states.
The service offers over 40,000 hours of continuing education for nurses, physicians,
pharmacists and optometrists, of which 10,000 hours are available for nurses.
Accreditation for eMedicine nursing CE is provided through the University of
Nebraska Medical Center's College of Nursing Continuing Nursing Education program.
Catherine Bevil, director of continuing nursing education in UNMC’s College
of Nursing, said the service’s “large audience and commitment to creating current
clinical information … provides an effective outlet for delivering UNMC's College
of Nursing continuing nursing education courses.”
California School Model for Energy-based Design
Sonoma State University received a rebate of $106,279 from Pacific Gas and
Electric Co. for incorporating energy efficient measures in its remodeled 120,000-square-foot
library. The school is on track to receive another $340,415 for the installation
of a photovoltaic solar panel system, the energy company said. The former library,
which houses several classrooms, high tech labs and the student services department,
now uses low-energy cooling, lighting controls, and high-efficiency windows.
As a result, it uses 42 percent less energy than is required by state building
standards. The project has attracted engineers from Lawrence Livermore Lab in
Berkeley, who will spend a year studying the performance of the building. "There
is not an installation quite like this where all these forms of energy conservation
come together at this magnitude,” said Keith Marchando, campus design engineer.
PBS Launches First Web-Only Non-Fiction Series
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) launched its first program to run exclusively
on the World Wide Web. The series, P.O.V. Borders, was webcast on Oct. 9. It
was the first of 10 weekly installments of the series, which discusses the idea
of physical and metaphysical borders that challenge peoples’ ideas about individual,
cultural, and geographic boundaries. The series is a prototype for an expanded
project set to begin in 2003. The producers said they hope the initial webcast
will appeal to Internet users interested in point-of-view perspectives and educators
in search of issue-based materials. "P.O.V.'s Borders is an extension of our
continued interest in … innovative, interactive methods of presenting non-fiction
film," said P.O.V. executive director, Cara Mertes. "It is our hope that the
series will [be] a model for high-quality, compelling and sustainable storytelling
that inspires civic engagement online.”
For more information, visit: http://www.pbs.org/pov/borders
