Open Access at ANU

Greetings from Parliament House in Canberra, where the seminar "Using Creative Commons in the Public Sector: Open Access to Knowledge, Culture and Public Sector Information (PSI)". Colin Steele, former ANU Librarian talked on issues with creative commons for research publishing. He expressed concerns over the effects of the new Excellence in Research for Australia scheme (ERA) on open access.

I gave a five minute impromptu talk after Colin, on how I use Creative Commons licensing for teaching. I started by explaining how ANU now accepts that course material can be released under a Creative Commons licence, as part of its open access policy. Then I detailed how I use a web search to find avialable open access material for teaching. In the case of training Australian Government employees and contractors, it is very useful to have HTML based government policy documents and manuals. This way students can work directly with the latest material. I forgot to mention how easy it is now to use web based material in e-learning systems and to create e-books. I will be teaching this in January 2011, at ANU: COMP7420: Electronic Data Management.