Freedom of Information Day: Science, Industry and Business Library (SIBL), The New York Public Library

Freedom of Information Day will be observed at the Science, Industry and
Business Library (SIBL) of The New York Public Library (188 Madison Ave. @
34th St.) on Tuesday, March 16, with a presentation and discussion from
10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. in Conference Room 18 on the lower level of the
library.

This year’s guest speaker is Heather Joseph, Executive Director,
the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, (SPARC), an
international alliance of academic and research libraries working to create
a more open system of scholarly communications. She will discuss the
growing momentum towards Open Access – the idea that society is best served
when the results of research and scholarship are made immediately, freely
available online to anyone who may want to access and use them. The title
of her presentation is: “Open Access, Open Scholarship – Open Future.”

Established by a Congressional Joint Resolution in 1989, Freedom of
Information Day is held on or near March 16, the birthday of James Madison,
fourth President of the United States and primary architect of the Bill of
Rights. The observance underscores the importance of freedom of the press,
speech, information, and the public’s right to know.

Heather Joseph has served as the Executive Director of the Scholarly
Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) since 2005. In that
capacity, she works to support broadening access to the results of
scholarly research through enabling open access publishing, archiving and
policies on a local, national and international level.

Ms. Joseph is also the convener of the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, a
coalition of universities, libraries, patients’ advocacy groups, consumer
groups, and student organizations who work to ensure that results of
publicly funded research are openly accessible to the public. The group has
been a leading voice on U.S. open access legislation, including landmark
policy issued by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Prior to coming to SPARC, she spent 15 years as a publisher in both
commercial and not-for-profit publishing organizations. She served as the
publishing director at the American Society for Cell Biology, which became
the first journal to commit its full content to the NIH’s pioneering open
repository, PubMed Central, and subsequently served on the National
Advisory Committee for the project.

Ms. Joseph serves on the Board of Directors of numerous not-for-profit
organizations, and recently completed ly. a term as the elected President
of the Society for Scholarly Publishing. She is a frequent speaker and
writer on scholarly communications in general, and on open access in
particular.

This event is free and open to the public. No reservations are required.