The Jeremiah Kaplan Institute on Libraries, the Information Society, and Social Policy presents:

“The Right to Information Access”
October 30, 2009
Penn State University, University Park Campus
State College, PA
The Hub Auditorium

UPDATE: This event will be available via a live web stream and remain freely accessible after October 30.

Web stream link for Windows Media Player Users

Web stream link for Quicktime Users

Featuring:

• John Willinsky, (keynote speaker) Professor of Education, Stanford University, Founder of the Public Knowledge Project and author of The Access Principle: the Case for Open Access. (MIT, 2005).
• Marybeth Peters, Register of Copyright, US Copyright Office. Author of The General Guide to the Copyright Act of 1976.
• John Palfrey, Henry N. Ess III Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources at Harvard Law School . Co-author of Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives (Basic Books, 2008) and Access Denied: The Practice and Politics of Global Internet Filtering (MIT Press, 2008).
• Clifford Lynch, Director, Coalition of Networked Information, and member of the National Digital Strategy Advisory Board of the Library of Congress , Microsoft's Technical Computing Science Advisory Board , the board of the New Media Consortium , and the Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access.

The United States Constitution codifies the right to free expression. But what rights have we to access the results of free expression?

“Libraries,” states the American Library Association, “help ensure that Americans can access the information they need – regardless of age, education, ethnicity, language, income, physical limitations or geographic barriers – as the digital world continues to evolve.” But two decades of rapid developments in information technologies have revealed a contradiction: it is easier than ever to disseminate information and to receive it, but it is also easier to control and monitor access to that information.

The first Jeremiah Kaplan Institute on Libraries, the Information Society, and Social Policy will address the "right" to knowledge and access to information, as well as the changing role that libraries and publishers play in supporting access in a networked environment. How must the missions of libraries and publishing adapt after the Internet? Who should have access to information and knowledge and how can it best be enabled? What economic, political, and regulatory factors impede that access, and how might they be overcome?

Four experts, representing the fields of education, libraries, information technology, and law and public policy, will explore these issues in a day-long symposium held at Penn State University's University Park campus on October 30, 2009.