Open Access at the WSIS Forum 2011

"As you may know, the IFLA General Assembly passed a resolution at the Gothenburg Congress in 2010 that encouraged IFLA to become more involved in the promotion of open access issues. Following up on this, I would like to draw your attention to the United Nations Group on the Information Society (UNGIS) Areas of Focus for 2010-2011. One of the areas of focus is “Open Access to Scientific Knowledge” – a great opportunity for us to showcase the innovative open access activities of libraries at a UN level. IFLA wants to take advantage of this and ensure that the issue is addressed at this year’s World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum which takes place in Geneva, May 16-20. We will therefore be proposing a thematic workshop on this topic at the Forum. It would help our proposal greatly if there was visible interest on the topic on the WSIS Community website. We are seeking interested people to support our proposal. We would like to do this by inviting you to join the WSIS Community platform to highlight issues related to Open Access. A new group has been created on the platform specifically to discuss Open Access and related topics...."