Re: new open science list
Christopher Olah wrote:
It's funny that you mention that. I've been thinking lately that it would be
a good idea to create packages containing educational (or other useful)
books and other useful resources. They're are a significant number
GFDLed or otherwise Free books as well as books beyond copyright
(eg. Shakespeare's plays) that schools, universities and other users could
benefit from having around.
This is exactly what we're working on at the OKF! For more details, see:
http://blog.okfn.org/
http://opendefinition.org/
http://okfn.org/projects
We've also got a project called Open Shakespeare - which is a package of
Shakespeare's texts, ancillary material and tools for concordancing,
word frequency and annotation. See e.g.,
http://www.openshakespeare.org/stats/word/love
They could be stored somewhere such as /usr/share/books/ in various
formats (HTML, PDF, txt... perhaps provide multiple in different packages).
And beyond books: movie lectures, picture libraries, condensed Wikipedia...
All available through apt.
This is why we're working on CKAN:
http://ckan.net/
Its got a RESTful API and we're working on an interface for installing
knowledge packages. We've spoken to archive.org and others about
mirroring open material, and it'd be great to have packages available in
multiple formats.
All this aims to be community driven, so if you come across any large
datasets, or collections of material, please consider registering them
on CKAN!
If you'd like to get involved, get in touch!
On a different note: I really disliked the Electricity and Magnetism textbook
for my school, so I'm making a replacement. My physics teacher looked it
over, but his area of expertise isn't E&M. Would anyone be willing to look it
over?
We've got a virtual meeting on textbooks later this month you might be
interested in!
http://ur1.ca/5an
There's also our weekly meeting tonight (from 1800 BST) if anyone would
like to pop in:
http://ur1.ca/575
Jonathan
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