Seminar on Open Educational Resources and copyright matters
OLE Nepal was part of the sub-regional seminar on Enabling universal access and preservation of knowledge through libraries and copyright matters organized by the Nepal Library and Information Consortium (NeLIC) and Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL) in Kathmandu. The seminar was supported by UNESCO and Soros Foundation Kyrgystan was held on 3-4 September, 2015 and focused on three priority areas for libraries and UNESCO; the Marrakesh Treaty for persons with print disabilities, digital preservation, and open educational resources (OERs).
Rabi Karmacharya, an Executive Director of OLE Nepal were among the key speakers including Professor Kenneth Crews (author of the WIPO studies on library limitations and exceptions), Mr GR Raghavender, Director, Dept of Industrial Policy and Promotion, India (former Registrar of Copyright and a Marrakesh negotiator), and Ms Aisuluu Chubarova, Assistant Professor, American University of Central Asia.
Mr. Rabi’s presentation on E-Pustakalaya
During the seminar, Mr. Rabi talked about the developments in Nepal in terms of open educational resources. E-Pustakalaya, a digital library and its importance as an open educational resources for students and general public were presented. OLE Nepal’s work on E-Pustakalaya was an added value in terms of an open access provided for the public. Along with the presentation about the open educational resources, copyright law in practice was also discussed followed by interesting Q & A.
All the contents in E-Pustakalaya is governed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Apart from this, we collect books from different organization such as Nepalese Society for Children’s Literature, Room to Read, British Council, Madan Puraskaar Pustakalya, Save the Children, World Education, Rato Bangala Kitab, Gorkhapatra Sansthan, Azim Premji Foundation, Practical Action, E-learning for kids and many others. Beside this, we also collect books from individual authors. OLE Nepal obtains written consent from individual writers, and books with writer’s sole rights are only uploaded on the digital library.