Document Type

Book Chapter

Date

2005

Keywords

communication, information commons, institutional analysis--IAD framework, intellectual property rights, universities, knowledge, sustainability, copyright, Workshop

Language

English

Disciplines

Communication | Library and Information Science

Description/Abstract

Who hasn’t heard of the six blind men of Indostan encircled around an elephant?1 The six—one a political scientist, one a librarian, one an economist, one a law professor, one a computer scientist, and one an anthropologist—discover, based on their own investigations, that the object before them is a wall, spear, a snake, a tree, a fan, and a rope. The story fits well with the question that propelled this chapter: how can an interdisciplinary group of scholars best analyze a highly complex, rapidly evolving, elephantine resource such as knowledge? Trying to get one’s hands around knowledge as a shared resource is even more challenging when we factor in the economic, legal, technological, political, social and psychological components—each complex in their own right—that make up this global commons.

Additional Information

Book published by MIT Press.

Source

Indiana University Commons metadata

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