Open Access Week 2024

The Penn State University Libraries will participate in the 17th annual global celebration of Open Access Week by hosting Sarah Lamdan, Deputy Director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom and author of Data Cartels, for a talk, “Data Cartels and Commercial Obstacles to Open Access.” Lamdan has worked on data justice projects across the spectrum from open government to personal privacy. She researches and writes about information access, surveillance and privacy, and informational capitalism. Her most recent book is Data Cartels (published in 2023 by Stanford University Press), in which she calls out the companies that control and monopolize our information, which she will be discussing at this event. 

Anyone, from Penn State or beyond, may attend. The event will be free and take place on Zoom from 1:30 to 3:00 p.m. EDT on Thursday, October 24. Registration is required to attend the event. 

At the American Library Association (ALA), Lamdan combats book bans and works to educate librarians and the public about the nature and importance of intellectual freedom in libraries. Before joining ALA, Lamdan was a professor at CUNY School of Law, where she taught administrative law, environmental law, open government law, and data privacy courses. In addition to a JD, she holds a master's degree in library science and legal information management and a law certificate in environmental law.   

Lamdan has been a SPARC Senior Fellow, a fellow at the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy at the NYU School of Law and is a member of the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative. She is an Invest in Open Infrastructure council member and has worked with immigration groups on government surveillance issues.  

Due to popular demand, the theme of Open Access Week this year is once again “Community Over Commercialization,” the only time that an Open Access Week theme has been repeated. This theme highlights the “need to prioritize approaches to open scholarship that serve the best interests of the public and academic community.”