Open Access Week, a week to celebrate free scholar information, will be held in Booth Library from Monday through Oct. 28.

There is an activity each day of the week, starting with getting to know exactly what Open Access Week is about. 

Open Access Week started in 2008 and is now a global event. 

Steve Brantley, reference and instruction services professor, said Open Access Week is especially useful at Eastern. 

“(Open Access Week) is important to Eastern because it lowers educational cost and gives students access to scholarly information,” Brantley said. “(It) is a model that allows us to make research available to all audiences.” 

Open Access is a movement that is based on scholarly research, journals, books and films being made free for public use. 

Publishing for scholarly journals and books can be extremely expensive for schools to purchase, and this movement makes it possible for students to use it for free, Brantley said. 

Eastern has an institution called “The Keep” which gives access to free scholar data, which becomes more important as journals and research become more expensive, he said.

“Scholarly journals are rising to an unsustainable rate that university libraries can’t afford,” Brantley said. 

Brantley said he encouraged students to talk with their professors to help spread awareness about Open Access Week. 

Monday in the Doudna Fine Arts Center Lecture Hall at 6:30 p.m. there will be a movie screening, “Paywall: The Business of Scholarship,” which is a documentary about academic journals.

Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. “The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz” will be screened in the Doudna Fine Arts Center Lecture Hall.

Thursday is bring a brown bag lunch starting at 11:30 a.m. in the Edgar Room of the library, which will include a panel of three professors: history professor Lynne Curry, health promotion professor Lauri DeRuiter-Willems and Stacey Knight-Davis, head of library technology services.

Throughout the week there will be pamphlets and information to grab on the go. 

Open Access Week is free for everyone and for more information students can visit openaccessweek.org.

Dee Luter can be reached at 581-2812 or at dsluter@eiu.edu.