John Mark Ockerbloom (born 1966) is a digital library architect and planner in the

library science Library science (often termed library studies, bibliothecography, and library economy) is an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary field that applies the practices, perspectives, and tools of management, information technology, education, and ...

field. Formerly at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

, from which he earned a PhD in computer science, he now works for the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

. He is the editor of The

Online Books Page The Online Books Page is an index of e-text books available on the Internet. It is edited by John Mark Ockerbloom and is hosted by the library of the University of Pennsylvania. The Online Books Page lists over 2 million books and has several feat ...

, which lists over two million books including

project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a Virtual volunteering, volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the ...

titles, all of which are freely available for reading online or by download.

Education

Mark Ockerbloom attended

in the 1990s and earned a PhD in computer science.

Career

Mark Ockerbloom works as a digital library planner and researcher at the

. He is involved in the use of technology by the general public for the public good. He is the chair of the ILS-DI Task Group for the

Digital Library Federation The Digital Library Federation (DLF) is a program of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) that brings together a consortium of college and university libraries, public libraries, museums, and related institutions with the stated ...

Free speech

In 1994, Mark Ockerbloom created Banned Books On-Line in response to the censoring of usenet newsgroups on Carnegie Mellon's servers. A number of organizations including

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ci ...

and the

American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...

were opposing the

Communications Decency Act The Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) was the United States Congress's first notable attempt to regulate pornographic material on the Internet. In the 1997 landmark case ''Reno v. ACLU'', the United States Supreme Court unanimously struck ...

around that time and took note of Banned Books On-Line, linking to it from their websites. In 1998, Mark Ockerbloom joined as a plaintiff along with columnist Rob Morse of the ''

San Francisco Examiner The ''San Francisco Examiner'' is a newspaper distributed in and around San Francisco, California, and published since 1863. Once self-dubbed the "Monarch of the Dailies" by then-owner William Randolph Hearst, and flagship of the Hearst Corporat ...

'', the ACLU and others in a federal lawsuit against a library using web filtering software. The Loudoun County Library in Virginia installed X-Stop filtering software created by Log-On Data Corporation. The filtering software stopped library patrons from visiting the websites of the ''San Francisco Examiner'', ''The San Francisco Chronicle'' and Ockerbloom's Banned Books On-Line.

Copyright

Mark Ockerbloom has pointed out some of the conflicts between

web 2.0 Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory) web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, and ...

and copyright law, describing how multimedia can contain unintended copyright violations. Mark Ockerbloom runs the

, which indexes books that are free to read over the Internet. In 1993, while at Carnegie Mellon University, Ockerbloom started the Online Books Page which allows readers to find books by title, subject or author. The site has been described as one of the largest and most popular resources for online books. He has said the

Copyright Term Extension Act The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act – also known as the Copyright Term Extension Act, Sonny Bono Act, or (derisively) the Mickey Mouse Protection Act – extended copyright terms in the United States in 1998. It is one of several a ...

can have a chilling effect on websites that provide readers easy access to books online and is concerned about the conflict between the public good and the interests of for-profit enterprises.

Personal life

Mark Ockerbloom's wife, Mary Mark Ockerbloom, is the editor of ''A Celebration of Women Writers'' website, which lists resources about women writers and works written by women that are freely viewable online.

Bibliography

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References

External links

Selected works of John Mark Ockerbloom
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ockerbloom, John Mark 1966 births American librarians Living people University of Pennsylvania staff Carnegie Mellon University alumni Place of birth missing (living people) American software engineers