The Chronicle reports that the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) will make virtually all of its publications, databases, and course materials freely available on the Internet over the next few years.
According to the article, UNAM, Mexico's largest university, said the program, known as All of UNAM Online, could double or triple the institution's 3.5 million publicly available Web pages, as the largest collection of its kind in Latin America. It also says that it would include all magazines and periodicals published by UNAM, and, if negotiations with outside publishers went well, all research published by UNAM employees. The university would provide online access to all theses and dissertations as well as materials for its approximately 300 undergraduate and graduate courses, according to the story.
"If UNAM can do everything it proposes, this will be a very big step," said Carolina Rossini, the coordinator of the Open Education Resource Project, a program supported by the Open Society Institute to promote open access and open-educational resources in Brazil. "It will fulfill part of the public university's mission to benefit society beyond those who are enrolled or affiliated with the university."
