October 14, 2008 is the world’s first Open Access Day.  The founding partners are SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), Students for FreeCulture, and the Public Library of Science.  Open Access Day will help to broaden awareness and understanding of Open Access, including recent mandates and emerging policies, within the international higher education community and the general public.

SPARC has released 6 videos on why Open Access matters:

* Barbara Stebbins, science teacher at Black Pine Circle School in Berkeley
* Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust, London, U.K.
* Sharon Terry, CEO and President of the Genetic Alliance, Washington, DC
* Ida Sim, Associate Professor and a practicing physician at the University of California, San Francisco
* Diane Graves, University Librarian for Trinity University, San Antonio
* Andre Brown, PhD student, University of Pennsylvania

The videos are available for the public to view, download, and repurpose under a CC-BY license at http://www.vimeo.com/oaday08.