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 | NDIIP Releases International Study on Copyright and Digital Preservation
The Library of Congress (LC) today released a 200-page report on the challenges copyright and related laws worldwide present for digital preservation. The International Study on the Impact of Copyright Law on Digital Preservation was conducted jointly by the LC’s National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIP) in the United States, the Joint Information Systems Committee in the U.K.; the Open Access to Knowledge (OAK) Law Project in Australia; and the SURFfoundation in the Netherlands.
The study focused on the impact of various laws on digital preservation of copyrighted works, offering both “proposals for legislative reform” and suggestions for “non-legislative solutions.” It covers many of the same, thorny issues addressed recently in the report issued by the Section 108 Study Group. A key difference, however, is that the NDIIP joint report does not bear the marks of the fractious debate evident in the Section 108 Study Group’s report. The Section 108 Study Group included a wider range of stakeholders with differing interests.
Among the NDIIP’s broad suggestions: -
That countries establish “laws and policies” to encourage and enable the digital preservation of at-risk copyrighted materials and that these apply to “all non-profit libraries, archives, museums and other institutions,” provided they do not seek commercial advantage.
- That preservation laws and policies apply equally to all categories of copyrighted materials, including “literary, artistic, musical and dramatic works, as well as motion pictures and sound recordings.”
- That laws cover all copyrighted materials in all media and formats, “hard copy or electronic, born digital or digitized for preservation.”
- That “preservation institutions” be allowed to actively harvest publicly available content (such as web sites) for preservation purposes.
- That “preservation institutions” be permitted to “proactively preserve at risk copyrighted materials before they deteriorate, are damaged or are lost.
Preservation was one major issue addressed in the Section 108 Study Group report, but its recommendations reflected serious concerns from rightsholders, and left significant latitude for legislators to consider solutions. For example, the Section 108 Study Group agreed that libraries and museums should be granted an exception to make copies of “at risk” works but suggested limiting that provision to making only a “reasonably necessary” number of copies, as well as restricting access to the preservation copies. It also enumerated a laundry list of qualifications to be met before determining which institutions could even take advantage of that exception.
While the NDIIP report offers clearer mandates and priorities for preserving digital content than the Section 108 Study Group report, action should not be expected quickly. The NDIIP report also suggests that significant further research and discussion is necessary to form policies and best practices, including research “on the national level” to determine “whether and under what circumstances access to digital preservation copies can be provided without harm to right holders,” and “to reexamine the interaction between copyright and private agreements as it relates to digital preservation.”
Nevertheless, the report represents a more urgent push for increased latitude in laws and policies for libraries and other institutions to engage in digital preservation activities, and it will surely be a welcome component to ongoing international copyright discussions. “Digital works are ephemeral, and unless preservation efforts are begun soon after such works are created,” the report posits, “they will be lost to future generations.” Although the report notes copyright and related laws as just one obstacle to digital preservation activities, it clarifies that “there is no question that those laws present significant challenges.”
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University of Iowa Main Library Reopens
Some good news from the University of Iowa (UI), in Iowa City, as the main library reopened last week, and the campus recovery continues. Library staff was cleared to return to work in the main library on Monday, July 7, and it reopened on July 9. As of July 11, most all of the building’s staff were back at work, although many of the books and other materials moved from the basement are still on upper floors. Nevertheless, given the severe, unprecedented flooding, the reopening of the library just weeks after waters receded is an important step in the university’s recovery. “It was critical that we open as quickly as possible for students in summer session courses and for faculty doing research,” UI librarian Nancy Baker told the LJ Academic Newswire.
Challenges remain, however. UI president Sally Mason noted that UI facilities along the Iowa River received substantial damage from the historic floods. “Every effort is being made to prepare for the fall semester, yet undoubtedly there will be inconveniences that everyone will encounter,” Mason wrote on UI’s web site. That includes the art and music libraries, located in buildings close to the river that received serious flooding. They are likely to be inaccessible for the coming year, Baker noted, adding that librarians were busy working on a plan to retrieve needed items each day while the renovation and repairs occur.
At the main library, work is also progressing to get materials back on shelves in the basement. The items were removed quickly by volunteers as the floodwaters rose—but getting them back on the shelves is a more methodical task. “It does take a lot longer to move everything back than it did to move it out since we need to put the collections in order,” Baker noted, saying that the job was nevertheless moving along swiftly. Baker said about half the basement’s collections remain on upper floors but that the goal is to have everything back in place by August 15 and ready for the August 25 start of fall semester, which UI’s Mason pledged will begin on time.
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| A Thaw in Franco-Google Relations? Google Books Signs First French Library
Sacre Bleu! While some librarians at the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference were left wondering whether Google “had used them,” for their book collections after the search giant did not exhibit in Anaheim, the company this week announced that it had signed its 29th library partner for Google Book Search. Google officials announced that the Lyon Municipal Library, France’s second largest library after the national library in Paris, and the project’s first partner in France, has signed on to make more than 500,000 books available online as part of Google’s Book Search Library project.
Under the plan, Google and Lyon will digitize and offer access to out-of-copyrights works, to be searchable through Google Book Search. On the Google blog, Gérard Collomb, senator and mayor of Lyon, said the partnership would “open our library doors to the rest of the world.”
More importantly, perhaps, the partnership suggests a thaw in Franco-Google relations, and comes just a year after Google’s most impassioned international critic, Jean-Noel Jeanneney, left his post as head of the French national library. In 2005, Jeanneney made international headlines with an editorial in Paris-based Le Monde expressing alarm over Google’s original plan to digitize books from five prominent university libraries, saying that the plan would favor Anglo-Saxon ideas and the English language. In 2006, he published Google and the Myth of Universal Access with the University of Chicago Press, in which he posited that Google’s book scanning plan constituted “a risk of crushing domination by America in defining the idea that future generations have of the world.”
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| NARA Joins World Digital Library
Librarian of Congress James H. Billington and Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein announced this week that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) will become a founding partner in the World Digital Library (WDL). Launched in 2005 by the Library of Congress in cooperation with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the WDL will make a wealth of primary materials from countries and cultures around the world freely available on the Internet.
Weinstein said NARA will contribute digital versions of documents from its collections to the WDL, which is slated to launch for the international public in early 2009. Documents will include the Declaration of Independence; the Constitution of the United States; the Bill of Rights; the Emancipation Proclamation; as well as an array of Civil War photographs; naturalization and immigration records of famous Americans; and photographs by Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and Lewis Hine. The images NARA has contributed to the WDL, meanwhile are already available on the NARA web site. In addition to NARA and the Library of Congress, WDL project partners include cultural institutions and libraries from Brazil, China, Egypt, Israel, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and many other countries.
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| Library Journal Politician of the Year deadline has been extended to July 25, 2008.
Library Journal Politician of the Year deadline has been extended to July 25, 2008. Is there a political figure making a difference in your library community? The editors of Library Journal want to know about them and what they've achieved for libraries in your area. Please send nominations, including a description of the politician's efforts on behalf of libraries, to Ann Kim via email at akim@reedbusiness.com; by mail to: Library Journal, 360 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10010; or by FAX at 646-746-6734
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Library Journal Academic Newswire
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