[Commons-l] Digitisation equipment

[John Vandenberg]

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 12:20 AM, Andrew
Turvey<andrewrturvey at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Yes, I take your point. However, much of the scanned material is subject to copyright, and the people who've invested in the scanning are often keen to get a return on their investment and not release it to us! The concept we were thinking about is linking with municipal archives, saying - we'll scan your records for you if you release them to us copyright-free afterwards. Not sure if it's a runner at the moment, which is why I'm asking the question to see what others have done.

Organise for these records to be donated to a commons-friendly library
or archive, and let them do what they are good at.  We are good a
tasks that require lots of people.

There is a distinct lack of digitised works in languages other than
English, and I can understand Wikimedia chapters taking a leading role
in those countries.

> Could you tell me more about the "transcription" tasks? Have we got access to any resources that are awaiting transcription?

Wikisource is the transcription project; there is an abundance of
tasks, and not enough people.
See my email:

>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaau-l/2009-August/002611.html

If you want to talk to a local, Charles Matthews is the most active
Brit that I can think of quickly.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Charles_Matthews

Here are two very important texts which WMUK could push to completion:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:The_copyright_act,_1911,_annotated.djvu
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:A_treatise_upon_the_law_of_copyright.djvu

As far as I know, there is no complete etext of the original 1911 Copyright Act.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_1911

--
John Vandenberg