---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Manon Ress manon.ress@keionline.org Date: Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 1:46 PM Subject: [A2k] Google to Make British Library Archive Available Online by N. Kendall To: a2k discuss list a2k@lists.keionline.org
“What we really want is the 20th century, but we Europeans are often locked out of our own culture by copyright laws. So, for instance, the First World War poets, which are pre-1923 and therefore out of copyright in the USA, are still in copyright in Europe. There is an absurdity there.”end of quote
http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/06/20/google-to-make-british-library-a...
Google to Make British Library Archive Available Online
By Nigel Kendall
The British Library today announced its first partnership with Google, under which Google will digitize 250,000 items from the library’s vast collection of work produced between 1700-1870.
The Library, the only British institution that automatically receives a copy of every book and periodical to go on sale in the United Kingdom and Ireland, joins around 40 libraries worldwide in allowing Google to digitize part of its collection and make it freely available and searchable online, at books.google.co.uk and the British Library website, www.bl.uk.
Speaking at the official launch, Kristian Jensen, the Library’s head of Arts and Humanities, said: “This process allows books to fulfill their original aim of being useful to as many people as possible. Scholars will be able to identify what they are looking for in seconds, rather than hours.”
The new collection will contain only works that are out of copyright under European law. The collection will be selected according to theme, and will go online over the next three years. Google will undertake the digitization process at its own facility, whose location a Google spokesman declined to reveal, for security reasons.
As well as published books, the 1700-1870 collection will also contain pamphlets and periodicals from across Europe. This was a period of political and technological turmoil, covering much of the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, the introduction of UK income tax and the invention of the telegraph and railway. All of these topics are covered, as are the quirkier matters of the day, such as the account, from 1775, of a stuffed hippopotamus owned by the Prince of Orange.
The precise length of the deal, and the cost to Google, were not disclosed although it’s safe to assume that the British Library struck a hard bargain over the contentious issue of digital rights. Just over two years ago, rights issues caused the Library to pull out of previous negotiations with Google.
In 2009, Simon Bell, the head of partnerships at the British Library, said: “Ultimately the ownership should be fully taken back into the British Library so that we can then offer it via our website to the British taxpayer for free. We could not at the time achieve that with Google.” The Library went on to form limited partnerships with Microsoft and others.
In 2011, Mr. Bell seems happier with the new Google deal: “This is a fixed contract that gives us huge freedom. It’s not a monstrously long contract and then the digital rights revert to us. Google is also happy for us to disseminate this material in any non-commercial way we see fit, including via www.europeana.eu which hosts digitized content from public sources all across Europe.
“The deal was timely, because other national libraries are starting similar collaborations…it started with the Italians, then the Austrians, then the Dutch, then the Czechs. So we are not the only ones.
“We think it would have cost us about £6 million to scan these documents, though I can’t say how much it’s costing Google. We like to think that projects like this are for the common good; Google’s motives may be less altruistic, but they’re not going to be making a fortune out of this.”
Nevertheless, Mr Bell expressed slight frustration that the project will not go beyond 1870: “What we really want is the 20th century, but we Europeans are often locked out of our own culture by copyright laws. So, for instance, the First World War poets, which are pre-1923 and therefore out of copyright in the USA, are still in copyright in Europe. There is an absurdity there.”
Nor, he noted, was the issue of copyright restricted to Europe: “Early adopters of digitization were American college libraries that got themselves in a bit of trouble with copyright. The 1870 date we’ve chosen is very conservative and none of the European libraries has released anything that is still in copyright. The idea of the British Library and things that are still in copyright is way too rich for our blood.”
There is still, hope, however. A recently published review of UK Intellectual Property laws commissioned by the UK government and delivered by professor Ian Hargreaves in May recommends the establishment of separate digital rights for works that are technically still in copyright, but unavailable. Perhaps one day UK Internet users will be able to enjoy Siegfried Sassoon’s war poetry legally, without first having to travel to the United States to view it.
In the meantime, bibliophiles can play an intriguing game at ngrams.googlelabs.com where the occurrence of key words in texts over set historical periods can be viewed as a graph. Tip: try “heaven” and “hell” from 1650-1800.
-- Manon Anne Ress Knowledge Ecology International 1621 Connecticut Ave, NW, Suite 500 Washington, DC 20009 USA http://www.keionline.org manon.ress@keionline.org
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