digitizationblog News on digitization in libraries and allied institutions

This article from the BBC News describes the Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari Archive, developed by a community based in Australia's Northern Territory, and the degrees of access people have to parts of the archive based on who they are. Access to particular material is based on culturally-specific norms such as what sex the user is, what community the user is from, and whether an image being viewed is of a person from the user's family (family members cannot view images of deceased relatives).

You've got to see this video, mashed up from Disney film clips. Quotable quote: "The public domain is a disgrace to the forces of evil" (time index: 5:00).

CC version 3 is now available. This announcement describes the changes in the new license nicely.

This report deals with three broad sets of copyright issues relevant to digitization (orphan works, out of print works and digital preservation) and recommends specific actions be taken allow the development of the European Digital Library to proceed.

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research has released its policy on OA for publications reporting on research it funds. Finally, an OA mandate from a federal research funder. See Steven Harnad's commentary.

I don't usually pipe up about how embarrassingly moronic some of the copyright reforms coming out of the True North Strong and Free are, but Michael Geist's posting "Education Ministers' Copyright Proposal Needs a Rewrite" clearly explains another example of how a group of lobbyists, in this case the provincial Ministers of Education, can misrepresent the public good through doublespeak. Their Communiqué makes the Ministry of Truth look like clumsy amateurs.

The latest RLG DigiNews (Aug. 15, 10.4) contains a useful FAQ on two aspects of US copyright law, orphan works and Section 108 (limited number of copies of copyrighted works).

This add-in enables users of Office 2002 and 2003 to embed CC licenses into their documents. However, the Microsoft download page warns that "The Creative Commons Add-in is an unsupported technology preview, however we welcome your feedback and input."

Most of the chapters from the newly published Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects (Chandos, 2006) are freely available. This list from eprints.org brings them together in one place.

The Report on Orphan Works is now available. It recommends ammending the US Copyright Act’s remedies section with the clauses

(1) prior to the commencement of the infringement, performed a good faith, reasonably diligent search to locate the owner of the infringed copyright and the infringer did not locate that owner, and
(2) throughout the course of the infringement, provided attribution to the author and copyright owner of the work, if possible and as appropriate under the circumstances