The Digital Public Library of America
It's something of a dream for many: to digitize and make accessible the vast number of books, documents, artifacts, photos, videos, and other materials housed at thousands of different institutions across the country. The Digital Public Library of America is working on making it a reality. We explore a collaboration between libraries, museums, and archives - including the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian - that aims to put it all online.
Guests
Director, Digital Public Library of America Secretariat, Berkman Center, Harvard University.
Associate Director of Digital Services, Smithsonian Libraries; Co-chair of the Technical Workstream; Digital Public Library of America.
United States Register of Copyrights
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Comments
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How will this affect DONATED materials? Some libraries allow donated items to be placed into general circulation. Will digital libraries allow donated materials to be digitized? Will it allow the submission of electronic materials, such as e-books, video, and software?
The possibility of limiting the number of copies in digital "circulation" already exists through locked-down, copy-protected freeware programs like Adobe Digital Editions, which several online repositories are currently using to provide digital access to in-copyright works that are out of print or otherwise hard to find.
This model permits users to access the works without having to shell out hundreds of dollars for copies of rare works that are, in some cases, collectors' items.
It seems that this model would work well for works that are still in print or that are NOT as rare or difficult to find.
Does this not provide proper copyright protection for authors and creators, or are there additional complexities to the law that would make this model difficult to implement on a large scale?
Earlier in the program, one of the guests seemed to imply that the public will not have direct access to the Digital Public Library (DPL). That instead the content will be curated by search engines such as those by Google and Microsoft (i.e., Bing). Does this mean that direct access will be restricted to such companies and/or programs? Does this mean that members of the public will not be able to create their own custom search engines?
Thank you for responding to my question on-air; however, I believe Martin Kalfatovic missed my main concern which is not whether the DPL data will be directly available to Google, Microsoft, and such for optimization of their search engines but rather will it be available to the public for custom search engine development or if not to the public than any private company (i.e., no exclusive rights to direct access for certain companies). I will stress that my concern is over search engine development and who has the rights to develop such engines (which is dependent on direct access to DPL content).
My concern involves both market share of information space but also optimization of DPL use for individual or special purposes. Extending the librarian/library metaphor, will the public be allowed to go directly to the stacks (i.e., have direct access to DPL content), have to use a government appointed librarian (i.e., a government developed search engine), or have to use private librarians such as Google or Microsoft? If the latter is the case, will it be possible for any private company to apply for direct access to the DPL data if they meet security and bandwidth criteria and will these criteria be the same across all companies including Google and Microsoft?
Shan, sorry if I didn't fully answer your question. One of our goals on the technical workstream is to make the content of the DPLA to work in the world of Linked Open Data (LOD). LOD will allow users to create their own "slices" into the content and reuse it in all types of new applications and things that we've never thought of. If we can implement LOD properly, you'll be able to create all type of things using DPLA data from Google Maps mashups to your own personal library using the whole world of internet tools.
Take a look at some of the APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that the Biodiversity Heritage Library offers (http://biodivlib.wikispaces.com/Developer+Tools+and+API) as an example of how you can use the content for your own projects.
Follow along with the DPLA tech workstream (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/dpla/Technical_Aspects) to see what we'll be doing and please send along any comments/suggestions on how we can make this useful for you.
good information
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