Okay, I get that Google is dealing with millions of documents at breakneck pace, with workers who are not lawyers. But can we get just one rulke in writing and post it on everyone's monitor?
IF IT'S PUBLISHED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, IT'S PUBLIC DOMAIN. EVEN WHILE BUSH IS STILL IN OFFICE.
I just came across this record, and stopped in disbelief. I know there's a budget crisis, I know that federal agencies are making some very secretive and strange deals (see the Smithsonian/cable deal), but restricting content by falsely declaring an unconstitutional copyright ought to be actionable.
Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the ... Congress
Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the ... Congress
by United States Congress - Law - 1933
[ Sorry, this page's content is restricted ]
Snippet view - About this book - Add to my library - More editions
Come on guys. I understand that you don't have time to investigate the status of works that should be PD by date, but might have been restored under some later amendment, though I don't understand why you would scan works in copyright under a claim of fair use and restrict PD.
But what possible challenge to fair use could there be in the Congressional Record? How could a corporate body even establish standing to the public record?
Guys, they're our laws, and our congress. Yours too, of course, but not just yours. So can we just write an algorithm that says "This is PD, and we're sorry, we really goofed" for the Record?
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Monday, December 8, 2008
If not Google, who?
There's been some buzz about the Library of Congress putting images on Flickr, and the Life/Google partnership, but now the German Archives is putting 100,000 images up on Wikimedia.
It's an interesting choice. Flickr is popular, but so was AOL and Compuserve once. Google is the big dog, but keeps things in their silos (Google Books). Wikimedia has the advantage of international support and a foundation, so it may be a wise choice. It's certainly cheaper than having your own server farm, and provides redundancy. And I'm sure some of those images will end up on Flickr and other sites, for more redundancy.
I've always been a belt-and-suspenders person, so this looks like a win-win situation.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Bundesarchiv
It's an interesting choice. Flickr is popular, but so was AOL and Compuserve once. Google is the big dog, but keeps things in their silos (Google Books). Wikimedia has the advantage of international support and a foundation, so it may be a wise choice. It's certainly cheaper than having your own server farm, and provides redundancy. And I'm sure some of those images will end up on Flickr and other sites, for more redundancy.
I've always been a belt-and-suspenders person, so this looks like a win-win situation.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Bundesarchiv
Sunday, November 23, 2008
I Will Fear No Google
Over at Archives Next, I just took a quick look at the Archives 2.0 Manifesto, and one thing really stood out for me. There's a lot of muttering, some from high places, on primary sources being the next target for Google, fed by the Google/Life project that just announced.
Well, duh.
I worked in a photographic archive with 1.5M images, and I've freelanced for archives with image collections. I KNOW how hard it is to describe images in a meaningful way if there's no caption info, and even if there is. I blush to think how long it took me to realize that Jack Niles was John Jacob Niles, and the reason he was in Eastern Kentucky was because he was Doris Ulmann's assistant, and suddenly there were research implications that weren't there before.
If I wasn't there, how long would it have taken for someone else to make the connection? And if they had, would they have told us?
I love the Flickr archives images. The people who know by experience what and where of the FSA photos are dying off, and the common knowledge will become deep research we can't afford to do.
I love the Google copyright registry. Ditto.
Why should we wait until we gather a group and write a grant and get funded (someday maybe)when someone's willing to do it now, at no cost, and more importantly, make it available. What will happen when Google goes away? The Internet Archive. And then? Someone else. There's always someone else, someone with the public good in mind.
We're supposed to serve the scholarly community, and not just the scholars on our campus. If Google Archives puts us out of a job, what's that compared with the public good? That's like lamenting the loss of catalog card typists and electric erasers.
I'm only the third generation in this country. My grandmother used to say "What you know, no one can take from you". Multiply that by a few billion, and no political or natural disaster can wipe out the knowledge.
Books that can't be censored or banned, images that can be freely seen, archives that can be read any time and any place? What's the problem with that?
Oh, I know there are problems and issues, including me learning still another profession. But if we don't act, if we don't partner with people who can make it happen, if we don't move forward and reinvent ourselves, someone else will do that for us.
Google rules right now. It used to be AOL and Compuserve. Things change all the time.
Why shouldn't we?
http://www.archivesnext.com/?p=64
Well, duh.
I worked in a photographic archive with 1.5M images, and I've freelanced for archives with image collections. I KNOW how hard it is to describe images in a meaningful way if there's no caption info, and even if there is. I blush to think how long it took me to realize that Jack Niles was John Jacob Niles, and the reason he was in Eastern Kentucky was because he was Doris Ulmann's assistant, and suddenly there were research implications that weren't there before.
If I wasn't there, how long would it have taken for someone else to make the connection? And if they had, would they have told us?
I love the Flickr archives images. The people who know by experience what and where of the FSA photos are dying off, and the common knowledge will become deep research we can't afford to do.
I love the Google copyright registry. Ditto.
Why should we wait until we gather a group and write a grant and get funded (someday maybe)when someone's willing to do it now, at no cost, and more importantly, make it available. What will happen when Google goes away? The Internet Archive. And then? Someone else. There's always someone else, someone with the public good in mind.
We're supposed to serve the scholarly community, and not just the scholars on our campus. If Google Archives puts us out of a job, what's that compared with the public good? That's like lamenting the loss of catalog card typists and electric erasers.
I'm only the third generation in this country. My grandmother used to say "What you know, no one can take from you". Multiply that by a few billion, and no political or natural disaster can wipe out the knowledge.
Books that can't be censored or banned, images that can be freely seen, archives that can be read any time and any place? What's the problem with that?
Oh, I know there are problems and issues, including me learning still another profession. But if we don't act, if we don't partner with people who can make it happen, if we don't move forward and reinvent ourselves, someone else will do that for us.
Google rules right now. It used to be AOL and Compuserve. Things change all the time.
Why shouldn't we?
http://www.archivesnext.com/?p=64
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Google settles for - everything
Of course, digitizing everything was the goal. And considering what Google has in the bank, $125M is cheap to settle. The bad news is that it's a settlement, and doesn't make any difference in the law, but it does set a non-legal precedent.
Of course, I'm curious if OCLC's fledgling copyright information registry is partnering with Google; it would make sense not to duplicate effort, and crowdsourcing has made sense in other fields. It certainly hasn't hurt LC, with its Flickr experiment.
I'm not as concerned about Google replacing libraries. It's not like Google is taking the books away from libraries, stopping ILL, or burning them. It certainly has a lower barrier to entry than the aggregators, when an individual can pay for full access to only what they want. Certainly better than Corbis, who bought the photos and has locked them up.
That's not to say that it can't change, but the libraries have gotten their digital copies, presumably the Internet Archive will crawl the open collections, and the libraries will know what was actually used if it comes to them doing the work again.
What's the worst case scenario? Google goes out of business, all the digital files go away, and the libraries are no worse than before, and some publishers and authors have made some money they wouldn't have gotten under the first sale provision.
What's the upside? 20% instead of snippets, payment to authors (if they can be found), fewer dead trees, universal access.
I don't have any problems with that.
Of course, I'm curious if OCLC's fledgling copyright information registry is partnering with Google; it would make sense not to duplicate effort, and crowdsourcing has made sense in other fields. It certainly hasn't hurt LC, with its Flickr experiment.
I'm not as concerned about Google replacing libraries. It's not like Google is taking the books away from libraries, stopping ILL, or burning them. It certainly has a lower barrier to entry than the aggregators, when an individual can pay for full access to only what they want. Certainly better than Corbis, who bought the photos and has locked them up.
That's not to say that it can't change, but the libraries have gotten their digital copies, presumably the Internet Archive will crawl the open collections, and the libraries will know what was actually used if it comes to them doing the work again.
What's the worst case scenario? Google goes out of business, all the digital files go away, and the libraries are no worse than before, and some publishers and authors have made some money they wouldn't have gotten under the first sale provision.
What's the upside? 20% instead of snippets, payment to authors (if they can be found), fewer dead trees, universal access.
I don't have any problems with that.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Socializiing 2.0
Facebook is fun, but low on content. OCLC's Web Junction had content, but was focused on public libraries.
Good news! WJ now has a section for academic libraries, for special libraries, and archives and museums. Now there's a chance for connections between different institutions for collaboration and just getting to know one another.
My Preservation Group is growing, and all are invited to join it. I'm slowly getting some links into the Archives Section, and will be adding to it. Right now there are links to preservation handouts, book repair videos, and disaster plans.
So if you want to meet other archivists and librarians online without the Facebook Fluff (R), check out WebJunction. The more of us who join, the more useful it will be! You do have to join, but it's free and spamless.
Good news! WJ now has a section for academic libraries, for special libraries, and archives and museums. Now there's a chance for connections between different institutions for collaboration and just getting to know one another.
My Preservation Group is growing, and all are invited to join it. I'm slowly getting some links into the Archives Section, and will be adding to it. Right now there are links to preservation handouts, book repair videos, and disaster plans.
So if you want to meet other archivists and librarians online without the Facebook Fluff (R), check out WebJunction. The more of us who join, the more useful it will be! You do have to join, but it's free and spamless.
Moving my wiki
Which will technically not be a wiki any more, though I'll be glad to add anyone as collaborator who wants to add sites or annotations! PBWiki was getting too weird, with hidden ads; the old wiki will remain, but I won't be adding to it.
The new site is a Google Site, at
http://sites.google.com/site/humanitiesforlibrarians/
The new site is a Google Site, at
http://sites.google.com/site/humanitiesforlibrarians/
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Out of Context
It's a phrase we hear a lot during the political season - you took my remark out of context. But do archival collections always have context to remove an item from? Is it always bad to scan just part of a collection?
Take photographic studio collection. They were never meant to be documentary, they get a job, they shoot it, they don't know where it'll be used the next day. There may be some context in that shoot, that series of five street shots of downtown, but they have nothing to do with the passport photo before it or the product shots after, unless you're the odd duck studying the business model of studios. And that's fine.
But most patrons want a portrait of their uncle, not the street shot. Or their house, and don't care about the other thousand. Or a particular building for an article. The context is in the image itself.
Or the family papers, four generations of paper - but only the eyewitness letter about Pearl Harbor has any relevance outside the family. The sons baby pictures have no relevance to that event, or the wedding pictures.
So where's the sin in digitizing what's useful, what's interesting, and just telling people there's more? Or, like LC, posting photos on Flickr and letting people identify them for you?
Let's think about what we're doing, and why we're doing it, and not follow dogmatic policies. The odds are that if a patron looks at the whole collection, they're still going to want that one picture they're looking for. When they post it online or publish it in an article, it's going to be out of context again, just like it was for the studio.
We can keep context in the collection, but we can't send it out into the world with the item. Let's do our job and let the patrons do theirs.
Take photographic studio collection. They were never meant to be documentary, they get a job, they shoot it, they don't know where it'll be used the next day. There may be some context in that shoot, that series of five street shots of downtown, but they have nothing to do with the passport photo before it or the product shots after, unless you're the odd duck studying the business model of studios. And that's fine.
But most patrons want a portrait of their uncle, not the street shot. Or their house, and don't care about the other thousand. Or a particular building for an article. The context is in the image itself.
Or the family papers, four generations of paper - but only the eyewitness letter about Pearl Harbor has any relevance outside the family. The sons baby pictures have no relevance to that event, or the wedding pictures.
So where's the sin in digitizing what's useful, what's interesting, and just telling people there's more? Or, like LC, posting photos on Flickr and letting people identify them for you?
Let's think about what we're doing, and why we're doing it, and not follow dogmatic policies. The odds are that if a patron looks at the whole collection, they're still going to want that one picture they're looking for. When they post it online or publish it in an article, it's going to be out of context again, just like it was for the studio.
We can keep context in the collection, but we can't send it out into the world with the item. Let's do our job and let the patrons do theirs.
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