Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
> Hahn, Harvey wrote:
>> "pristine"--unless they redownloaded for some reason.) The LC bib
>> database could be included, too, since it's freely available to
>> Americans--but I believe there are restrictions to allowing access to
>> non-U.S. libraries, since it was created with American tax money and not
>> funds from other countries.
> The issue is not whose tax dollars created it. The issue is that US
> Copyright law specifically exempts works created by the US federal
> government by copyright---they are not copyrightable at all under US
> law, are simply not protected by copyright in the US. However, other
> country's copyright laws have no such exceptions, so they ARE protected
> by copyright in other countries (with the US government being the
> copyright holder).
>
Of course, even this is not quite so straightforward as it sounds.
While it certainly may be true that the laws of some other countries
would protect the ability of the US Government to assert its copyright
of LC records in those countries, I am quite sure there are some
jurisdictions where such an assertion would fail for any number of
reasons. Of course, it's all speculation until the US Government
actually tries to assert its copyright claims over LC records in a
foreign court. I'm not sure if this has ever happened, but for some
reason, it seems pretty unlikely.
> Copyright law ends up being enormously complex. But this is one aspect
> of it I'm fairly certain of. In general though, you can't count on
> something being true in copyright law just because it makes sense to
> you. It's not about what makes sense, it's about a complicated set of
> laws (statutory and case law) built up over time little by little to try
> and meet and balance certain needs and interests, to become the mess
> that it is.
>
Which is why I've grown increasingly frustrated by the discussion of
copyright as it applies to catalog records. Copyright, at least in the
US, is extremely difficult to understand or speak about with any
certainty, even for legal experts, so we tend to simplify the rule to
"don't copy stuff, just in case." If such a restrictive and
precautionary view of copyright, rather than our actual needs, allows us
to dictate our practice, then I think any effort to open up data is
bound either to fail or to become commercial. We need to make what we
do legal, of course, but if we could come up with some sort of general
agreement among libraries that records are free to share and that we
won't start prosecuting each other, then copyright becomes less of a
concern.
- Jonathan (the other one)
> Jonathan
>
>> (You'd have to check on how to deal with
>> that.) Anyway, that combination ought to give a good start to such a
>> cooperative project. Of course, other considerations come into play
>> beyond what have already be mentioned: if two or more libraries (in
>> different shared cataloging cooperatives) created bib records from
>> scratch for the same item, which record goes into the repository?
>> What's the process for correcting errors, and who has authority to do
>> so? Or is the repository like a wiki, where anybody can change records
>> willy-nilly? How would duplicate records, if any, be handled? Just
>> read any shared cataloging cooperative's manual(s) to get an idea of all
>> that's involved. It's easy to look at big pictures, but (in a digital
>> world) little pixels all have to fit together correctly for the big
>> picture to exist. I'm rather sure the wished-for repository is quite
>> possible, but it won't be large unless *lots* of libraries (especially
>> big ones) participate. For example, the current typical rate for local
>> creation (from scratch) of book bib records in OCLC is about 2% (AV is
>> around 10%-20%)--at least in a public library environment. That's not a
>> lot of books that any one typical local institution can contribute (for
>> us, that would be only around 7000-7500 titles). Compare that to the
>> 4-5 million or more records (I no longer know how many LC MARC records
>> exist) created by the Library of Congress since 1968. Without the LC
>> bib database, you're likely talking a piddly-sized repository--nothing
>> approaching OCLC's 70+ million bibs without all the other article
>> records using up numbers. FWIW.
>>
>> Harvey
>>
>> --
>> ===========================================
>> Harvey E. Hahn, Manager, Technical Services Department
>> Arlington Heights (Illinois) Memorial Library
>> 847/506-2644 - FX: 847/506-2650 - Email: hhahn(at)ahml(dot)info
>> OML & Scripts web pages: http://www.ahml.info/oml/
>> Personal web pages: http://users.anet.com/~packrat
>>
>>
>
> --
> Jonathan Rochkind
> Sr. Programmer/Analyst
> The Sheridan Libraries
> Johns Hopkins University
> 410.516.8886
> rochkind (at) jhu.edu
--
Jonathan V. Williams, MLS
URSUS System Manager, University of Maine System
jvwilliams_at_maine.edu
(207) 262-7942
327 Belfast Hall
University College of Bangor
Bangor ME, 04401
Received on Thu Apr 26 2007 - 08:46:56 EDT