While I applaud David Rothman's sentiments about the National Digital Public Library concept, I find myself wondering about the likelihood of licensing widespread public access to copyrighted materials.
I was involved in some early efforts to license online full-text journal article databases for the faculty, students and staff of several dozen Illinois colleges and universities. We offered our first such database in the early 1990s, with access to all library users affiliated with the Illinois Library Computer Systems Organization (ILCSO). The funds to support these subscriptions were provided by the Illinois Board of Higher Education. Tom Peters (coordinator of LibraryCity.org) was involved in some of these activities.
If anything, I have the feeling it's more difficult now to license such access to copyrighted materials. Publishers seem more picky now about how their copyrighted materials are used (see: http://bit.ly/kh9nQx for one example). And the funding that supported such interlibrary cooperative activities in the past is drying up in today's economic climate. Even Google, with all its resources, has hit an intellectual property roadblock in the Google Books project.
I think the key to any "national digital library" is to find some way to offer widespread public accesss to copyrighted materials at an affordable price that publishers will accept. I'm not sure that's do-able in today's publishing climate. Something/someone has to give.
Bernie Sloan
--- On Sun, 5/22/11, David H. Rothman <davidrothman_at_POBOX.COM> wrote:
From: David H. Rothman <davidrothman_at_POBOX.COM>
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Bill Clinton: Create Internet agency
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Date: Sunday, May 22, 2011, 4:41 PM
I agree with worries over censorship even if that isn't Bill Clinton's
intent. And, yes, both librarians and journalists are solutions. No
policing or corrections agency, though. I hate the idea.
What would help would be two well-stocked national digital library
systems--public and academic. I've raised that topic on the NGC4LIB
list before, but since then have collaborated with librarian Tom
Peters on the LibraryCity.org site filling in more details, including
some thoughts on the censorship threat.
I find the Digital Public Library of America initiative at Harvard to
be especially promising, at least if the DPLA executes well and is
more cognizant of the true costs of and need for copyrighted materials
for popular consumption.
The project urgently needs to split into (1) a Scholarly Digital
Library of America (academic and mostly privately funded) and a
National Digital Library of America (public and mostly publicly
funded), with close cooperation between the two.
Among many other things, cooperation could include the creation of a
joint technical operation, as well as consolidated discovery
mechanisms and content exchanges. Both systems would be universally
accessible. Just the same, the priorities of academic libs and publibs
might clash brutally at budget time. I don't want this be--so
directly--"scholarly monographs vs. K-12 textbooks, multimedia
content, The Great Gatsby and John Grisham novels." Or accurate
medical and financial information for the elderly! Many academics
don't understand the extent to which libraries are life-copers, not
just books, and how this so often happens through face-to-face and
virtual services--librarians, in other words!--not just the actual
content.
Yet another advantage of two systems with somewhat different business
models would be increased diversity of content and more freedom of
expression. Let's make it as easy as possible to route around the
censors.
Of course, I want Google, online bookstores and others on the private
side to keep plugging way. Here's to diversity of biz models, geo
diversity, racial and ethnic diversity and all other kinds in library
planning and operation! In a Chronicle of Higher Education essay, I
tell how different models could exist.
Meanwhile see relevant URLs below, beyond http://www.librarycity.org
David Rothman
Co-founder, LibraryCity.org
703.370.6540
@librarycity on Twitter
Received on Sun May 22 2011 - 17:57:43 EDT