Eric said:
"All of this content could be collected, described, archived, indexed, and a have services provided against it. Yes, the inclusion of copyrighted ('licensed') material in libraries is complicated, but those complications are a superset of the complications of freely available material. I advocate first learning how to collect, curate, organize, and disseminate freely available content, and once that is well understood tackle the difficulties of licensed material."
Here's a naive question: Haven't librarians talked about organizing freely available Internet content for the past 15-20 years? I remember thinking it sounded like a killer app back in the day. I recall projects like the "Librarians Index to the Internet", etc. Why don't we have that killer app today? Just curious...
Bernie Sloan
--- On Mon, 5/23/11, Eric Lease Morgan <emorgan_at_ND.EDU> wrote:
> From: Eric Lease Morgan <emorgan_at_ND.EDU>
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] National Digital Public Library (was: Bill Clinton: Create Internet agency)
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Date: Monday, May 23, 2011, 5:07 PM
> On May 22, 2011, at 5:57 PM, B.G.
> Sloan wrote:
>
> > 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 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.
>
>
> I'm not so sure I agree; I do not think a key to any
> national digital library is finding a way to offer
> copyrighted materials.
>
> I think the inclusion of copyrighted (read "licensed")
> materials makes just about any library more complete, but I
> do not think their inclusion is necessary. Their inclusion
> makes libraries more useful, but their exclusion would not
> make them useless. The key to addressing these issues is the
> definition of the library and the articulation of a
> corresponding collection policy.
>
> As we all know, the amount of data/information freely
> available on the Web abounds, and its size is only getting
> bigger. If a library's collection policy dictated the
> inclusion of only free materials, then the library could
> easily include content such as:
>
> * audio recordings
> * blog postings
> * conference proceedings
> * digitized books
> * digitized museum items
> * government publications
> * images
> * mailing list archives
> * open access journals
> * research data sets
> * theses & dissertations
> * Twitter feeds
> * videos
>
> All of this content could be collected, described,
> archived, indexed, and a have services provided against it.
> Yes, the inclusion of copyrighted ("licensed") material in
> libraries is complicated, but those complications are a
> superset of the complications of freely available material.
> I advocate first learning how to collect, curate, organize,
> and disseminate freely available content, and once that is
> well understood tackle the difficulties of licensed
> material.
>
> I believe a national digital library can be successful sans
> the inclusion of licensed material.
>
> --
> Eric Lease Morgan
> University of Notre Dame
>
Received on Tue May 24 2011 - 20:18:27 EDT