ICOLC October 2008 Digitising in copyright material: soft law approach to mass digitisation

The Large scale digitisation: basic assumptions — Libraries want to digitise vast collections, including materials that are still under copyright — Many of these materials are out of print or not commercially available — Many of these materials are orphaned — Some of these materials are ‘authorless’ and/or unpublished — Finding right holder/getting permission on title-by-title basis problematic: — capacity libraries/archives insufficient — costs diligent search rise sky high

ta Approach world wide — Strong focus on orphan works and diligent search — Not yet solutions for mass digitisation — United States — Legislation on orphaned works is pending in Congress — Europe — 4 June 2008 Memorandum of Understanding — guidelines for diligent search for diverse works — guidelines for public-private partnerships — Netherlands — co-operation with publishers to find solution

Joint solution possible when — Publishers and Libraries — agree on the definition of the problem — both have the intention to overcome the problem — are willing to look for practical rather than juridical solutions

Letter of Intent — Signed during opening of Amsterdam World Book Capital — Single helpdesk for library digitisation projects; — Ability libraries to digitise collection on condition of concluding agreement for each project with relevant copyright holder’s organisations; — Agreement should balance each others interest but must prevent unnecessary expensive workflows; — right owners can prohibit digitisation certain works if they are still commercially relevant. — Establishment Committee assessing requests institutions & promoting concluding agreements

Agreements on : — works eligible to digitisation — procedure to make digitally available for education, research or private use — possible fee

Joint committee — Publishers and Libraries — For a period of 2 years — Mediates between cultural heritage institutions that want to carry out mass digitisation projects, and right owner organisations — Libraries must register their project plans and inform Committee about the works to be digitised and their copyright status — assesses plans and establishes contacts between library and right owner organisations involved

First milestone — Cultural heritage institutions will get a general permission to digitise works that: - form part of the Dutch Cultural Heritage - are not commercially available anymore (by best knowledge) - form part of the institutions own collection - have been acquired lawfully - will be made available only on site through the secured network of the library - Authors must be given opportunity to withdraw their works

Remaining Issues — Must a library pay for the permission to digitise their collections for onsite availibility? Libraries think not!! — How to deal with on line availability? — What to do with other works, that don’t meet the criteria of Cultural Heritage and/or Commercial (non) availability?

To be continued Thank you for listening