The present Communication outlines the context of the Commission Recommendation on the digitisation and online accessibility of cultural material and digital preservation. The Recommendation aims at bringing out the full economic and cultural potential of Europe’s cultural and scientific heritage through the Internet. It is part of the Commission’s strategy for the digitisation, online accessibility and digital preservation of Europe’s cultural and scientific heritage as set out in the Commission Communication ‘i2010: digital libraries’ of 30 September 2005....
The digital libraries initiative aims at enabling all Europeans to access Europe's collective memory and use it for education, work, leisure and creativity...
Only part of the material held by libraries, archives and museums is in the public domain in the sense that it is not or no longer covered by intellectual property rights. Europe’s cultural heritage should be digitised, made available and preserved, while fully respecting Community and international rules on copyright and related rights. Particularly relevant in this context is Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society, which stipulates in its Article 5(2) that Member States may provide for exceptions or limitations in respect of specific acts of reproduction by publicly accessible libraries or by archives, where they are not for direct or indirect economic or commercial gain...
THE COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES ...HEREBY RECOMMENDS THAT MEMBER STATES:
...promote a European digital library, in the form of a multilingual common access point to Europe’s distributed...digital cultural material, by:
encouraging cultural institutions, as well as publishers and other rightholders to make their digitised material searchable through the European digital library,
ensuring that cultural institutions, and where relevant private companies, apply common digitisation standards in order to achieve interoperability of the digitised material at European level and to facilitate cross-language searchability;
...improve conditions for digitisation of, and online accessibility to, cultural material by:...identifying barriers in their legislation to the online accessibility and subsequent use of cultural material that is in the public domain and taking steps to remove them;
creating mechanisms to facilitate the use of orphan works, following consultation of interested parties,
establishing or promoting mechanisms, on a voluntary basis, to facilitate the use of works that are out of print or out of distribution, following consultation of interested parties,
promoting the availability of lists of known orphan works and works in the public domain,
identifying barriers in their legislation to the online accessibility and subsequent use of cultural material that is in the public domain and taking steps to remove them;
PS: By "online accessiblity" the recommendation seems to mean "online accessibility without charge", though it never mentions open access and never discusses the presence or absence of access charges.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/25/2006 08:01:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
