Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Out of Fear, Colleges Lock Books and Images Away From Scholars; Chronicle of Higher Education, 5/29/11

Marc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Education; Out of Fear, Colleges Lock Books and Images Away From Scholars:

"A library of 8.7 million digital volumes. A trove of 100,000 ocean-science photos. An archive of 57,000 Mexican-music recordings.

A common problem bedevils those different university collections. Wide online access is curtailed, in part because they contain "orphan works," whose copyright owners can't be found. And the institutions that hold the collections—a consortium of major research libraries and the University of California campuses at San Diego and Los Angeles—must deal with legal uncertainty in deciding how to share the works. A university that goes too far could end up facing a copyright-infringement lawsuit."

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