Beyond 1923: Characteristics of Potentially In-copyright Print Books in Library Collections

Brian Lavoie, Lorcan Dempsey, D-Lib Magazine; Beyond 1923: Characteristics of Potentially In-copyright Print Books in Library Collections:

"Introduction

Issues of copyright and permissible use have swirled around efforts to digitize print book collections. Sharp debate has ensued over the circumstances in which creating a digital surrogate and making it accessible online runs afoul of copyright protections, and what remedies might be appropriate to compensate rights holders. Some digitization efforts, such as the Open Content Alliance, have restricted themselves to public domain materials; Google Books, on the other hand, has sought to reach agreement with copyright holders represented by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. A proposed class-action settlement,1 announced in October 2008, would create a Book Rights Registry responsible for administering and adjudicating the process of locating and compensating rights holders impacted by Google's digitization activities.

The Google book settlement provoked spirited discussion of its potential ramifications, mimicking the commotion that followed the announcement of the original Google Print for Libraries (later re-named Google Books) project in December 2004. Using data from the WorldCat bibliographic database,2 OCLC Research published an article in 2005 aimed at illuminating issues surrounding Google's plan to digitize the print book collections of five major research libraries. The present article is motivated by a similar purpose: to provide empirical context for the many discussions surrounding the digitization of in-copyright print books. The settlement has raised challenging questions regarding permissible use of print book titles published after 1923; many of these titles may eventually form a significant part of the Google book database should it come to pass.

Discussions of Google Books and other digitization efforts tend to treat in-copyright print books as an amorphous collection, with little elaboration or detail on what this important collection of materials actually looks like. How many titles are involved? What is the distribution of their publication dates? What general observations can be made about their content? This article examines these and other questions in regard to the collection of US-published print books represented in WorldCat. Many of these questions were posed to the authors in private inquiries; these inquiries, along with the keen interest in digitization that continues to spark debate on blogs and listservs, suggested that a general publication addressing the characteristics of in-copyright print books could provide helpful context for ongoing discussions.

The focus of this article is on print book titles that are either in-copyright or potentially in-copyright. Determining copyright status is, however, problematic. The nuances of US copyright law are quite complicated, but a useful simplification organizes print books into three categories of copyright status based on date of publication. Broadly speaking, works published before 1923 are considered in the public domain, and therefore unencumbered by copyright restrictions. The copyright status of books published between 1923 and 1963, however, is murkier. Under US copyright law, works published during this period with a copyright notice remain in copyright for 95 years after publication – if their copyright was renewed. If copyright was allowed to lapse, the work reverts to the public domain. Finally, books published after 1963 are, by and large, still in copyright.

In addition to copyright status, the question of orphan works has received much attention in regard to digitization activities. The United States Copyright Office defines an orphan work as "the situation where the owner of a copyrighted work cannot be identified and located by someone who wishes to make use of the work in a manner that requires permission of the copyright owner."3 While it is important to bear in mind that any in-copyright book can be an "orphan", in practice the prevalence of orphan works is likely to be skewed toward older, rather than recently published, materials.

The analysis that follows examines the characteristics of US-published print books, with an emphasis on books that are likely in copyright according to US copyright law.4 As with our earlier article, the analysis is based on data from the WorldCat database, which represents the aggregated collections of more than 70,000 libraries worldwide. The analysis focuses on three areas: the WorldCat aggregate collection of US-published print books; the subset of this collection published during or after 1923 – i.e., those potentially associated with copyright and/or orphan works issues; and the combined print book collection of three academic research library participants in Google Books – again, with an emphasis on materials that are potentially in copyright."

http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november09/lavoie/11lavoie.html