Showing posts with label European libraries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label European libraries. Show all posts

Monday, September 7, 2009

Google Books moves to reassure EU publishers; Yahoo, 9/7/09

Aoife White, AP, via Yahoo; Google Books moves to reassure EU publishers:

"Google sought to assure European copyright holders that the deal wouldn't infringe their rights, saying it wrote to several national publisher associations "to clarify that books that are commercially available in Europe will be treated as commercially available under the settlement."...

Unlike the U.S., Google is only scanning European books over 150 years of age to avoid infringing copyrighted material. So far, it has scanned some 10 million books — many of them still in copyright.

Google Books has strong advocates and harsh critics in Europe. While library associations pleaded for Europeans to have more access to the content available to U.S. users of Google Books, some rights holders complained that Google was creating a dangerous new monopoly...

Some European libraries see the project more favorably. Sylvia Van Peteghem, the chief librarian of Belgium's Ghent University, said her work with Google had prompted users to increasingly seek out paper versions of scanned books.

"It's a revival of old books," she said, praising a project that created a digital backup of books that can easily be damaged or stolen.

LIBER, the League of European Research Libraries, said it wants Google to show that it will act as a long-term trustee for printed material and provide ways for scanned books to be available for decades to come.

European officials have also called for a debate — and possibly new rules — to clarify what can be done with "orphan" books that are still in copyright but which cannot be reprinted or digitized because the copyright holders cannot be traced."

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Google-Books-moves-to-apf-3368778091.html?x=0&.v=1

Friday, December 12, 2008

New European online library to remain down until January, Sydney Morning Herald, 12/10/08

Via Sydney Morning Herald: New European online library to remain down until January:

"With 14 staff members and at an annual cost put at around 2.5 million euros (3.2 million US dollars), Europeana -- which can be found at www.europeana.eu -- has more humble beginnings, despite the massive interest.

The prototype which was launched, briefly, last month contains around two million digital items, all of them already in the public domain, as the most recent items are plagued by problems linked to copyright and their use online."

http://news.smh.com.au/technology/new-european-online-library-to-remain-down-until-january-20081210-6v42.html