Re: New strategy at NY Times and libraries

Thread: Re: New strategy at NY Times and libraries

Search this list only Search all lists
Re: New strategy at NY Times and libraries
United States	2007-09-20 17:06:42
Ann Okerson wrote: >I believe libraries have paid a significant sum of money for the >back issues that will now be available for free (e.g., before >1923); Should we now be dropping out of those arrangements? Thanks to projects like the Google, Microsoft, and OCA scanning projects and the National Digital Newspaper Program, we can envision a day soon when most public domain content will be freely available on the Web; To me, that suggests that when we license products from commercial vendors, we should be paying only for the value-add that they contribute, and not for the content itself. And since many libraries are having trouble funding even minimal level cataloging of books, it makes little sense to spend big bucks on a product that is indexed within an inch of its life. I would argue that libraries should not be purchasing public domain content from vendors, but instead pooling that money to create free and openly accessible resources from the available scans.  We should rely on vendors to provide us with access to copyrighted material that is unlikely to be freely available on the web. Peter B. Hirtle US History and General History Bibliographer CUL Intellectual Property Officer Cornell University Library pbh6cornell.edu