The announcement below pertains to book collections more than to museum or other visual collections, but might be of interest nevertheless -- especially the comments at the end, which are concerns that can apply to any kind of digital collection.
Amalyah Keshet Chair, MCN IP SIG > OCLC has announced the release of their copyright evidence > registry. from their PR: > > http://www.oclc.org/news/releases/200832.htm > > "The WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry is a community > working together to build a union catalog of copyright > evidence based on WorldCat, which contains more than 100 > million bibliographic records describing items held in > thousands of libraries worldwide. In addition to the WorldCat > metadata, the Copyright Evidence Registry uses other data > contributed by libraries and other organizations. > > "Digitization projects continue for books in the public domain, > but books whose copyright status is unknown are destined to > remain in print and on shelves until their status can be > determined. The process to determine copyright status can be > lengthy and labor intensive. The goal of the Copyright > Evidence Registry is to encourage a cooperative environment to > discover, create and share copyright evidence through a > collaboratively created and maintained database, using the > WorldCat cooperative model to eliminate duplicate efforts." > > and concerns by molly kleinman, on her blog: > > http://mollykleinman.com/2008/08/26/oclcs-new-copyright-evidence-registry/ > > "1. OCLC claims and enforces copyrights in its bibliographic > records. While it grants member libraries permission to > make broad use of those records, my understanding is that > the same is not true for non-members. If OCLC extends that > policy to the Copyright Evidence Registry, it risks > becoming just another walled garden that is useful only to > a select (and paying) group of members, and less useful > even to that group than it would be if it were truly open. > > "2. Right now the registry is sparsely populated. It will > take a critical mass of records and contributors to become > a trustworthy source of copyright evidence. Where will that > critical mass come from? What is OCLC doing to build it > quickly? How will users know when the registry has reached > it?" With thanks to Peter Brantley.
