Digitisation and Copyright

John LaurieDigital Initiatives LibrarianThe University of Auckland Libraries and Learning Services

Digital Library SIG WorkshopLIANZA Conference, 2014

Copyright conundrums• 50 years after death of the author or photographer

• Multiple copyrights within one book• Multiple authors in serials• Anonymous articles• Copyright agreement with print publisher?

In the absence of a written agreement copyright remains with the creator

• ORPHAN WORKS – copyright owners, heirs, uncontactable, would have no objection to having their work online

• No register of contact details

Multiple copyrights

• Sections of J.W. Stack’s diary – he died in 1919

• Foreword, introduction andfootnotes by A. H. Reed, died 1975

• Reed editions 1935• Illustrations, photos

• Located heirs at Alfred and Isabel and Marion ReedTrust, for permission

Multiple copyrights 2

• Multiple creators• Includes poems, art, photos

stories, adapted stories• Many well-known authors

and artists• New Zealand, Britain,

Australia and other places

• Key resource for NZ studies• Note controversies over

similar material for schools in Japan, Palestine, 1914 Serbia

NZ School Journal 1938, Part IIIThe first 110 pages of the 1938 School Journal Part III has stories (many adapted) from named authors Barbara Sleigh (d. 1982), Ian Hay (d. 1952), Cecil Roberts (d. 1976), Vitaly Bianchi (translated from Russian, d. 1959), Minnie Pallister, George Eliot (d. 1880), Louis Barnett (d. 1946) and John Bunyan (d. 1688); poems from Punch by “Dum Dum”, W. A. Bennett, and L. Du Garde Peach (d. 1974); other poems by John Masefield (d. 1967), “Meredith”, T. Sturge Moore (d. 1944), Wilfred Wilson Gibson (d. 1962), Andrew Lang, Robert Browning (d. 1889), C. Fox Smith (d. 1954) K. M. MacKay, Leon Gellet, George Kenyon, James Elroy Flecker (d. 1915) and Charles Harpur (d. 1868), as well as unattributed photos and illustrations and stories, extracts from the Pilgrim’s Progress, and a play by Bernard Shaw (d. 1950).

[Note: multiple authors for some articles, pseudonyms, translations, adapted stories]

NZ Copyright Act: Section 55, copying by librarians or archivists, and 56A, communicating digital copies to authenticated users

• Sn 55(3), “at risk of loss, damage, or destruction.”  • Sn 56A single concurrent user per work (story or poem).

• next person wanting to download the PDF to wait for 5 minutes from the last download.

• PDF/A archival files, protected from alteration and modification  

• A Copyright notice - private study and no further copies.• Print issues withdrawn from circulation except where

researchers need to view originals.

Other strategies• Permission from print publishers• Society publishers – resolution at society AGM• Take-down notices • Risk management approach?

• NZ Copyright Act – claims must be based on loss of revenue, court costs – no exemplary damages.

• Some NZ literary heirs strongly defend their copyrights

Digitisation:Wikimedia and Flickr

You have some historic photos you want to put online

• Search • Zoom in• Search engine visibility• Easy to use

• Wikimedia Commons• Flickr

Ugly front page! Strange focus on browsing, not searching, already logged in…

Flickr is even worse – see themselves as social networking sites?

Wikimedia Commons

• One file at a time• All works hosted at the

Commons must be legal to publish in the United States.

• All images must be freely available CC attribution and share alike licences

• {{PD-heirs}}• Title and description• No date range

Editing page

• Can’t edit titleTitle becomes filename

• No bulk editing• No sorting

Flickr

• Bulk upload• “Albums” can be

sorted, batch edited• Title displays on hover• Album metadata• Sort by date taken• 1 TB of free storage• Pay to remove

advertisements – c $50 per year.

• LC displaying photos on Flickr since 2008

• Flickr Commons

Part of an album

Tags for subjectsCan be words or phrases

Restrictions

Date

Room for description here

Metadata entry page

Not too bad:

Can search your own photos, everybody’s.

Date taken

Keyword and phrase

Flickr advanced search

Web indexing:Within a week the photos have been picked up by Google, and some added to other people’s collections

Flickr and Preservation??

• “Are my photos ever deleted?”“No, your photos will not be deleted, unless you do it yourself, or fail to play by our Community Guidelines.”

• Need to retain further backup, preservation copies

John LaurieText and Image CollectionsUniversity of Auckland Libraries and Learning Services

• Early New Zealand Books (ENZB)• Journal of the Polynesian Society (JPS)• New Zealand Journal of History (NZJH)• Early New Zealand Statutes (ENZS)• The Bookshelf

• History of the University of Auckland• Anthropology Photographic Archive• Exam papers