conjugating international copyright laws
As a Google Library Partner , The University of Texas Libraries will digitize at least one million books from the Libraries’ unique collections, starting with our Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection. This rich collection holds over 800,000 titles about and from Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean. Librarians, faculty and alumni acquired these works by gift, exchange and purchase over eight decades to create a comprehensive collection to support teaching and research at the university.
Current technologies enable us to provide virtual access to these
collections for study anywhere, but a tangle of international treaties and copyright laws complicates our use and distribution of foreign
works. There is little guidance to help us reliably identify which of
our books are already in the public domain so we are piloting a project
to develop new tools for ourselves and for anyone who wants to tackle
these difficult public domain problems. We will document our process, our progress and our results on these pages along with links to web resources we find useful. We invite suggestions and comments from other Google Library Partners and anyone undertaking similar or related projects. Comment on our posts.
Email us at
freethebooks@gmail.com. We are here; we are building an evidence base and we are looking for virtual partners!
Archive for December, 2007
When we joined the Google Book Search project, we really didn’t have in mind that it would launch an internal effort to free books from obscurity. In fact, we expected Google’s effort all by itself to free the books. But, of course, things don’t always turn out like you think they will. Google sponsors meetings [...]
Posted in Benson Latin American Collection, evidence base, International Copyright Laws, orphan works, public domain | Thursday, December 27th, 2007 | No Comments »
Less than a year ago, the University of Texas Libraries signed an agreement with Google to digitize a million books, most from the Benson Latin American Collection, over a period of six years. The digitization process continues at a slightly faster pace than anticipated. As of this week, several thousand books have been digitized and [...]
Posted in Benson Latin American Collection | Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Welcome to free*the*books a liberating place where we challenge ideas about creation and authorship and discuss copyright laws, the public domain and orphan works. What? you say, why in the world would I want to discuss copyright on a blog? Well, copyright laws are what make the difference between reading several pages, a snippet or [...]
Posted in Benson Latin American Collection | Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 | No Comments »