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Deutsch: Beratungen darüber, wie die digitale Bibliothek der EU geführt werde...
The European Commission launched a consultation on 28 August 2009 on EU's digital library project Europeana, set up in November 2008, in order to find the best way to make the project work.
Differently from the controversial Google's Book project having scanned about 10 million books, many of which are still copyrighted based on Google's agreement with the US Author's Guild allowing the company to scan copyrighted material in the US, Europeana has scanned about 4.6 million works including books, photos, films and maps which are not covered by copyright and has not yet included orphaned copyrighted works.
The project has met difficulties in developing and in competing with Google's initiative because of the current legal framework. "Europeana includes, for legal reasons, neither out-of print works (some 90% of the books in Europe's national libraries), nor orphan works (estimated at 10 - 20% of in-copyright collections) which are still in copyright but where the author cannot be identified," says the recent European Commission statement.
Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media, who is very strongly supporting the project, considers alarming the fact that "only 5% of all digitised books in the EU are available on Europeana." She also observed that "almost half of Europeana's digitised works have come from one country alone, while all other Member States continue to under-perform dramatically. To me this shows, above all, that Member States must stop envying progress made in other continents and finally do their own homework. It also shows that Europeana alone will not suffice to put Europe on the digital map of the world. We need to work better together to make Europe's copyright framework fit for the digital age."
The Commission declared its target to reach 10 million digitised objects by 2010 and wants to get opinions from the industry and the public on how it should operate the Europeana project which costs 3 million euro per year.
"How can it be ensured that digitised material can be made available to consumers EU-wide? Should there be better cooperation with publishers with regard to in-copyright material? Would it be a good idea to create European registries for orphan and out-of print works? How should Europeana be financed in the long term?" are some of the questions asked by the Commission in the statement announcing the consultation.
The consultation runs until 15 November 2009.
EU consults on copyright problems of digitising libraries (1.09.2009)
http://www.out-law.com/page-10340
Commission of the European Communities - Europeana - next steps (28.08.2009)
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/digital_libraries/d...
Questions for the public consultation "Europeana - next steps"
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/digital_libraries/d...
i2010: Digital Libraries Initiative
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/digital_libraries/i...
Europeana - Europe's digital library
http://www.europeana.eu/
Digital libraries initiative of the European Union
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/digital_libraries/i...
Europe's Digital Library doubles in size but also shows EU's lack of common
web copyright solution (28.08.2009)
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/09/1257&...