Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Monday, August 11, 2008

EC funds more digitization for OA, calls on member states to do the same

Opening soon: a digital library for Europe, a press release from the European Commission, August 11, 2008.  Excerpt:

Europe's cultural diversity in books, music, paintings, photographs, and films open to all citizens at the click of a mouse via one portal – this dream of a European Digital Library could become reality this autumn. However, further efforts by the EU Member States are needed, said the Commission today in a new Communication on making available digital versions of works from cultural institutions all over Europe. Digitisation of cultural works can give Europeans access to material from museums, libraries and archives abroad without having to travel or turn hundreds of pages to find a piece of information. Europe's libraries alone contain more than 2.5 billion books, but only about 1% of archival material is available in digital form. The Commission therefore called on Member States to do more to make digitised works available online for Europeans to browse them digitally, for study, work or leisure. The Commission itself will provide some € 120 million in 2009-2010 for improving online access to Europe's cultural heritage.

[S]aid Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media: "...[E]ven though Member States have made significant progress in making cultural content accessible on the Internet, more public and private investment is needed to speed up digitisation. My goal is to have a European Digital Library, called Europeana and rich in content open to the public before the end of the year."

The Commission today confirmed its commitment to help Member States bring their valuable cultural content online. In 2009-2010 € 69 million from the EU's research programme will go to digitisation activities and the development of digital libraries. In the same period, Europe's Competitiveness and Innovation Programme will allocate about € 50 million to improve access to Europe's cultural content....The Commission today called on Member States to raise digitisation capacities to make their collections available for Europe's citizens....

Some Member States have taken exemplary steps to accelerate digitisation of cultural collections....

However, the Commission's assessment also shows that in many cases there is a gap between the objects which have been digitised and their online accessibility....

Background:

The European Digital Library is part of the i2010 initiative adopted by the Commission on 1 June 2005 (IP/05/643)....

The World Digital Library

The European Library

Europeana....

Update (8/13/08).  Thanks to Fleur for pointing out the accompanying Progress Report and Staff Working Paper.  From her post:

...The Staff Working Paper accompanying the progress report includes this paragraph: “Public domain content in the analogue world should remain in the public domain in the digital environment. If restrictions to user access and use are necessary in order to make the content available at all, these restrictions should only apply for a limited time period” (7.1.3., p.23)

‘An interesting statement’, says Patrick Peiffer (National Library of Luxembourg) ‘since Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) deals and institutions tend to cover public domain works with new exclusive rights’....