Inside Higher Ed today carries a story* indicating
that the American Library Assn. is supporting various universities (including
UC) and their position in the HathiTrust case.
“HathiTrust is a partnership of
academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of
titles digitized from libraries around the world.” [See http://www.hathitrust.org/ ] This is a case involving charges of copyright
infringement by an organization called the Authors Guild. We have posted entries about this case
before. The purpose of the HathiTrust is
said to be “preserving and providing
access to digitized book and journal content from the partner library
collections. This includes both in copyright and public domain materials
digitized by Google, the Internet Archive, and Microsoft, as well as through
in-house initiatives. The partners aim to build a comprehensive archive of
published literature from around the world and develop shared strategies for
managing and developing their digital and print holdings in a collaborative
way. The primary community that HathiTrust serves are the members (faculty,
students, and users) of its partners libraries, but the materials in HathiTrust
are available to all to the extent permitted by law and contracts, providing
the published record as a public good to users around the world.” Generally, faculty who use modern technology
in teaching and research have an interest in this case and in more open, rather
than restricted, access to materials in digital format.
No comments:
Post a Comment