Update to entry http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/2609488/

Peter Suber writes in his "Open Access News":

Google and Michigan block access outside U.S.
Klaus Graf has pointed out that Google Book Search and the University of Michigan's MBooks (based on Google scans) both block access to users outside the US.

His test case is Emanuel Geibel's Gedichte, published in Stuttgart in 1873, the same year that Geibel died [Correction: Geibel died in 1884 but this changes nothing concerning the copyright - it was my mistake]. As Klaus observes, the book is in the public domain in every country on Earth and US users have free online access to the full text.

Comment. When Klaus told me this by email a few days ago, I asked some friends outside the US to click on the link and tell me whether they got a book or an error message. So far, they report no access from Australia, Canada, England, Finland, France, India, Nigeria, and Paraguay. How many report access? None. (Thanks to many friends in many places for rapid turn-around on this informal survey.)

When denying access to non-US users, Google gives this error message:

Page images and the full text of this item are *not available* at this time due to *copyright restrictions*. (Why?) However, you may search within the text of this item to determine the frequency and location of specific words and phrases.

I join Klaus in calling on Google and Michigan either to restore access to non-US users or to explain what copyright problems bar access to this public-domain book.

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_09_03_fosblogarchive.html#115766385751334831

Thanks, Peter!

http://news.google.com/archivesearch

http://www.spellboundblog.com/2006/09/06/google-newspaper-archives/

So what does this mean for archives? In their FAQ, Google states “If you have a historical archive that you think would be a good fit in News archive search, we would love to hear from you.”. Take a moment and think about that - archives with digitized news content could raise their hand and ask to be included. Google has suddenly put the tools for increasing access in the hands of everyone. The university that has digitized it’s newspapers can suddenly be put on the same level with the New York Times and the Washington Post.

http://www.narc.fi/parnu/3.pdf

THE USE OF SAMPLING IN THE APPRAISAL AND DISPOSAL OF RECORDS

A perfect archive is an illusion. [...] Archives are like people: imperfect and always different.

More on sampling:

http://www.archive.nrw.de/dok/symposion01/BeitragAerts.pdf

Google's Copyright Paranoia blocks non-US-citizen from viewing the full text of books which are PUBLIC DOMAIN world wide. There is no change in the policy I have criticized at
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/1073534/

Now UMich is blocking in the same way US-citizen from viewing books which are PD in the US. See the example at
http://log.netbib.de/archives/2006/09/01/mbooks-online/

Update: I have checked with an US-Proxy: UMich has the same IP rights management like Google. Us citizen can see the full text of Geibel at
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015018428865

End of Update

Geibel died in 1873 (see the UMich catalog entry!) and thus his works are PD in the EU (and worldwide, including Mexico).

The Chroniken der deutschen Städte are at UMich in the same way not free as in the Google. There can be found hundreds of PD books which UMich sees falsely as copyrighted.

That Google is doing a very poor scanning job (no book without errors) is well known for all digitization experts.

Its Fraktur OCR is worthless, see
http://log.netbib.de/archives/2006/09/01/bs-e-stinben-men-s-ft-nictt-su/

The decision of the UMich Regents NOT to show library patrons the digitized books which UMich believes copyrighted makes the whole effort for Fraktur books actually worthless.

If a German Fraktur book from say 1925 (author died 1945) is scanned it is PD in the EU 2015. We have to wait until that date before there is any profit from the scanning. "Search only" does'nt make sense if there is no searchable OCR text. Let's have a look on an US edition of Wilhelm Hauff (shown as PD at UMich):

Zcnn menu bit (Iisuen Tieben unub @on (Iistem
geliebl felt tell!, boss bofet et' sienanbgtasgip
(Slusben, unb en if is Rep.
(Sic (mielten jept gmot)cn Slnicgs'nolf. Die Rod)
cutlet, Sic Sen @Jtiilseifcr eon (tines Sbcssmrahcs
(Schalberoff oat' l@neihinpen em(maties ash baum gu.
sun ben (sinufis milpetfeilt baUd, fimrnten oaf cit
@oom mit hem bemein, tat' l@niulcims (Sorbcs
if rem ttfct ge(fmiebems (matte. Utber ben @lbat
beftosh mom olfo sift ben geningflc 3uunti(tl surf r.
Itben tie Sent (,t)ra(es beitusmen?

Can you detect any string worth for searching in this text?

There are thousands of Fraktur books which are OCR'd in this useless way by Google.

Let's be fair to Google. Its a commercial enterprise no welfare institution. But there is no excusation for the ignorant and incompetent UMich librarians who are blocking PD books and ignoring the serious Fraktur problem.

What the U.S. Government No Longer Wants You to Know about Nuclear Weapons During the Cold War

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB197/index.htm

http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/apollo11/apollo11_sstv_search_report.html

Executive Summary

For the past several years a group of dedicated former Apollo 11 personnel have been searching for the original magnetic data tapes that contain the high quality Slow-Scan TV of the Apollo 11 EVA. This report is a detailed justification of their efforts to date. In summary, the key points are:

* In July 1969, three tracking stations received the TV signals of the historic Apollo 11 EVA. They were the DSN 64 metre antenna at Goldstone, California, the MSFN 26 metre antenna at Honeysuckle Creek, Australia, and the 64 metre CSIRO Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia.

* The TV signals transmitted from the Moon were high quality Slow-Scan TV (SSTV).

* When received on Earth, they were scan-converted to the commercial TV standards before being broadcast to the public at large.

* The scan-converted TV signals, from each of the three stations, were then relayed via landline, microwave relays and geostationary satellite to Houston before being released to the TV networks for general broadcast.

* The signal, as sent from the Moon, was initially degraded by the scan-conversion process, producing lower resolution images and introducing additional signal noise. Also, the transmission of the scan-converted TV to Houston caused additional signal degradation. This lower quality TV is currently all that is available of the Apollo 11 EVA.

* The SSTV was of superior quality to the scan-converted pictures viewed by the world.

* As the raw SSTV signals were received at the three tracking stations, they were recorded onto 1-inch magnetic data tapes. Following the EVA, procedures required that these tapes be shipped to the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC).

* In 1970, the tapes were placed in the US National Archives in Accession #69A4099. By 1984, all but two of the over 700 boxes of Apollo era magnetic tapes placed in the Accession, were removed and returned to the GSFC for permanent retention. These tapes are now missing.

* These missing data tapes include the raw Apollo 11 SSTV tapes. For the past several years, a search for these tapes has been undertaken by several former Apollo 11 personnel. To date, no Apollo 11 SSTV tapes have been found.

* When the tapes are found, it is hoped to recover the original, high quality SSTV of the first lunar EVA and to release it to the public for the first time.

* The Data Evaluation Lab (DEL) at the Goddard Space Flight Center is the only known place that has the equipment and expertise to playback the tapes and to recover the data.

* The DEL is slated for closure in October 2006.

* Efforts are underway to assure the future of the DEL (the critical hardware located in the DEL that would be required for tape evaluation and processing is being removed and retained through the efforts of the former Apollo engineers).

* It is vital that the DEL (or some elements of it) remain open and functional, otherwise none of the Apollo data tapes can ever be played back and the historic information recovered.

* This report details the reasons why the search for the tapes was undertaken, how much better the SSTV was to the scan-converted TV and the progress of the search to date.

See also the article in German (by Andreas Rosenfelder): Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 2006 August, 21, page 31.

http://hangingtogether.org/?p=121

There was a session on blogging at the recent Society of American Archivists annual meeting.

http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00006887/

Graf, Klaus (2004) Wissenschaftliches Publizieren mit "Open Access" - Initiativen und Widerstände, in Gersmann, Gudrun and Mruck, Katja, Eds. Historical Social Research, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 64-75. Center for Historical Social Research.

Abstract

In the sense of an "Open Access" movement this article is an appeal for making scientific publications accessible in Internet free-of-charge and worldwide without any restrictive "permission barriers." It presents projects and initiatives in both the United States and Germany and advocates a stronger reception of American approaches here in Germany. According to this article, "Open Access" is the answer to the crisis scientific literature is facing, which is not only reflected in the professional journal prices, but also means that an anthology is maybe subsidized four times by local authorities, and the state then has to buy back its own research findings from commercial publishing houses. There are also thoughts about providing "Open Access" not only for books and articles. The article closes by dealing with the resistance and barriers to this idea and deliberating possible solutions, with an emphasis on the legal framework.

Picture Imperfect

Art-history scholars face narrowing publishing venues and rising permissions costs. But a report signals that help is on the way.
advertisement

By JENNIFER HOWARD

http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i48/48a01201.htm

Excerpts:

If scholarly publishing had an endangered-species list, the art monograph would be at the top. At least that's the perception of many art historians as they struggle to publish their work.

"Between dwindling sales and the soaring costs of acquiring illustrations and the permission to publish them, this segment of the publishing industry has become so severely compromised that the art monograph is now seriously endangered and could very well outpace the silvery minnow in its rush to extinction," writes Susan M. Bielstein in a recent call to arms, 'Permissions, A Survival Guide: Blunt Talk About Art as Intellectual Property', published this spring by the University of Chicago Press.

As the press's executive editor for art and architecture, Ms. Bielstein writes from the barricades. She knows that publishing art monographs costs a pretty penny. Art historians need high-quality illustrations to support their arguments, but in most cases, they must shell out for reproducible images, even of works in the public domain. And they, not their publishers, foot those bills. "It's not unusual for a scholar working on the Renaissance to pay $10,000 or $15,000 to illustrate a book that may sell only 400 or 500 copies," she says in an interview. Contemporary subjects still under copyright, and subject to an artist's or estate's whims, can prove to be an even costlier proposition.

Reproducing those images is not cheap for presses, either. A typical art-history book sets a publisher back anywhere from $7,500 for a title with 30 illustrations to $75,000 for one with 150 images. At Yale University Press, the largest scholarly publisher of art titles, the "hard cost" of an art book — including paper, binding, and image reproduction — is $40,000 to $50,000 "at a bare minimum," says Patricia Fidler, publisher for art and architecture there. "And that's a pretty simple kind of book."

"Not to put too fine a point on it," Ms. Bielstein observes in her book, when it come to art-history publishing, "today's picture is about as pretty as a Francis Bacon painting."

Some presses have streamlined their art-history lists. [...]

The article is discussing the findings of an report "Art History and Its Publications in the Electronic Age" by Ms. Westermann and Ms. Ballon.

But the most prominent recommendation in the draft report concerns permissions. All parties agree that it is harder than ever to navigate what Ms. Bielstein calls "the ecosystem of rights publishing." What's fair use? Should a museum be able to charge for a reproducible image of an out-of-copyright object in its collection? Most do. And as digital publication tempts more and more publishers and scholars, how will they protect images that appear in an electronic book or an electronic version of a journal article?

The report's authors urge those in the field to "organize a campaign to break down barriers to access and distribution of images, in all media and at affordable prices, for scholarly research and publication." (Ms. Bielstein's book makes a similar exhortation.)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has taken a revolutionary step toward that end with the "scholars' license," which it hopes to have in place by this fall. "We have responded to what scholars needed and wanted," says Doralynn Pines, associate director for administration. "We are proposing, in certain areas, certainly for scholarly purposes, ... that we permit people to use the images with no fee." Under the old way of doing business, a one-time use of one transparency or digital image from the Met set a scholar back $135. [...]

I reccommend also reading Ms. Bielstein's article at
http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/researchforum/news/bielstein-copyright.pdf

Hear Ms. Bielstein on a Fair Use Conference
http://www.archive.org/details/NYIH_Comedies_of_Fair_Use

See also the position of K. Hamma (Getty Foundation) at
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/1162128/

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documentsonline/domesday.asp

Each folio (PDF) costs 3,50 British Pounds!

Disgusting!