A couple days ago I heard an interview with James Boyle on NPR that reminded me of a lot of information related issues that I have previously discussed with other librarians (and my father). See Boyle bring up the issue that current copyright laws are actually a disservice to the general public. While no one wants the author of any piece, be it in writing, audio or visual format to be robbed of their intellectual products, we also need to think of the needs of the general public.

Copyright is supposed to give the intellectual author of a piece credit and when appropriate, income from their work. All this is great, the problems begin when people begin extending these rights for increasingly long periods of time, and passing these rights down through the generations. In effect this creates a scenario where an increasingly larger amount of information is under copyright, but out of print, and therefore out of reach to most users.

For a little historical background, the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) dates back to 1998, when copyright in the USA was extended by an additional 20 years. Before copyright would last the lifetime of the author, plus an additional 50 years, 75 years in the case of a corporate authorship. Fair enough, but now the extended term says the copyright holder has copyright for a lifetime plus 70 years, and 120 years for corporate authorship. These extended dates are making more and more information inaccessible to users.

I’ve discussed these issues with my father because he works as a scientist in a third world country and he is often frustrated by finding so much intellectual material inaccessible. The organization where he works has little money to buy access to the large (and expensive) journal databases, the fact that he lives outside the USA means that mailing documents back and forth is difficult, costly and timely. So how is he supposed to get current information to keep up to date in his field? He’s been forced to increasingly rely on Google Scholar, which he thinks is a great source to find useful citations, but often doesn’t provide full text article. And we’re back to large amounts of information being out of the reach of users.

All this brings me back to the issues of copyright, and in Boyle’s case to the Public Domain. As a people it is in our collective best interest to be educated. There are plenty of books, pieces of music, movies and the like that have become part of our collective understanding of the world, and we should all be able to use these works. And I’m not advocating that authors get the short end of the stick and not be able to claim copyright. Everyone who produces intellectual material of some kind or other should be given full credit for their work, and should be allowed to profit from it when appropriate, but I don’t see why this person’s offspring or trust holder should continue to make money off their work when they are not the authors. Likewise it bothers me that this situation prevents people like my father from being able to access material in an inexpensive and timely manner.

Fortunately a few things are changing. For one people are starting to publish in the public domain, making their work available under licenses such as Creative Commons. (Even president elect Obama has begun using them!) Universities such as Harvard are encouraging their faculty to embrace open access and sites such as the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) are helping us find more and more information that is freely available to us.

Coming back to that NPR interviews, you should check out James Boyle’s book The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind. He will give you much more detail on the subject, and true to his word, you can either purchase the book, of download the entire thing for free from his website!

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A couple weeks ago Google come out with one more impressive online collection. This time it’s the LIFE Photo Archive. Most of us have probably seen the powerful images that have been printed in LIFE Magazine over the decades. Google’s press release explains that only a small percentage of this archive has been made public, but now we get to see a much larger portion of the collection.

From the front page of the collection you can browse images by decade, as well as use the search box to find more specific images. Some of the options include searching for individual people, places, sports, cultures and events. The site also suggest we add “source:life” to searches to make sure the images we get are the ones from this collection.

While looking through some of the images, I’ve found that results show you a variety of images, but if you open an individual image, you’ll find tags related to the image, information as to where the photograph was taken, the date, and size of image (You have the option of two sizes for all images). When available, you are also given a few “related images.”

The images you’ll find are for the most part photographs, although there are a few posters, and pieces of art work as well. Currently the collections begins back in the 1860s, and reaches the 1970s. The plan is to eventually catch up with current times.

The collection is really great, so happy browsing!

Image: “Cats Blackie & Brownie catching squirts of milk during milking at Arch Badertscher’s dairy farm” by Nat Farbman.

Hace un par de semanas Google salio con otra impresionante colección. Esta vez se trata de la colección LIFE Photo Archive. Muchos de nosotros probablemente hemos vista algunas de las impactantes imágenes que han salido en la revista LIFE a través de las décadas. El comunicado de presa de Google explica que solo una pequeña parte de esta colección alguna vez se ha puesto a la disposición del público, pero ahora tendremos la oportunidad de una porción mucho más grande.

Desde la página principal de la colección podrá ojear por década, al igual que usar la caja de búsqueda para conducir una búsqueda más específica. Algunas de las opciones de búsqueda incluyen buscar por persona individual, lugares, deportes, cultura, y eventos. El sitio también nos sugiere que agreguemos “source:life” a nuestra búsqueda para asegurar que los resultados realmente sean parte de esta colección.

Mientras miraba algunas de las imágenes me he dado cuenta que los resultados nos muestran una variedad de imágenes, información sobre donde se tomo la foto, fecha, y el tamaño de la imagen (tendrá opción de dos tamaños diferentes). Cuando haya imágenes relacionadas con esta, también le serán disponibles.

Las imágenes que encontraran son en su mayoría fotografías, aunque también encontrara algunos afiches, y obras de arte. Actualmente la colección empieza en el año 1860 y llega hasta 1970. El plan es eventualmente ponerse al día con el presente.

Esta colección es realmente asombrosa, así es que a diviértete ojeándola!
Imagen “Cats Blackie & Brownie catching squirts of milk during milking at Arch Badertscher’s dairy farm” de Nat Farbman.

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