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The European Commission has proposed a series of initiatives designed to increase the number of digitised works made freely available. The proposals come as the European Digital Library prepares for a November launch.
In a detailed report, Brussels said it wants reform of regulatory obstacles preventing orphan sources – where the copyright holder cannot be traced – and works in the public domain from being digitised and published online.
As regards orphan works, the Commission is concerned that there are too few clear regulatory procedures allowing a work to be declared orphan and hence available for digitisation. It said: "Overall little practical progress is reported. In most cases, the issue is still under consideration, often through working groups that consider the orphan works issue together with other copyright related-issues within the digital libraries domain." It said some national EU governments have "indicated they would welcome a solution or guidance at European level". However in the absence of such initiatives, there is no "substantial work on databases of orphan works in most [EU] member states", concluded the Commission. It called on governments to support European initiatives such as the ARROW project, where rightholders and cultural institutions are working together to create databases of orphan works.
Brussels said it welcomed the signing of a memorandum of understanding this June by publishers and libraries in on "what measures have to be taken before a work can be considered to be orphan", and hence available for digitisation. And it noted that Denmark and Hungary were reforming their orphan works legislation clarifying when these publications can be digitised and Germany is preparing reforms with the same goal in a broader reform of copyright rules.
Other problems that the Commission wants tackled include reducing the sometimes "very high" costs of rights clearance for digitising works that are out of print or out of distribution. Here Brussels wants broad cooperation between "rightholders, cultural institutions and collecting societies" with national governments bringing them together.
And Brussels wants governments to review their rules on works in the public domain, because "national legislation may contain barriers [that] could limit the accessibility and usability of the material, for example through Europeana", the European Digital Library.
Meanwhile, in a separate report on archiving in Europe, the Commission has promoted the idea of setting up a "centre of excellence" for archiving that would swap good practice and expertise on archiving between library professionals in member states.