Digitizing Libraries

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The Wider Net Project has created digital offline libraries where high capacity of hard drive in terabytes is used to reproduce materials. The library contains proxy server and search engine to allow access of digital materials by using internet browsers. These libraries provide access to materials in places where connection to internet is very slow, too expensive, unreliable, non-existent or unsuitable (ZHANG, DENG, 2011).

Digital libraries are disadvantaged through copyright law since, different with conventional print publications, the laws of digital copyright are still being fashioned. The publication of materials on the web might need authorization from rights owners. There is adisagreement of interest and the owners who might desire to generate online editions of their obtained content for profit reasons. A number of digital libraries, such as Project Gutenberg, labor to digitize materials from copyright works and make them liberally accessible to the public. In this case of free copyright production, it is clear thar students and other researchers enjoy the benefits that outweigh the authors’ rights. There are four factors that comprise fair use provided under the Copyright Act of 1976. This act offer specific rules under which situations libraries are permitted to duplicate digital resources .The fair conditions include Purpose of the use, Nature of the work, and Amount of work or considerably used and Market impact.” However, some libraries obtain licenses to lend their resources though with some restrictions such as lending only a single copy at a time. The system of digital rights management is also applied for restriction purpose (ZHANG, DENG, 2011 and Weston, Anderson, Crews, Kaufman and Maher, 2013).

The desire of some publishing houses to limit the use of digital materials such as e-books bought by libraries can be a fine way of achieving middle ground between authors and users of materials. Even if this restriction emerges to be a complicated issue, it can assist to protect the original authors to some extent. This restriction thus offers good balance of library lending and protecting them from book sales decrease. Information that is used for non-commercial educational, personal or scholarly purposes can be shared without copying, reproduction, retransmission, distribution, publishing or other unlawful acts. Information that involve deep linking to library’s digital objects, framing or hosting apportion of public library, harvesting of library’s digital objects either manually or by automated means for use in other websites are all inappropriate for sharing (ZHANG, DENG, 2011).

References

ZHANG, N., & DENG, X. C. (2011). RESEARCH ON THE LEGAL PROBLEMS IN DIGITIZING UNIVERSITY LIBRARY COLLECTIONS. Journal of Southwest Petroleum University (Social Sciences Edition), 4, 015.

Weston, C., Anderson, I., Crews, K., Kaufman, R., & Maher, W. (2013). Session 4: What Should Be the Conditions on Libraries Digitizing, Maintaining and Making Available Copyrighted Works?. Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts, 36(4), 587-606.