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Proposal: Put Library of Congress' Contents Online

Posted by timothy on from the how-many-libraries-of-congress-is-that-anyhow dept.

Mark_Uplanguage writes "The idea to scan in all materials available at the U.S. Library of Congress was presented at the Web 2.0 conference this week (as just one of many ideas presented). The proposed cost of $260 million would create a huge benefit to society (well, at least to those who can read English)."

6 of 394 comments (clear)

  1. One of the More interesting projects by randall_burns · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The government has proposed recently. I would also suggest that they put in place requirements that all future material that is to be copyrighted present appropriate copies in machine readable form so this will be cheaper in the future.

  2. Re:Er by siriuskase · · Score: 4, Interesting
    This is one more reason that the whole basis behind IP law needs to be reevaluated. Although we do want authors, inventors, and other creative types to be rewarded for their efforts, it is also true that what they create becomes more valuable the more it gets out into the world. Any academic knows that the more a paper gets cited, the more valuable it is. Likewise, the more a book is read, the more likely it will wind up in the canon of culturally significant books.

    Creating primarily for money is shortsighted when a work has the chance to impact the larger culture. Just look at Michael Moore (ooh, isn't he ugly, but that's not the point), he's more interested in people seeing and being influenced by his movies than in getting richer off them. Enough money to be comfortable is great, but then, barriers to free movement of ideas should be relaxed.

    --
    If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
  3. a real application for internet2 by LuxFX · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Right now, Internet2 can download the entire Library of Congress in about 20 seconds.

    I'm not aware of any PIAA for publishers, but somebody is going to have a problem with this. And by the time this actually happens, I bet there will be an Internet4 that can do it all in 20ms.

    --
    Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
  4. Re:Er by sonamchauhan · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Putting it all online would let people get copies of it for *gasp* FREE.

    Can't have that, now can we?

    No, we can't... it not be fair to lots of people whose copyrights haven't yet lapsed.

    But scanning the materials is _still_ a good idea. It allows for automated OCR that allows searching for text _within_ a book (like A9.com does, and as Google plans to do.) The difference is that all books published in the US could be searched.

    It would also make this scenario possible:
    • I walk into a public library
    • On a library computer, I enter keywords that search the new "library of congress book text search database".
    • Based on the results (matching text snippets from _within_ books), I decide to buy two books.
    • I walk to the librarian and pay the purchase price
    • She fires up a local print run on the library's new laser book printer
    • 500 automatically laser-printed-punched-and-bound pages later, I have my new two books.


    Since this process is handled by people trained to respect copyright (i.e. the librarians), it is a win-win for everyone.
  5. Re:Can't do that. by Senjutsu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    you must mean that whole 70 years after the author's death.

    You must mean currently. But we all know that as soon as anything major (like Steamboat Willy) comes close to coming out of copyright, we'll see Congress extend the term of copyright yet again, thanks to 'encouragement' from Disney.

    Copyright terms are nigh on infinite in fact, if not in law.

  6. Better Access for Everyone by azemon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What a cool idea and, even "if" the dollar estimate is too low, who cares? $260M is chump change for our gov't.

    Right now, the only way to access the stuff in LoC is to go there in person. Anyone can do it but you have to travel to WashDC and pass through security and so forth to get into the LoC public reading room. Then you have to ask the librarian to pretty-please bring you the book that you want.

    Now imagine that you can access any item in the LoC by simply entering the building and using a public kiosk with a browser. LoC's software would only permit use within the copyright so that is OK. But you don't have to mess with as much security because LoC isn't handing over the physical book.

    Now imagine that, from any web browser, you can access any book in the LoC for which the copyright has expired. I like that idea!

    My opinion... skip the buy on the next couple of cruise missiles and digitize LoC's books instead.

    Oh yeah, before I forget, LoC already has tons of seriously neat stuff online. My favorite is this collection of tons photos from Russia. These were taken between about 1907 and 1915! I don't know about you, but I never dreamed that I would see color photos that are almost 100 years old.

    Cheers,
    -- Art Z.