Re: New strategy at NY Times and libraries

[Peter Hirtle <pbh6@cornell.edu>]

Ann Okerson wrote:

>I believe libraries have paid a significant sum of money for the 
>back issues that will now be available for free (e.g., before 
>1923); Should we now be dropping out of those arrangements?

Thanks to projects like the Google, Microsoft, and OCA scanning 
projects and the National Digital Newspaper Program, we can 
envision a day soon when most public domain content will be 
freely available on the Web; To me, that suggests that when we 
license products from commercial vendors, we should be paying 
only for the value-add that they contribute, and not for the 
content itself. And since many libraries are having trouble 
funding even minimal level cataloging of books, it makes little 
sense to spend big bucks on a product that is indexed within an 
inch of its life.


I would argue that libraries should not be purchasing public domain
content from vendors, but instead pooling that money to create free and
openly accessible resources from the available scans.  We should
rely on vendors to provide us with access to copyrighted material that is
unlikely to be freely available on the web.


Peter B. Hirtle
US History and General History Bibliographer
CUL Intellectual Property Officer
Cornell University Library
pbh6@cornell.edu