Digital bookshelves

The National Library of Norway has entered into an agreement with Kopinor – the organization taking care of copyrights – to publish about 50.000 books digitally on the net. The books will mostly be free to use for the Norwegian public – if you have an IP-adress in Norway. The national Libray is paying a remuneration of NOK 0,56 per page made available. This is a pilot project considered part of keeping our cultural heritage alive.

http://www.nb.no/bokhylla

Several bookpublishing projects are being pondered and some are partly in progress, examples are:
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
http://books.google.com/

The field of copyright is complex: who has the rights, what are the rights, remuneration, what about free books, books where the holders of rights are not known (orphans), representation, …

The important point seems to be getting a fair licence into place and having accredited organizations/companies behind the deal.

Maybe an example to follow?

Google plans to start selling e-books this year, to compete with Amazon.com Inc. Google aims to build a “digital book ecosystem” to allow publishing partners to sell access to their titles, available from any Web-enabled device. Google Book Search users can “buy access” to copyrighted books, to read titles online and temporarily cache them in their Internet browsers so they could also read them offline. Google is still in talks with publishers.

Tags: ,

Leave a Reply