Digital libraries and Copyright: The National Library of Norway digitizes copyrighted books

The Reflection Group on Digitization, established in April 2010 by the European Commission, is now working out recommendation on how to boost the online presence of Europe's cultural heritage. The purpose is to speed up the online accessibility and preservation of cultural works across Europe.

Within August 18 – September 30 2010 the experts were conducting the consultation which invited all interested parties - citizens, cultural institutions, public authorities, private companies, NGOs, academic institutions - to give their views on key issues of digitization. These included potential sources of funding for digitization and for developing Europeana, acceptable exploitation models for content digitized with public funding, conditions that could govern public-private partnerships for digitization, ways how to bring more copyrighted material online and on how to ensure cross–border access to digitized resources. Contributions will feed into the recommendations the Group will submit to the Commission before the end of the year on how best to speed up the digitization, online accessibility and preservation of cultural works across Europe in the digital age, looking in particular at the issue of public-private partnerships for digitisation in Europe.

Thus, for instance, the National Library of Norway solved some of the issues of digitizing copyright protected material through a contract with Kopinor, who represents copyright holders of published works through 22 member organizations, consisting of 5 publishers' associations and 17 authors' associations.

The National Library of Norway has made large parts of its digitized material publicly available on Internet. Already at the opening the material included 12 000 books on which the copyright still applied, which was made possible by the contract with Kopinor, in addition to vast material on which the copyright has expired. The internet service of The National Library of Norway now includes, in addition to other material, all books published in Norway during the 1690's, 1790's, 1890's and 1990's.