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Tag: 18. Mai 2006

Erster Archivfinder für den Kreis Siegen-Wittgenstein:

Orientierung und nützliche Tipps für die Archivarbeit: Das bietet die 60-seitige Broschüre “Aus erster Quelle. Archivfinder für den Kreis Siegen-Wittgenstein” geschichtsinteressierten Bürgern und Fachleuten. Der 60-seitige Archivfinder, dessen Herausgeber der Heimatbund Siegerland-Wittgenstein e.V. und der Arbeitskreis der Archive im Kreis Siegen-Wittgenstein ist, gibt in Kurzporträts einen Überblick über die wichtigsten Daten der Orts- und Stadtgeschichte. Neben dem Kreisarchiv und den Städten und Gemeinden präsentieren sich zudem das Archiv des Evangelischen Kirchenkreises, der Universität Siegen und dem Fürstlichen Archiv zu Sayn-Wittgenstein sowie das Landesarchiv NRW, das Staatsarchiv Münster und das Westfälische Archivamt. Die dahinter stehende Idee des Archivfinders: Jung und Alt werden dazu eingeladen, sich in den Archiven vor Ort erlebbar mit der Regionalgeschichte in Siegen-Wittgenstein auseinander zu setzen und auf persönlich interessierende Fragen Antworten zu finden. “Das kulturelle Verständnis im Hier und Jetzt ist ohne das historische Erbe nicht denkbar. Das Kreisarchiv sowie die Archive in den Städten und Gemeinden übernehmen aus diesem Grund eine enorm wichtige Bildungsaufgabe”, so der Vorsitzende des Heimatbundes Siegerland-Wittgenstein e.V., Landrat Paul Breuer, bei der Vorstellung des Archivfinders. “Das Wissen unserer Region und des Wittgensteiner Landes darf nicht im Verborgenen bleiben”, so Breuer weiter.

Die Archive im Kreis Siegen-Wittgenstein verstehen sich als moderne regional- und lokalhistorische Informationsanbieter und möchten mit dem neuen Medium auf die “offenen Türen” bzw. Zugänglichkeit für Jedermann verweisen. “Vorfahrt für Archive! heißt für alle Beteiligten, Ansprechpartner für Regionalgeschichte zu sein”, betonte Kreisarchivar Thomas Wolf. Dass viele Fragen, die sich dem Geschichtsinteressierten stellen, nicht ausschließlich in den Archiven vor Ort geklärt werden können, machten die Fachexperten des Landesarchivs NRW und des Westfälischen Archivamtes deutlich. Dr. Mechthild Black-Veldtrup, Abteilungsleiterin im Landesarchiv, zeigte auf, wie das Landesarchiv und die Kommunalarchive zusammenarbeiten. Anschließend gab die Mitautorin des Archivfinders und Vertreterin des Westfälischen Archivamtes Münster Katharina Tiemann Einblicke in die Arbeit der kommunalen und Privatarchivpflege in Westfalen. Der erste Archivfinder des Kreises Siegen-Wittgenstein enthält außerdem Hinweise zu Ansprechpartnern, Öffnungszeiten und gibt Antworten auf die Fragen “Wie arbeiten Archive?”, “Welches Archiv ist das richtige?” und “Was sollte man vor dem erstmaligen Archivbesuch wissen?”
Der Archivfinder ist büber das Kreisarchiv Siegen-Wittgenstein, E-Mail: t_wolf@siegen-wittgenstein.de kostenlos zu beziehen.”

Orphan Works

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/magazine/14publishing.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

In the world of books, the indefinite extension of copyright has had a perverse effect. It has created a vast collection of works that have been abandoned by publishers, a continent of books left permanently in the dark. In most cases, the original publisher simply doesn’t find it profitable to keep these books in print. In other cases, the publishing company doesn’t know whether it even owns the work, since author contracts in the past were not as explicit as they are now. The size of this abandoned library is shocking: about 75 percent of all books in the world’s libraries are orphaned. Only about 15 percent of all books are in the public domain. A luckier 10 percent are still in print. The rest, the bulk of our universal library, is dark.

5. The Moral Imperative to Scan

The 15 percent of the world’s 32 million cataloged books that are in the public domain are freely available for anyone to borrow, imitate, publish or copy wholesale. Almost the entire current scanning effort by American libraries is aimed at this 15 percent. The Million Book Project mines this small sliver of the pie, as does Google. Because they are in the commons, no law hinders this 15 percent from being scanned and added to the universal library.

The approximately 10 percent of all books actively in print will also be scanned before long. Amazon carries at least four million books, which includes multiple editions of the same title. Amazon is slowly scanning all of them. Recently, several big American publishers have declared themselves eager to move their entire backlist of books into the digital sphere. Many of them are working with Google in a partnership program in which Google scans their books, offers sample pages (controlled by the publisher) to readers and points readers to where they can buy the actual book. No one doubts electronic books will make money eventually. Simple commercial incentives guarantee that all in-print and backlisted books will before long be scanned into the great library. That’s not the problem.

The major problem for large publishers is that they are not certain what they actually own. If you would like to amuse yourself, pick an out-of-print book from the library and try to determine who owns its copyright. It’s not easy. There is no list of copyrighted works. The Library of Congress does not have a catalog. The publishers don’t have an exhaustive list, not even of their own imprints (though they say they are working on it). The older, the more obscure the work, the less likely a publisher will be able to tell you (that is, if the publisher still exists) whether the copyright has reverted to the author, whether the author is alive or dead, whether the copyright has been sold to another company, whether the publisher still owns the copyright or whether it plans to resurrect or scan it. Plan on having a lot of spare time and patience if you inquire. I recently spent two years trying to track down the copyright to a book that led me to Random House. Does the company own it? Can I reproduce it? Three years later, the company is still working on its answer. The prospect of tracking down the copyright — with any certainty — of the roughly 25 million orphaned books is simply ludicrous.

Which leaves 75 percent of the known texts of humans in the dark. The legal limbo surrounding their status as copies prevents them from being digitized. No one argues that these are all masterpieces, but there is history and context enough in their pages to not let them disappear. And if they are not scanned, they in effect will disappear. But with copyright hyperextended beyond reason (the Supreme Court in 2003 declared the law dumb but not unconstitutional), none of this dark library will return to the public domain (and be cleared for scanning) until at least 2019. With no commercial incentive to entice uncertain publishers to pay for scanning these orphan works, they will vanish from view. According to Peter Brantley, director of technology for the California Digital Library, “We have a moral imperative to reach out to our library shelves, grab the material that is orphaned and set it on top of scanners.”