[A2k] Ancient Books Go Online

[Claude Almansi]

Thank you, Jeffrey - that's an odd collection, though, as if made only
of MS in US collections. For instance they have only 3 works for the
500-1499 CE period - while just in Switzerland, e-codices
<http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en> contains 380 works,  with fairly
straightforward terms of use <http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/terms>.
And though Gallica <http://gallica.bnf.fr> is a such a miracle of
unusability I've given up looking for stuff there, they do
theoretically offer 783,060 documents: if the advance search page were
not perpetually "unable to service your request due to maintenance
downtime or capacity problems" it might be possible to find out
exactly how many of these are old manuscripts. According to
<http://gallica.bnf.fr/html/presentationManuscrits.html>, though,
quite a lot.
And so on for other countries, probably. So what kind of  "World"
library is this new UN-US thing anyway?

Best

Claude


On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 9:12 AM, Jeffrey A. Williams
<jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> All,
>
> =C2=A0Well I was wondering when this shoe would drop... =C2=A0Does this
> now lead to a new round of copywrite extensions to say 10k
> years?
>
> See: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3D09/04/22/0243258
>
> >From the BBC
> "The BBC is reporting that the United Nations' =C2=A0http://www.wdl.org/e=
n/
> World Digital Library has gone online with an
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8009974.stm initial offering of
> 1,200 ancient manuscripts, parchments and documents. To no great
> surprise, Europe comes in first with 380 items. South America comes in
> second with 320, with a very distant third place being given to the
> Middle East at a paltry 157 texts. This is only the initial round, so
> the leader board can be expected to change. There are, for example, a
> lot of Sumerian and Babylonian tablets, many of which are already online
> elsewhere. =C2=A0Astonishingly, the collection is covered by numerous
> copyright
> laws, according to the legal page. Use of material from a given country
> is subject to whatever restrictions that country places, in addition to
> any
> local and international copyright laws. With some of the contributions
> being over 8,000 years old, this has to be the longest copyright
> extension ever offered. There is nothing on whether the original artists
> get royalties, however."
>
> Regards,
>
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