Thoughts on Orphans

Peter Brantley has a thoughtful piece on digitization and orphan works. The essay is a prelude to a series of articles he edited for the journal Library Trends (Link).

Here is a sample from his introductory essay:

Like many, I’ve recently been thinking a lot about the availability of books in online searchable repositories, and the likely outcomes for publishers, libraries, and the public. I have even been considering the impact of a rapprochement between publishers, authors, and Google over books whose availability is most savagely contested, largely because their legal status has been brought into a hazy dawn of uncertainty by the startling recent shifts in availability that catch them stranded between public goods and private property.

A significant portion of these implicated works are likely to be out-of-print, of uncertain copyright status, and no longer present in any publisher’s archive—available only in the less-visited shelves of the largest research libraries. This substantial category, numbering in the millions of books, would undoubtedly incorporate a large number of what are called “orphan works,” where the presence of any identifiable copyright owner in the work, or its constituent parts, is not known, and resilient to easy resolution as a result of poorly recorded mergers and acquisitions, lost archival contracts, publisher insolvency, and myriad other reasons. In turn, some of this orphan material is almost certainly public domain; the original copyright never renewed, and long since expired.

Crisis What Crisis

John Bird and John Fortune on the banking and subprime crisis broadcast a year ago.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzJmTCYmo9g

MediaWeek Report (Vol 1, No 42): Frankfurt Bookfair

Numerous articles on the Frankfurt Bookfair. Mokoto Rich in the NYTimes has two articles on translating foreign works. Looking for foreign titles for the US market: (link)

It is a commonly held assumption that Americans don’t like to read authors who write in languages they don’t understand. That belief persists here in Frankfurt, where publishers from 100 countries show off a smorgasbord of their best — or at least best-selling — books.

By and large, the American publishers spend most of the week in Hall 8, the enormous exhibit space where English-language publishers hold court.

Although there are exceptions among the big publishing houses, the editors from the United States are generally more likely to bid on other hyped American or British titles than to look for new literature in the international halls.

And another article about translations from English to foreign languages: (link)

A 20-year veteran of the fair who publishes many North American authors, including Malcolm Gladwell, Jeffrey Eugenides and Colson Whitehead, Ms. van der Pluijm, 46, promised to read the stories that night.

After the scout moved on, Ms. van der Pluijm (pronounced VAN der ploom) said it was a personal rule never to buy anything in Frankfurt. But she admitted that it was difficult sometimes not to get caught up in the frenzy. “It is so much more easy to buy something here than not to buy,” she said. Too many of the sales in Frankfurt, she said, were dictated by “too much excitement, not enough sleep and a big hangover.”

Talking about the elusive killer e-Book device (link):

Some believe they could galvanize the market for digital text in the way Apple's iPod did for digital music.

Penguin publishers Chief Executive John Makinson told Reuters: "They have become mainstream in the sense that they are a genuine consumer product for which there is real appetite, so this is not the province of geeks any longer."

Makinson said Penguin was now publishing all new titles both as printed books and e-books and was digitalizing its backlist.

Alison Flood at the Guardian takes a look at what books are selling at Frankfurt (link):

The publishing deals struck at the Frankfurt Book Fair set the tone for the books trade all around the world, and half way through the fair they are coming thick and fast. Publishers may still be bullish about their prospects, but the credit crunch is already driving big deals for books with a financial flavour.

Pearson reported strong 3rd quarter results last week. (Link):

• Sales up 8% and operating profit up 11% at constant exchange rates
• 2008 adjusted EPS expected to be toward the top end of current market estimates

Pearson, the international education and information company, is today providing an update on trading in the first nine months of 2008. Pearson continued to perform well in the third quarter. For the first nine months, sales are up 8% and operating profit up 11% at constant exchange rates. We are trading in line with our expectations, and we remain on track to make further progress on our financial goals in 2008. If the recent strengthening of the US dollar against sterling is maintained, we expect full-year adjusted earnings per share to be toward the top end of current market estimates*.

Bill Reilly Dies

Folio is reporting that William F Reilly died at his home on Friday. Bill was CEO of Macmillan when I (and Mrs PND) started my career after business school. To one of his staff members, he was an intimidating presence in the board room on the monthly occasions when we presented business results to him. He frequently made clear he knew more about the business than we did (as staff business analysts) but in doing so he imparted a clear perspective on what was important to understanding the true performance of the business. When Reilly joined Macmillan in the early 1980s, the company was on its knees loosing something like $100K a week. The share price was around $2. By the end of the decade, Robert Maxwell had purchased the company for over $90/share and Reilly and several of his management team were very rich. I joined after the Maxwell purchase and worked for Reilly for about a year before he went to join his team at K-III. K-III became Primedia.

Folio reports that services will be held as follows:

A wake is scheduled for October 21 in New York at the Frank E. Campbell funeral home from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. The funeral will be held Wednesday, Oct. 22 at St. Ignatius Loyola Church in New York at 10:00 a.m.

QE II Leaves NYC for the Last Time

The luxury liner Queen Elizabeth II sails past the Empire State Building for the last time. I would have missed this as I was on a call, but three long blasts of her horn had me rushing to the window. Since I wasn't ready this was the only shot I got.

The ship is to be retired and will become a floating hotel in Dubai. Her predecessor, the QE was similarly retired to become a floating university but after an extensive refit in Hong Kong the ship caught fire in a spectacular inferno. Somewhere in the PND family archive, is a photo of that ship lying on its side in HK harbor. I hope nothing untoward happens to this one.

That Big Database in the Sky

Are we getting ever closer to that large digital repository in the sky that enables any library patron to access the collections of their own and all other libraries from their computer? Perhaps. I believe this concept will come to represent a major element in the changed definition of 'library.' We are many years off that eventuality however, this new initiative may provide a glimpse of the opportunity.

Something named the HathiTrust has announced a large scale digital repository initiative in collaboration with 13 charter member research libraries. From the press release,

A group of the nation’s largest research libraries are collaborating to create a repository of their vast digital collections, including millions of books, organizers announced today. These holdings will be archived and preserved in a single repository called the HathiTrust. Materials in the public domain will be available for reading online.

Launched jointly by the 12-university consortium known as the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) and the 11 university libraries of the University of California system, the HathiTrust leverages the time-honored commitment to preservation and access to information that university libraries have valued for centuries. UC’s participation will be coordinated by the California Digital Library (CDL), which brings its deep and innovative experience in digital curation and online scholarship to the HathiTrust.

“This effort combines the expertise and resources of some of the nation’s foremost research libraries and holds even greater promise as it seeks to grow beyond the initial partners,” says John Wilkin, associate university librarian of the University of Michigan and the newly named executive director of HathiTrust. Hathi (pronounced hah-TEE), the Hindi word for elephant incorporated into the repository’s name, underscores the immensity of this undertaking, Wilkin says. Elephants also evoke memory, wisdom, and strength.

As of today, HathiTrust contains more than 2 million volumes and approximately ¾ of a billion pages, about 16 percent of which are in the public domain. Public domain materials will be available for reading online. Materials protected by copyright, although not available for reading online, are given the full range of digital archiving services, thereby offering member libraries a reliable means to preserve their collections. Organizers also expect to use those materials in the research and development of the Trust.

Volumes are added to the repository daily, and content will grow rapidly as the University of California, CIC member libraries, and other prospective partners contribute their digitized content. Also today, the founding partners announce that the University of Virginia is joining the initiative.

Each of the founding partners brings extensive and highly regarded expertise in the areas of information technology, digital libraries, and project management to this endeavor. Creation of the HathiTrust supports the digitization efforts of the CIC and the University of California, each of which has entered into collective agreements with Google to digitize portions of the collections of their libraries, more than 10 million volumes in total, as part of the Google Book Search project. Materials digitized through other means will also be made available through HathiTrust.

HathiTrust provides libraries a means to archive and provide access to their digital content, whether scanned volumes, special collections, or born-digital materials. Preserving materials for the long term has long been a mission and driving force of leading research libraries. Their collections, accumulated over centuries, represent a treasury of cultural heritage and investment in the broad public good of promoting scholarship and advancing knowledge. The representation of these resources in digital form provides expanded opportunities for innovative use in research, teaching, and learning, but must be done with careful attention to effective solutions for the curation and long-term preservation of digital assets.

This is an initiative worth following closely. The collaboration between libraries looks like the single most important differentiator compared with other digital initiatives particularly the Google digitization program. Hathi's application to the in-copyright world should be closely watched. As this program matures I expect the Trust will seek licencing terms that enable on-line viewing for in-copyright materials. Currently, the application is for preservation only.

Ingram: Downloads Strong. Prichard Interview

A little bit of a puff piece from Ingram Digital announcing that digital downloads from their retail solutions unit had enjoyed record third quarter growth with downloads more than double the same quarter last year. No numbers noted. Ingram Digital includes solutions for digital content management, distribution and promotion.

The press release does give me the opportunity to link to an interview Skip Prichard did last week as part of the SIIA brown bag interview series. It is 60mins.

College Networks Protect Music Rights

Frankfurt Bookfair is this week October 15-18th

Ars Technica reports on the trend on Campus networks to offer music download services so that students actually pay for music. This is a transparent effort by educational institutions to avoid being named in any potential lawsuits placed by Music publishers. Music publishers could claim that as a network owner, the Universities facilitated and did nothing to prevent students from illegally downloading content. Interesting that they don't seem to have the same issue with Students and Academics illegally unloading college course material.

Isolated stories about this trend have appeared in the tech press for the last few years as schools have tried to convince students (often with little success) to use sponsored solutions instead of peer-to-peer file-sharing. Early music solutions were often Windows-only and used DRM that was incompatible with the iPod, which generally led to failing grades for legal alternatives. Such services have also proved controversial at schools where student fees were used to fund them; the non-eyepatch-wearing landlubbers among the student body tended to object to this use of their money.

MediaWeek Report (Vol 1, No 41): Google and the AAP Law Suit

Library Journal reports that the lawsuit between Google and the AAP may be on the cusp of being settled:

Nearly three years after its initial filing, it appears a settlement may finally be near in publishers’ lawsuit over Google’s controversial program to scan books from library shelves. Although rumors of a settlement have flared up and died down intermittently over the years, sources wishing to remain anonymous this week told the LJ Academic Newswire and Publishers Weekly that talk of a final agreement has indeed heated up, with one publishing insider confirming that a settlement was “imminent,” although no solid time frame was known.

Lulu.com is cutting some staff. Link Continued negative news on the sale of Reed Business Information. If it happens at all the price looks like being much lower than expected. Bloomberg NYTimes looks at how video games could spur reading in those who don't.

Springer Buys BioMed Central

Just announced from their press release. Looking forward, Springer may be the perfect (only?) partner to continue the experiment with Open Access and ensure BioMed remains true to its purpose.

Springer Science+Business Media has reached an agreement to acquire BioMed Central Group, the leading global open access publisher.

BioMed Central was launched in May 2000 as an independent publishing house committed to providing free access to peer-reviewed research in the biological and medical sciences. BMC is the largest open access provider in the world with over 180 peer-reviewed journals.

BioMed Central’s flagship journals include Journal of Biology, BMC Biology, BMC Medicine, Malaria Journal, BMC Bioinformatics and Genome Biology. BioMed Central has revenues of approximately EUR 15 million per year. The company is based in London, with a second office in Liverpool, and has approximately 150 employees.

Derk Haank, CEO of Springer Science+Business Media said: “This acquisition reinforces the fact that we see open access publishing as a sustainable part of STM publishing, and not an ideological crusade. We have gained considerable positive experience since starting Springer Open Choice in 2004, and BioMed Central’s activities are complementary to what we are doing. Additionally, this acquisition strengthens Springer’s position in the life sciences and biomedicine, and will allow us to offer societies a greater range of publishing options.”

Matthew Cockerill, Publisher of BioMed Central said: “We are very excited about this new phase of BioMed Central's growth and development. Springer has been notable among the major STM publishers for its willingness to experiment with open access publishing. BioMed Central has demonstrated that the open access business model can work, and we look forward to continued rapid growth as part of Springer. The support of our authors, journal editors and institutional customers has been vital to BioMed Central's success and we will continue to focus on offering the best possible service to these groups."

Peter Suber of Open Access News as more thoughts: Link

Frankfurt Next Week

The annual Frankfurt Bookfair starts next Wednesday and it is preceded by the annual International Supply Chain Specialists meeting where I have been asked to speak. My topic is Publishing in the Digital Age for which I have been allotted 20 minutes.

I will be posting the presentation here subsequent to or immediately after the event on Tuesday.

Also, please tell me if you are attending either the Supply Chain meeting or the Fair and would like to meet.

email: michael.cairns @ infomediapartners.com

Greenwood To Close

On the heals of the deal by Harcourt to sell perpetual rights to the Greenwood list, the company will vacate its offices in Westport CT by year end. According to WestportNow, a company source has told them that approximately 150 positions will be lost when the pink slips go out in December.