[pdb-discuss] Writing a grant proposal for the public domain works db

[Rufus Pollock]

Dear Tom and Tim,

I'm writing to you guys particularly because you both posted on 
fc-uk-discuss recently about pdb and indicated a willingness to help out.

Right now one of our priorities is to write a grant proposal for the pdw 
db (public domain works database). Just yesterday I spoke again with 
Vera Franz of OSI about the idea and she seemed very interested and 
specifically asked me to send her a basic 1-2 page proposal outlining 
the pdw. I have also talked quite a bit with a law professor at 
Cambridge who was very interested and suggested writing a proposal to 
got a public funding body such as the AHRB.

Would one or both of you be willing to take on the task of producing a 
first draft of this?

It would be pretty simple to do and would focus on the metadata database 
(the works db) itself rather than the whole of PDB. I think we would 
want to outline the idea and ask for funding to develop a software 
prototype. (I also note that providing a simple overview of pdw db is 
valuable in itself). We should also point out that the underlying 
software (and db) could easily be used for other purposes than simply 
identifying public domain work, for example identification of orphan 
works (in fact as we have already discussed one would always end up 
making a db of all works since that a prior condition for identifying pd 
works -- and it would then be a trivial matter to add an extra field 
such as is_orphan just as we will add is_public_domain). Finally I think 
it is important to emphasize that both the data and software that 
resulted from our work would be /open/.

Regards,

Rufus