[pdb-discuss] Composer data

Thu May 25 09:54:14 UTC 2006

Many moons ago I came across:

   http://www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/

Which has lots of data on authors, books and composers (the guy seems to 
be transcribing a large amount of the US copyright register by hand!).

In the light of our work on the db I wrote to the owner of the site at 
the start of May and, to my slight surprise, got an immediate response 
(email addresses on websites are usually dead due to spam). Philip 
Harper who runs the site was extremely helpful and while not able to 
make available the general author data as he is planning a 
semi-commercial collaboration with it he was happy to provide us his 
composer list (I include the final email of our exchange below). I have 
now posted this up here:

   http://project.knowledgeforge.net/pdw/Composers.txt

It looks like this:

Jens Christian AABERG, * 1877 Nov 8, + 1970 Jun 22
Heikki AALTOILA, * 1905 Dec 11, + 1992 Jan 11
Alfred E AARONS, * 1865 Nov 16, + 1931 Nov 16
Emanuel AARONS, * ?, + ?
Leroy (F) AARONS, * 1933 Dec 8, + 2004 Nov 28

I am not entirely clear at to the meaning of all of the format (* and +) 
so if anyone has ideas please say (we can also contact Philip if it 
remains unclear).

Regards,

Rufus

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Permission to reuse/redistribute your data on authors and 
their works
Date: Fri, 12 May 2006 14:30:45 +0100
From: Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org>
To: Philip Harper <webmaster at kingkong.demon.co.uk>
References: <20060508202547.GA16969 at lt1.okfn.org> 
<l2fySvFpb8XEFw1P at kingkong.demon.co.uk> <44606667.4010702 at okfn.org> 
<tQRQ7IGsqKYEFwOs at kingkong.demon.co.uk>

Philip Harper wrote:
> Rufus,
> 
> In your message dated Tue, 9 May 2006, you wrote:
> 
>>We've been trying to contact the Canadian project but 
>>haven't yet actually had a response. 
> 
> 
> That's interesting.  I had wondered about contacting them, but it sounds
> like it might not be worth the effort.

Spurred by your enquiry I wrote to CC-US again (this time to a different
person) and this time got an immediate response from Mia Garlick. After
speaking from her my understanding is that the Canadian project is
proceeding but they are still at the stage of getting agreement on the
plan and the data permissions. We agreed the best way to proceed at
present is for PD Burn and the Canadian project to advance in parallel
with each keeping the other informed of what is happening but with the
intent to collaborate in future (e.g. when there is something more
concrete to collaborate on).

>>>IF Composers: I have annotated in my master database who were music
>>>composers, though you do not currently see this on the webpages, for
>>>lack of space.  Since it is a small and peripheral part of my catalog, I
>>>could let you have an extract of all the composers to make free/open use
>>>of.
>>
>>That would be very kind. In what manner could we obtain this data from 
>>you. 
> 
> 
> See attached ASCII file.  The format should be obvious, but if you want
> something different, let me know and I'll munge it into something else.

Thanks a lot. I have taken a look and it seems fine. I'll discuss it
further with the rest of the group and get back to you if there are any
problems. Once again thanks for providing this.

> 
>>Also, just for clarity what license would you make available under? 
>>(Public Domain, CC Attribution, etc)
> 
> 
> It's so small, and by the time you get anywhere worthwhile it'll be so
> small a component, that it's not worth making any reservations, so
> straight Public Domain - do whatever you like with it, without
> attribution or other conditions, and if you can make money out of it,
> good luck!
> 
> 
>>>In either case I have long intended making a copy of my master database
>>>available in a public repository (such as Project Gutenberg) with only a
>>>relatively short time restriction on making modified copies of it (eg,
>>>the sort of thing you're attempting), so that it is freely available to
>>>the world in case of the demise of my interest or, eventually, me.
>>
>>A very sound idea. Would the idea be that you would deposit a copy and 
>>with the proviso that it only be made available after 2 years or 
>>something similar?
> 
> 
> Making it publicly available immediately, so that people can have their
> own copy for offline consultation-type use and thus making "multiple
> distributed backups", but reserving the intellectual property rights for
> X years, to stop people making a modified version of it or incorporating
> it in a database, etc.  And then issuing annual updates, with each one
> expiring X years after issue, but still leaving the earlier versions
> with their unchanged 'expiry dates', until I drop off the world's radar.
> 
> I've long been telling myself I'll start doing it when the catalog gets
> to 100,000 authors, as that is a nice round number and a size where it
> might start to be really useful.  As of last night it's 101,500, so I
> really ought to do something about it this year.

This is a really impressive dataset and it should definitely be up
somewhere.

>>We are not yet sure we will use a 'wiki' since the data has so much 
>>struture that it calls out for something like a proper db. However we 
>>are looking at some sort of hybrid where the structured data is 
>>versioned in a db and comments are attached in a wiki. We plan to have 
>>something up for testing in the next couple of months.
> 
> 
> I look forward to seeing that, if you'd like to let me know the URL when
> it's ready for someone external to have a look it, at least in a
> provisional /beta-test manner.  I'll let you know the URL of my search
> site when it's ready for beta-testing in a couple of weeks.

That's very kind and I will certainly let you know the moment we have
something up. FYI our public discussion list is at:

   http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/pdb-discuss

Regards,

Rufus