[pdb-discuss] Fwd: Public domain burn

Thu Oct 5 16:27:39 UTC 2006

Tom Chance wrote:
> Ahoy,
> 
> Just got this, can people suggest some responses to questions below and I'll 
> edit them together into a reply?

Comments inserted below.

> Regards,
> Tom
> 
> ----------  Forwarded Message  ----------
> 
> Subject: Public domain burn
> Date: Thursday 05 October 2006 15:42
> From: "Kerryn McKay" <mckay at icommons.org>
> To: tom at acrewoods.net
> 
> Dear Tom
> 
> I am part of the newly formed non-profit org The African Commons Project
> and am also currently working with Heather and Diane on establishing a
> direction (for proposal to the community) for the iCommons incubator.  I
> have also spoken with your uncle, Toby Chance, regarding the Soweto
> Festival, thanks to a helpful lead from you.  (Unfortunately time was
> rather tight so we didn't manage to have a presence at the festival, but
> we're keen to participate next year.)
> 
> Anyway, the above is simply by way of an introduction.  The reason that
> I'm emailing you is that I would like to pick your brain about the Public
> Domain Burn project, which would be a great project to include on the
> iCommons Incubator for replication in other countries.

> Of course some information is available on the project page, but some info
> would need your input.
>
> The info that I would be looking for is along the lines of:

Some of this depends on whether we are talking about PD Burn or just PDW 
(public domain works db). PD Burn includes PDW and also involves work to 
actually digitize stuff. At present I think we've concluded that we will 
just work on PDW and leave digitization to others (or until we have the 
resources necessary to do it).

Focusing on PDW. Most of the answers are on:

   http://www.publicdomainworks.net/

> *  objectives of the project

http://www.publicdomainworks.net/about/

> *  tools and resources:  were these created/ how were they found etc?

We're having to build most stuff from scratch. We have found some web 
resources and hope to be able to use metadata from some library or other 
but that isn't certain yet.

> *  people working on setting up the project:  what skills needed

code: well the hope is if we write the code once it can be re-used 
everywhere (we're just providing a metadata db with extra attributes 
such as pd status)

Thus once it has been once you'll just need a sysadmin to install a 
local copy

data: metadata again should be pretty common (though extra items such as 
pd status might not be). Thus again this is something that can be done 
in common. Of course a load of works may be country specific in which 
case it's most likely that it will be volunteers from that country who 
will be interested in entering the data

> *  people contributing to working project: who is, or has, contributed

The people on this list ;) I and Nathan did most of the coding.

> *  how many works have been added

Depends what one means. We could add as many works as we want just by 
piping them from the BL but there are potential copyright issues. At 
present we are just testing the software and system and so are working 
with a test set of 137 works from 1900.

> *  what is the activity like (slow, fast etc)

slow with bursts (see next question)

> *  who funded the project (if at all)

no funding as yet

> *  who is administering the project

PD Burn: FC-UK

Public Domain Works Database: FC-UK + Open Knowledge Foundation

> *  what timeline (if any) are you working towards

Because it is a volunteer project with no funding (at present) we don't 
have a specific timeline

> *  what will be the expected result (obvious, but nontheless!)

An **open** database of metadata relating to cultural works along with 
PD status in Europe

> *  how will the information gained (either process info or actual info
> around the public domain works) be dissseminated

It will be available via a website as well as for download as a database 
dump. All code (and perhaps other source data files) will also be 
available in a source code repository such as subversion.