[pd-discuss] PRESS RELEASE : Gale releases all its public domain content freely on the open web

[info at galecengage-publicdomain.com]

Dear John, dear all,

I acknowledge this decision might seem a bit disorientating. As you may
know, Gale is already familiar to give access freely to some of its
content (during the National Library week for instance or via
http://www.galetrials.com/Login.aspx), but for Public Domain content we
have decided to move to the next degree by putting the content under the
Public Domain Mark.
Our business model is now a freemium model, which means that we only give
access to the content through basic tools like the Public Domain
Downloader (which by the way is open source) and still give acces to our
search platforms only to our subscribers.
The title lists you will find on our dedicated website will give you
direct access to the 1st page of every document (eg :
http://callisto.ggsrv.com/imgsrv/Fetch?recordID=127020090000010&contentSet=ECFA),
hence letting you download manually the whole book if you want.

I hope I have dispeled your fears and that you will enjoy the rich
documents we provide. But if you want to enjoy them even more, the best
thing to do is subscribing to our platform !

Yours,

Marmaduke Robida
Director for Public Domain Content
Cengage Learning EMEA
Cheriton House
North Way
Andover, SP10 5BE


> Do we have verification on this?  I don't see a mention on the
> main Gale site, and for some reason the access mechanism they
> provide is a "downloader" program you have to install on
> your machine.  I'd love this to be true, but I want to make
> sure this isn't a hoax (with or without possible malware).
>
> John
>
>
> On 1/9/13 8:38 AM, info at galecengage-publicdomain.com wrote:
>> Gale releases all its public domain content freely on the open web
>>
>> Andover, Hampshire UK, January 1st, 2013.
>>
>> Gale, part of Cengage Learning, is thrilled to announce that all its
>> public domain content will be freely accessible on the open web. "On
>> this
>> Public Domain Day, we are proud to have taken such a ground-breaking
>> decision. As a common good, the Public Domain content we have digitized
>> has to be accessible to everyone" said Marmaduke Robida, Director for
>> Public Domain Content, Gale.
>> Hundreds of thousands of digitized books coming from some of the world's
>> most prestigious libraries and belonging to top-rated products highly
>> appreciated by the academic community such as "Nineteenth Century
>> Collection Online", "Eighteenth Century Collection Online", "Sabin
>> America", "Making of the Modern World" and two major digitized
>> historical
>> newspaper collections (The Times and the Illustrated London news) are
>> now
>> accessible from a dedicated website called
>> http://galecengage-publicdomain.com . The other Gale digital collections
>> will be progressively added to this web site throughout 2013 so all
>> Public
>> Domain content will be freely accessible by 2014. All the images are or
>> will be available under the Public Domain Mark 1.0 license and can be
>> reused for any purpose.
>> Gale's global strategy is inspired by the recommandations issued by the
>> European reflection group "Comite des sages" and the Public Domain
>> manifesto. For Public Domain content, Gale decided to move to a freemium
>> business model : all the content is freely accessible through basic
>> tools
>> (Public Domain Downloader, URL lists, ...), but additional services are
>> charged for. "We are confident that there still is a market for our
>> products. Our state-of-art research platforms offer high quality
>> services
>> and added value which universities or research libraries are ready to
>> pay
>> for" said Robida.
>> A specific campaign targeted to national and academic libraries for
>> promoting the usage of Public Domain Mark for digitized content will be
>> launched in 2013. "We are ready to help the libraries that have a
>> digitization programme fulfill their initial mission : make the
>> knowledge
>> accessible to everyone. We also hope that our competitors will follow
>> the
>> same way in the near future. Public Domain should not be enclosed by
>> paywalls or dubious licensing terms" said Robida.
>>
>> Contact » Marmaduke Robida | Gale Cengage |
>> marmaduke.robida at galecengage-publicdomain.com
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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