[pd-discuss] books2ebooks.eu - E-Books on Demand

Mon Mar 18 14:10:01 UTC 2013

Hi Tom,

As far is I know, some institutions include the digitized works in their online catalogues; but I'm not sure whether all of them do so.
In any case, you could order a copy for free (this is the basic principle of the service).

To bring it one step further, one could try to get them to contribute the files to Project Gutenberg, Wikisource, Project Runenberg and the like in order to do OCR and proof-read the texts. However, I'm not sure whether these projects are able to process much more material than what they are already getting now. - Does anyone know?

Best,
Beat

From: pd-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org [mailto:pd-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Tom Morris
Sent: Montag, 18. März 2013 14:16
To: Public Domain discuss list
Subject: [pd-discuss] books2ebooks.eu - E-Books on Demand

Hi Beat.  Thanks for the link to that service.  It sounds interesting, but I'm curious as to what happens to the digitized works.  Do they go anywhere other than to the person who submitted the order?  Are they publicly available to others at the originating library or would the customer need to host their personal digital version somewhere (presuming they wanted to do that).

Tom
On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 3:50 AM, Estermann Beat <beat.estermann at bfh.ch<mailto:beat.estermann at bfh.ch>> wrote:
Dear all,

Have you thought about mentioning the E-Books on Demand service as an alternative approach to digitization agreements:
http://books2ebooks.eu/en

The principle is simple: someone interested in having a PD work scanned pays a scanning fee; the institution does the scanning, and the scan is made available online to other users.

Licensing practices vary between the different institutions: some provide their content in a truly "free" manner; others apply limiting licensing terms. Note however that some of the libraries also make works available that may not be in the PD. Here some examples:

The National Library of Sweden publishes their scanned works under the

CC-PD mark:

http://www.books2ebooks.eu/csp/en/nls/en/agb.html

Library am Guisanplatz, Bern, seems to scan not only PD books: "Public

domain books or books for which we receive a declaration of consent

from the author or publishing houses are imported by us into the

digital library of the Library Am Guisanplatz and are thus globally available and also preserved for the long term."

There is no contractual limitation as to the use of the material.

http://www.books2ebooks.eu/csp/en/big/en/paymentanddelivery.html

Zentralbibliothek Zürich also doesn't have a contractual limitation

concerning the use of the material.

http://books2ebooks.eu/csp/en/zbz/en/paymentanddelivery.html

Umea University Library prohibits commercial use in their terms of

service. At the same time they write: "Digitised books are imported by

us into the digital library of the Umeå University Library and are

thus globally available and also long-term preserved."

http://www.books2ebooks.eu/csp/en/umub/en/paymentanddelivery.html

The Royal Library, the National Library and Copenhagen University

Library by the way haven't updated their Terms yet: "eBooks acquired

via EOD may be used for personal, non-commercial purposes only. By

ordering you accept the Terms and Conditions." Furthermore, they offer

the most expensive service, according to EOD indications (more than

double of what Zentralbibliothek Zürich is charging; good that there are hopes that this will indeed change soon ;-)):

http://www.books2ebooks.eu/csp/en/kb/en/paymentanddelivery.html

You'll find a list with prices and terms of use on the EOD website:

http://books2ebooks.eu/en/prices

Best regards,
Beat Estermann
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