[pd-discuss] All public domain material liberated by 2020?

[Paul Keller]

On 21 Nov 2013, at 20:07, Jonathan Gray <jonathan.gray at okfn.org> wrote:

> I think it would be a tremendous thing if Europeana were to pursue this goal more aggressively (e.g. by proactively encouraging institutions to open up their digital holdings as per the Public Domain Charter, not just their metadata), and to take seriously and foreground the idea that this should happen for all digital copies of public domain works - or even just in Europe - throughout their activities. All digital copies of public domain works open with no restrictions by 2020 is no mean feat.

well to some degree this is something that Europeana is already doing on a day to day basis. We are constantly engaging with data providers to make sure that PD material is made available without restrictions. That is something that we are pursuing fairly aggressively (just ask some of the data providers). It may not be as visible as the switch of the metadata to CC0, because there is no big bang moment here) but we are putting quite a lot of work into this.

I think the main diver of substantially increasing the amount of material will need to come from outside of europeana. If we really want to have all of europe’s PD works available without restriction then we need a substantial investment in new digitisation projects and funding for these must be made conditional on unrestricted public availability of the results. /Paul