Re: orphans, doing something (was what are orphan works?)

From: "Lee Passey" 
> jon wrote:
> 
>> joseph harris wrote:
> 
> [snip]
> 
>>> I have absolutely no
>>> idea what serves research and culture best in this, but sometimes
>>> the whole original contains much which any digital copying will
>>> lose.
> 
> For Project Gutenberg this is undoubtedly true, for PG tends to apply 
> some pretty vague rules which to some extent /mandate/ discarding 
> valuable metadata.
> 
> The Internet Archive, on the other hand, goes to the opposite extreme, 
> by archiving primarily page scans of original works; what OCR they have 
> performed on the scans is of quite poor quality and is hidden 
> away--although it can be retrieved if you know where to look. While I 
> would rather have high quality digital text (which IA does not provide) 
> for computer analysis and display, at least IA seems to preserve the 
> whole original, in color, which might eventually be used to create 
> digital books. I can't imagine what can be lost from the original using 
> the IA system. It may not be as good as it could be, but it's as good, 
> and probably better, as what you get from microfilm or storing paper 
> books which decompose.

;-) Depends what you are counting in, of course, but some documents [papyri] two millenia or more; even foxed (poorish quality) paper books are around from early Gutenberg; half a millenium. And the other things that can mean something are the papers and the way print is applied; the colours of inks and their lasting - a whole host of forensic possibilities.

Comparing a top quality hot metal imprint with even a modern jet or powder one can provide surpising contrasts in clarity. [The hot metal wins, in case you wondered ;-)] All these differences will offer a lot of information to print historians.

> 
>> But given the system of Statutory Deposit that has operated in the 
>> English-speaking world at least for many decades now, there are vast
>> numbers of books on library shelves -- or in filing cabinets in
>> locked rooms, or underground vaults.
> 
> Or at least given the system of Statutory Deposit that operated (past 
> tense) in the United States. Prior to the Berne Convention 
> Implementation Act in 1988, an author or author's licensee was required 
> to register a copyright and deposit a copy of the copyrighted work with 
> the Library of Congress before being able to prosecute a copyright 
> violation under federal copyright statutes. This was considered to be an 
> impermissible "formality" under the Berne Treaty, and was repealed 
> (although still encouraged). Because registration and deposition is a 
> financial burden, my guess is that some of the (perhaps) unintended 
> consequences of implementing the Berne treaty will be to /increase/ the 
> number of orphan works, and /decrease/ the preservation of current works 
> into the future.
> 

That looks right, though I confess to not feeling all that worried about it! From now I am sure more attention will be given to keeping stuff around.

Joseph


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