Heritage material plays a powerful role in society, providing the intellectual and cultural platform upon which humankind develops. With this in mind, it is highly important for the policies and practices surrounding book digitization to be maintained to the highest possible standards so that the act of preserving, accessing and using knowledge isn't compromised. The Reclaiming New Zealand's Digitised Heritage project was initiated to explore ways in which this can be ensured.

My research has investigated the practices of digital repositories hosted overseas and in New Zealand, with a focus on the terms and conditions by which online libraries provide access to New Zealand heritage material. Research was conducted using a random sample of 100 books from within the New Zealand National Bibliography. Each title was searched for within six major repositories, with access and usage restrictions being assessed. All sample books were published before 1890, and are highly likely to have public domain status within New Zealand (where copyright expires 50 years after the author's death).

Key findings to date

Out of a sample of 100 books:
-50% of NZ Heritage Books have been digitized.
-48% of digitized books have access restricted by at least one repository.
-98% of digitized books have usage restrictions in the form of licenses or contracts.

Hathi Trust was the most restrictive repository, with access restricted to 91% of the sample books hosted. Google Books was the second most restrictive repository, at 44%. The other four sample repositories did not impose access restrictions (i.e. Internet Archive, Early New Zealand Books, New Zealand Electronic Text Center and Project Gutenberg).

All but two of the sample books hosted by Hathi Trust had been originally digitized by Google Books, and were subject to access restrictions required by Google as a prerequisite for hosting. Firstly, all books classified as “snippet view” on Google Books are completely blocked within Hathi Trust. Furthermore, none of the books originally digitized by Google Books are able to be downloaded from the Hathi Trust website. These restrictions contributed to Hathi Trust having the highest rate of access restrictions.

Google Books' high level of restriction arose from their policy of blocking access to all books that have been published within the past 140 years. Google has adopted this policy so that it can estimate the copyright status of books under New Zealand law, rather than undertaking the time-consuming and sometimes impossible task of individually assessing the copyright status of each book (which requires accurate knowledge of when the author died). Unfortunately, many public domain books have become blocked or restricted as collateral damage during this process of estimation. It is interesting to note that any sample book blocked to New Zealand audiences is available to American audiences. This is because any work published before 1923 is in the American public domain.

In addition to my close analysis of these six repositories, I did a preliminary study that explored the pay-per-download market for books. At this stage I have only analyzed two repositories offering paid downloads: General Books LLC and the iTunes Store. Out of the sample books that had been digitized, 72% are being offered as paid downloads within these sites. The minimum price was $4.99 USD, and the maximum was $9.99 USD.

Thankfully, 96% of digitized sample books were freely accessible within at least one repository. This was the result of open repositories who have archived books digitized by other repositories, and made their copies freely accessible to users without charge. Consequently, users are highly likely to find a fully accessible version of a digitized book if they make the effort to search all possible repositories. Unfortunately, many users may be unaware that accessible copies are available within other repositories, or may be discouraged by the time-consuming process required to search multiple sites.

Recommendations

1) New legal frameworks should be established to clearly define what restrictions are legitimate, and which are unreasonable and breach the public interest.

2) New international standards of copyright should be negotiated in order to ensure that users from all jurisdictions are able to access and use content on fair and equitable terms (especially heritage material that originated within their own jurisdiction).

3) Not-for-profit institutions and government archivists should be allowed to archive any public domain work that has been digitized, without any licensing barriers.

4) There should be a standardized process for copyright determination, ideally based on the use of accurate biographical information. Both users and rights-holders should have the ability to easily notify repositories if they feel that the copyright status of a book has been incorrectly determined.

5) Legal frameworks need to uphold copyright exemptions (such as fair-dealing/fair-use and the public domain) as having priority over licenses and contracts. Otherwise, reasonable uses risk being compromised by website terms and conditions.

6) Digital versions of public domain books should always be available free of charge, unless a genuinely transformative version of the book has been created which meets the threshold for new copyright protection.

The Reclaiming New Zealand's Digitised Heritage Summer Scholar project has been featured in the latest edition of Victorious, Victoria University's alumni publication. The magazine provides an opportunity for alumni to catch up with new developments at the University and to celebrate the achievements of other alumni, staff and students (click here for more information).

The Autumn edition of Victorious will be uploaded to their website soon. In the meantime I have uploaded the relevant sections about the project below.

Below is my winning entry in the 2012 Summer Gold Awards at Victoria University of Wellington.

The awards were initiated to acknowledge the research achievements of students who received scholarships as part of the the Summer Scholar Scheme during the 2011-12 trimester.  

Scholars were invited to submit a poster describing their work and its results in a clear and interesting style similar to that used at many professional and disciplinary conferences.

My poster won the award for best entry within the Faculty of Commerce, and can be viewed below (the image is full resolution, and can be zoomed to any level of detail for easy viewing).