(Catching up on my reading)

Acquiring Copyright Permission to Digitize and Provide Open Access to Books reports on CMU’s efforts to obtain copyright permissions to digiize books published after 1923. As with most CLIR reports, it’s an interesting study. CMU was most successful with targeted, specialized collections such as in their rare book collection. Two-thirds of the copyright holders in that collection granted permission.

The report details the process used and the costs. Permissions were easier to obtain in targeted collections than for larger sets of works, such as in CMU’s Million Book Project. CMU found that permissions were more likely to be granted from special publishers, authors and estates, museums, galleries, and scholarly associations. Commericial publishers, including university presses, were less likely to grant permission. University presses often reported that copyright reverted back to the author after the work went out-of-print. In other cases,publishers defined out-of-print differently than libraries since publishers saw potential in print-on-demand for titles were no longer being printed.

Overall, it’s a very useful report on copyright practices related to digitizing book collections.