The Committee on Culture and Education of the European Parliament urges EU States to enlarge Europeana while respecting copyright

A report drafted by MEP Helga Trüpel and approved by the Culture Committee on 22 February 2010 urges the EU Member States to provide more and better content to Europeana while copyright needs to be observed.

The draft report “Europeana, the next steps” highlights the need of the EU governments and cultural institutions to co-operate closely in speeding up digitisation, and "not to restrict availability to the territory of their country".

One of the main issues concerning content for Europeana raised by the report is the copyright status of the works. In that field, references to the out of print and orphan works were included in the document and ARROW has been noted as a “very useful tool(s) in facilitating the rights clearance for orphan works.”
The document also states that the European Parliament “welcomes and supports initiatives, such as the ARROW project, partnered by both rights-holders and library representatives, in particular since these seek to identify rights-holders and their rights, and clarify the rights' status of works including whether these are orphan or out of print.”

The initial draft report can be found here: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+COMP..., while the amendments to the draft report on Europeana can be downloaded from: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+COMP....

ARROW System development. German pilot on its way

In the recent past months, ARROW partners with the contribution of the involved stakeholders worked to define the project workflow and system specifications. Several technical meetings took place both at national and domain level. Libraries, publishers associations, books in print organisations, reproduction rights organisations, collecting societies representing authors, international organisations and technology developers have been assisting in building the ARROW system.

During the first semester of 2010, the ARROW consortium will deliver the first phase of the project pilot. At this stage, Germany, France, UK and Spain have been working closely to enable all technical requirements to make ARROW a sustainable project aiming to facilitate digital libraries within Europe.

In the course of the following weeks, we will see the delivery of the German pilot. Indeed Germany will be the first country that will use ARROW as an interoperable system to clear copyright status and data about European literary works.

The system that aims to offer tools for discovering rightholders and models and procedures for clearing rights on current orphan and out of print works will start its first public pilot phase with the collaboration of the German stakeholders: DNB for the library domain, VLB for the Books in print one, VG Wort for the RRO.

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek and its dissemination activities on ARROW

During November of 2009, the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, was present at two important gatherings for librarians in Latin America: the 7th University Digital Library Days (JBDU, its acronym in spanish), held in Rosario, Argentina; and in another meeting on Digital Libraries in Europe that was held at the Goethe Institute in Santiago, Chile.

In both events, the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek introduced ARROW as a project it supports with a use case and which it considers an important way to facilitate the search for rightholders across Europe. Thereby ARROW was promoted among one of its most important stakeholders: librarians.

These events are part of a large number of activities where ARROW has been presented by its partners.

The FGEE and its activity promoting ARROW

The Spanish Association of Publishers Guilds (Federación de Gremios de Editores de España, FGEE) reported some of the activities at which ARROW has been promoted on a local and international level by the Spanish partner.

These events included:

• Summer Workshops at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain) (13-17 of july of 2009);
• 61st Frankfurt Book Fair;
• Workshop TILO - Taller de ideas sobre el libro (Workshop on Ideas About the Book), Madrid;
• Technical meetings, Jerez (Spain) 11-13 November 2009;
• Meeting with retailers, 19-20 of November in Paular Monastery in Madrid

From EC Commissioner Viviane Reding to French Ministry of Culture Frédéric Mitterrand, interest in ARROW gets higher at European level.

The value of ARROW for the future of digital libraries and in particular Europeana is increasingly recognized by personalities from EU institutions and Member States and professionals of the book sector.

In the last month, the Project Director and Coordinator Piero Attanasio from AIE participated to several meetings, where he presented the main features of the project and its European approach in particular in comparison with initiatives like Google Book Search and the Books Rights Registry (BRR) that should be established once the agreement of Google with American Publishers and Authors is accepted.

On September 29th ARROW has been presented within the Executive Committee of FEP. The following day, a delegation of FEP leaded by FEP President Federico Motta met DG InfSo Commissioner Mrs Viviane Reding to illustrate the expected results of the project (a detailed presentation of ARROW was then requested and took place at Mrs Reding Cabinet on October 9th).

On October 1st in Luxembourg, Mr Piero Attanasio presented ARROW at the meeting of Member States Expert Group, gathering representatives of EU member states responsible for programmes of digitization and digital libraries at national level.

During Frankfurt Book Fair, Piero Attanasio presented the project at the International Supply Chain Seminar organized by EDItEUR () (13th october) and had a long meeting with the French Ministry of Culture Mr Frédéric Mitterand who showed deep interest in the evolution of the project for a correct rights management in the digital libraries environment.

ARROW at the IFRRO Annual General Meeting seminar “Providing access to content in a changing environment”

Olav Stokkmo, IFRRO’s Chief executive and ARROW WP 2 leader presented the project to some 200 attendees at the IFFRO Annual General Meeting seminar “Providing access to content in a changing environment” that took place on October 21st of October of 2009.

Publishers, RROs and libraries presented their business models for the digital era proving that the access to copyrighted works is being constantly eased for the users.

The ARROW project was also seen as the key solution to clear rights status of works during the European digital libraries afternoon session.

The Brussels press announces Ms. Reding’s digitisation plan

In an article published on 1st October, European Voice informs that the European Commission is planning to promote the digitisation of books either by creating a European register or a European network of registries. The newspaper did not approach ARROW for comments which it could have as we understand that the Commissioner sees ARROW as an important step in facilitating the digitisation of books and creating the right infrastructure. It is also referred to in the newly published European Commission consultation paper on the future of EUROPEANA.

European Voice says Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media, who is said to present the plans with Charlie McCreevy, Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, is concerned that "without a common EU approach, publishers and authors in different member states will sign up to a web of agreements with Google and rival companies, fragmenting the single market" (http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/imported/commission-to-present-eu-d...).

Commissioner Reding's plans are supposed to be published on 7 October 2009. The Commission, reportedly, intends to present its findings from a consultation on how the register or registries should work to national governments and the European Parliament by the end of 2009, and to present draft legislation by the end of March 2010.

ARROW´s mass media coverage

Following the European Commission´s hearing on the Google Settlement, the mass media coverage referred to the ARROW project as the solution for orphan and out of print works through facilitating the clearing of rights for those works. This conclusion reflects the high expectations that many cultural and governmental institutions have placed on the ARROW project.

Orphan and out of print works are big challenges facing the European Heritage digitisation projects, and they play an important role in commercial exploitation on the net as well.

The project members reaffirmed their commitment and willingness to deliver results on time and incorporate the best features possible. The first phase of the project is scheduled to be finished in February of 2010.

ARROW at Frankfurt Supply Chain Seminar

The ARROW approach to rights management in the digital library value chain will be presented by the ARROW Project Coordinator - Piero Attanasio - at the 31st Frankfurt International Supply Chain Seminar, next October the 13th.
The Supply Chain Seminar is one of the most important and attended events for publishing professionals, an will be the perfect showcase for ARROW.

For more information about the programme and to register to the Seminar click here

IDF partners in Europeana

The International DOI Foundation (IDF) has joined the European Commission's Europeana v1.0 Thematic Partner Network. The goal for Europeana is to make European information resources easier to use in an online environment. It will combine multicultural and multilingual environments with technological advances and new business models. This project is the successor network to the EC-funded EDLnet thematic network which created the EDL (European Digital Library) Foundation and the Europeana prototype of 4 million digital items.

IDF will participate in the network to offer technical and infrastructure advice on identifiers, metadata and related issues. Europeana Version 1.0 is being developed and will launch in 2010 with links to over 10 million digital objects.

Bookshelf project contract

Kopinor has made public the contract signed with the National Library of Norway that will allow the digitisation of an important part of the library collection, including a number of copyright protected works. Titles from the 1790s, 1890s and 1990s will be available on the Internet under the signature of this agreement.

You can read the complete English version of the document here.

Extension of the Opt-Out Deadline on the Google Book Search Copyright Settlement

The US Federal Court has extended the "opt-out"/objection deadline from May 5, 2009 to September 4, 2009. The change in the Opt-Out Deadline has caused the Final Fairness Hearing date to be rescheduled, from June 11, 2009 to October 7, 2009. All other dates in the case will remain the same. Read the full press release.

The ARROW Logotype

The ARROW project has been working with a design group to develop a logotype concept that reflects the spirit of this project.

Inspired by the experience of browsing or leafing through objects, the designer said:

“Whether it's browsing through files, books, music or something else, it usually means having multiple layers with some elements in front of others. This feeling of layers is what we wanted to bring into the logo as well.”

The logotype design also integrates the shape of an arrow in the sharp forms of the letter "A."

We are excited to incorporate this visual component as the principle identifying element for the project.

Europeana kicks off

On 2 and 3 April EUROPEANA organised a kick-off meeting at the Dutch National Library in The Hague. All of the project’s six work packages were work shopped by some 100 representatives of EUROPEANA’S partners and projects relevant to the realising of the project, including ARROW. Partners are typically national libraries, archives, museums, audio-visual collections and others that offer similar services to the ones offered by such institutions. These partners will also contribute content to be made accessible via EUROPEANA. Of the at least 100 partners it aims at recruiting during the project period 62 have already signed up.

When it was launched on 20 November last year EUROPEANA was introduced as “Europe’s online library, museum and archive”. Its main business case is to provide online access to individual and institutional users across Europe to intellectual and other works both in and out of copyright. As such it will run services for the European Digital Library (EDL) Foundation which was set up in 2007 with the purpose of providing cross-border and cross domain access to Europe’s cultural heritage.

EUROPEANA does not purport to become a content owner. Rather it aims to develop into a “super-aggregator” offering a platform to users for access to content. Content will be offered through various channels such as via school networks, university portals, sites for visually impaired, library portals, etc. The objective is to reach 10 mill. objects by 2010 and 25 mill. by 2014 and to include works both in and out of print. Already four months after the launch users can access more than 4.5 mill. books, maps, recordings, photographs, films, etc. across the EU Member States and EEA countries. Most of these are, however, works which are out of copyright.

The European Commission envisages granting EUR 25 mill. towards various projects including digitisation and open access to scientific content and the use of the cultural heritage for educational purposes. Member States will also contribute financially. ARROW is a project consortium made up of national libraries, publishers, creators and collective management organisations in text and image based works (RROs) set up to support the European digital libraries project through facilitating interoperability in relation to identifying rights status and clearance of copyright works.

Dutch Landmark Digitisation Agreement

Dutch libraries, archives, and museums have reached an agreement with right holders on the digitisation and accessibility of their heritage collections. The organisations representing the libraries (FOBID) and the right holders (VOI©E) reached agreement within the Digiti©E Committee (Digitisation of Cultural Heritage) that was set up 2008. The agreement is a major breakthrough in the discussion regarding the copyright aspects of digitising collections held by libraries and archives.