Taxacom: old journals
Kalfatovic, Martin
KalfatovicM at si.edu
Mon Nov 28 11:18:47 CST 2022
2022
Hi All, all the info so far is on target.
I'll respond to Rod's comment about diminish content, yes, the past 2+ years have seen new BHL content plummet. That has mostly been a factor of digitization efforts slowing (or stopping) at some of our big partners. Example: Smithsonian went from 335K pages in 2019 to 19k pages in 2021, 7K pages 2022 (year to date).
BHL remains an active program of the Smithsonian with generous support. BHL also relies on it's 41+ global members and affiliates for funding that primarily support technical development as well as digitization of their collections.
BHL roughly adheres to US Copyright. When BHL began, the cut-off date was pre-1923 publications. The "wall" has been moving forward for the past few years, so as of now, January 1, 1927 is the cutoff date.
As others noted, BHL has actively sought permission from copyright holders for permission to make available (with the most liberal licensing) content that is (ostensibly) protected by copyright. The terms of each agreement varies, so there may be other limitations.
BHL works with the permissions holder and the BHL partner libraries that hold the physical copies to digitize additional content as the copyright wall moves forward. The past 2+ years have seen many partners stop or slow down digitization and things are only now getting started up again at scale. Which is to say, we're behind.
To a great extent, it is global copyright law and not necessarily funding that is the problem with moving forward with the vast amounts of material out there. For legal reasons, BHL is not able to be as aggressive in risk management of materials that are likely (legally) covered by legitimate intellectual property claims. <sad face>.
Martin
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Martin R. Kalfatovic (he/him/his)
Associate Director, Digital Programs and Initiatives Division || Program Director, Biodiversity Heritage Library
Smithsonian Libraries and Archives
10th Street & Constitution Ave., NW | Room 29E
MRC 154 PO Box 37012
Washington, DC 20013-7012
email: kalfatovicm at si.edu<mailto:kalfatovicm at si.edu>
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Help save trees by printing only what you need.
From: Roderic Page <Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk>
Sent: Monday, November 28, 2022 11:56 AM
To: taxacom at lists.ku.edu
Cc: david.redei at gmail.com; Kalfatovic, Martin <kalfatovicm at si.edu>
Subject: Re: Taxacom: old journals
External Email - Exercise Caution
I can't speak for BHL, although I do collaborate with the project (e.g., https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbiostor.org%2F&data%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C7ed17a28c56845c761d208dad1649dab%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638052527319184408%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=GN5ca0tuFeTfPKcIAs5z7DBrth33tqgIRlrDQ5z7%2F10%3D&reserved=0<https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbiostor.org%2F&data%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C7ed17a28c56845c761d208dad1649dab%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638052527319184408%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=GN5ca0tuFeTfPKcIAs5z7DBrth33tqgIRlrDQ5z7%2F10%3D&reserved=0> )
Yes, the original cut off was influenced by US copyright, which moves forward a year at a time. In an ideal world this would automatically trigger additional scanning across the BHL member libraries, but that requires that those libraries have the resources to do this.
Note that there is BHL content that is much more recent, in some cases only a few months old. However, this depends on copyright holders being (a) willing to make their content available, and (b) BHL having the resources to scan and/or process that content.
My sense is that BHL's resources are increasingly limited, and the amount of new content being added to BHL (particularly, content related to taxonomy) has been diminishing recently. There are a few happy exceptions: a lot of recent Australian journals are being added, and most Mus?um National d'Histoire Naturelle journals are in BHL.
There is a lot of taxonomic literature that has been digitised but which is not in BHL. I've been trying to keep track of some of this, e.g. https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Farchive.org%2Fdetails%2Ftaxonomyarchive%3F%26sort%3D-addeddate%26page%3D1&data%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C7ed17a28c56845c761d208dad1649dab%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638052527319184408%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=xRGOsPNtZ33CgpR5InjqXISp6UrmjwkyCInPSrg20ZM%3D&reserved=0<https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Farchive.org%2Fdetails%2Ftaxonomyarchive%3F%26sort%3D-addeddate%26page%3D1&data%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C7ed17a28c56845c761d208dad1649dab%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638052527319184408%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=xRGOsPNtZ33CgpR5InjqXISp6UrmjwkyCInPSrg20ZM%3D&reserved=0> which barely scratches the surface.
Ultimately, as with most things, it comes down to resources (AKA funding).
Rod
On 28 Nov 2022 at 16:37 +0000, David Redei via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu<mailto:taxacom at lists.ku.edu>>, wrote:
As Biodiversity Heritage Library was just mentioned, I take the
opportunity to pick up a related topic I have wanted to ask since ages.
It is apparent that on BHL the vast majority of periodicals are available
up to about the early 1920's only. I always suspected (but I might be in
error, if so please correct me) that this is because the platform started
not much before 2010, and due to copyright reasons they only uploaded the
volumes up to 90 years before the (that-time) present. But I always
expected that as time passes, further volumes and issues will be gradually
uploaded. Now we are well after 2020, so volumes up to the early 1930's
would legally be possible to be made available, still it apparently does
not happen, all titles which over a decade ago were uploaded up to the
early 1920's are still frozen at the very same year, without any subsequent
addition.
Does anyone know what the policy of this project is? Will there be any
addition later, or ten years ago they just uploaded the volumes up to 1920
and only those will be available forever, the project has been finished?
With best regards, David Redei
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