CEE/Newsletter/October 2017/Contents/Russia report
Russian report: Wikimedia RU issued a manual for librarians
[edit]- By Dmitry Rozhkov
- Translated by Kaarel Vaidla
The publication contains recommendations on the use of open licenses and the publication of works as to be openly accessible.
The manual was prepared within the framework of the project of Resource Center named "Open Library", the main purpose of which is to organize the legal and methodological support for libraries to open access to the public domain. At present, many works of science and culture can not be found on the Internet, but publications that have already expired copyright protection can and should be digitized, and libraries can play a leading role in this process.
The manual provides details about the project "Open Library" and the specifics of the work of libraries with electronic content, including various technical and legal issues. The first section of the manual - "Overview of Practices" - tells about the experience of the largest libraries in the world and in Russia. Among other things, the manual describes the process of creating digital collections in the US, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries. Further, the authors of the manual analyze the development of international projects such as Europeana, which cooperates with 3000 European archives, libraries and museums, and provides access to more than 50 million works; Gutenberg, the world's first distributor of free e-books and documents; Google Books, which had to be frozen after the interference of copyright holders; HathiTrust Digital Library, which has become the world's largest digital repository of research libraries, digitized books of Google Books, independent online archives and local cultural institutions; as well as Open eBooks and Archive.org.
Also an overview of the current situation of open access to electronic resources in Russia is provid, detailing on the experience of the Russian State Library and National Electronic Library, Presidential Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Russian National Library, CyberLeninka, Maxim Moshkov's Libraries, Chronos Library.
The second chapter of the manual - "Legal Basis" - is devoted to the problems connected with the transfer of library funds into a new form. The manual analyzes in detail the norms of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation and advises libraries on the use of open licenses and the publication of works in open access, examines the rules of the Law on Library Activity and conflicts of copyright and technological issues. Briefly the Law on objects of cultural heritage and other standard regulations is presented in "Fundamentals of the legislation of the Russian Federation on culture". Special attention is paid to the algorithm for determining the timing of the transition of works to the legal regime of public domain in Russia.
The publication is available on the project's website and on Wikimedia Commons on terms of an open license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, i.e. it can be freely used and distributed.
The Resource Center Open Library project is being implemented by Wikimedia RU using the grant from the President of the Russian Federation for the development of civil society provided by the Presidential Fund.