Category Archives: oa.loc

New open access resources from Library of Congress – News – Illinois State

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“The librarians at LoC have hit the ground running in 2023, having added historical recordings, books, and datasets to their online collections. These include 58 new recordings to the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature from the 1960s-1980s, and LandScan GIS datasets for Ukraine and Russia that include population density. The library also added over 100 Open Access ebooks and German language newspapers published in Washington, D.C.

Even when online materials are Open Access, they still require software to be viewed. In February, LoC announced the creation of an EPUB reader for its ebooks. This viewer allows readers to access over 6,000 OA ebooks on the website without downloading a PDF and provides an improved interface for readers.

LoC is also planning to actively add materials to its online collections in the future and has outlined a digitization strategy for 2023-2027. With over 9 million items already digitized, this program offers five guiding principles to “expand, optimize, and centralize its collections digitization program to significantly expand access to users across the country to rare, distinctive, and unique collection materials which can be made openly available online and use digitization as a core method for preservation reformatting of rights restricted collection materials.” This ongoing commitment to Open Access materials on the part of LoC is exciting for Milner Library and its patrons.

While LoC does not set policy for public or university libraries, its practices can often indicate trends that other libraries will be inclined follow. Milner Library staff members are always happy to discuss their work with patrons. If you have questions or would like to make your materials more readily available, it is often possible to place pre-prints or even published articles and other materials in Milner’s institutional repository ISU ReD….”

Library of Congress Digitization Strategy: 2023-2027 | The Signal

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“The Library of Congress has a new Digitization Strategy for its collections. As we did for the Library’s Digital Collections Strategy, we are excited to share this overview of it with readers of The Signal blog. We get a lot of questions about what we digitize and why, and hopefully this provides a little bit of insight into our institutional plans and priorities.

The Library has expanded the amount and throughput of our digitization efforts dramatically over the past three decades. In 2020 we finished digitizing the last of our presidential papers – all of the personal papers of the presidents from George Washington to Calvin Coolidge are now available to anyone with an internet connection. In 2021, we opened a new Digital Scan Center, which significantly increased digital image production capabilities and postproduction processes. So far, we have digitized more than nine million items in our collections, with particular strengths in newspaper issues, manuscripts, and pictorial materials.

Over the next five years, the Library will expand, optimize, and centralize its collections digitization program to significantly expand access to users across the country to rare, distinctive, and unique collection materials which can be made openly available online and use digitization as a core method for preservation reformatting of rights restricted collection materials. Below are the five guiding strategic objectives for this work….”

Our Digital History Is at Risk – Internet Archive Blogs

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“Publishers and platforms continue to play an important role in bringing the work of creators to market, and sometimes assist in the preservation task. But companies close, and change hands, and their commercial interests can cut against preservation and other important public benefits. 

Traditionally, libraries and archives filled this gap. But in the digital world, law and technology make their job increasingly difficult. For example, while a library could always simply buy a physical book on the open market in order to preserve it on their shelves, many publishers and platforms try to stop libraries from preserving information digitally. They may even use technical and legal measures to prevent libraries from doing so. While we strongly believe that fair use law enables libraries to perform traditional functions like preservation and lending in the digital environment, many publishers disagree, going so far as to sue libraries to stop them from doing so. 

We should not accept this state of affairs. Free societies need access to history, unaltered by changing corporate or political interests. This is the role that libraries have played and need to keep playing. This brings us back to Twitter….”

Introducing the new EPUB reader for e-books at the Library of Congress | The Signal

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“The Open Access Books Collection on loc.gov includes approximately 6,000 contemporary open access e-books covering a wide range of subjects, including history, music, poetry, technology, and works of fiction. All books in this collection were published under open access licenses, meaning the e-books are available to use and reuse according to the terms of the licenses. Users can access the e-books in the Open Access Books Collection by reading directly online in a browser or downloading the book as a PDF or EPUB file.

When we first made open access e-books available on loc.gov, titles were available for download in either PDF or EPUB format, but PDF was the only one available for reading directly on the website; loc.gov did not support viewing EPUBs in the browser and they were only available for download. As many books were available in both formats or in PDF only, this ensured most titles were viewable directly on the website. However, we recognized an increase in titles available in EPUB only so we are happy to share the news that an EPUB viewer was launched on loc.gov. The viewer makes EPUBs available for reading on loc.gov and provides a richer interface for users….”

Introducing the new EPUB reader for e-books at the Library of Congress | The Signal

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“The Open Access Books Collection on loc.gov includes approximately 6,000 contemporary open access e-books covering a wide range of subjects, including history, music, poetry, technology, and works of fiction. All books in this collection were published under open access licenses, meaning the e-books are available to use and reuse according to the terms of the licenses. Users can access the e-books in the Open Access Books Collection by reading directly online in a browser or downloading the book as a PDF or EPUB file.

When we first made open access e-books available on loc.gov, titles were available for download in either PDF or EPUB format, but PDF was the only one available for reading directly on the website; loc.gov did not support viewing EPUBs in the browser and they were only available for download. As many books were available in both formats or in PDF only, this ensured most titles were viewable directly on the website. However, we recognized an increase in titles available in EPUB only so we are happy to share the news that an EPUB viewer was launched on loc.gov. The viewer makes EPUBs available for reading on loc.gov and provides a richer interface for users….”

About this Collection  |  Copyright Historical Record Books Collection, 1870-1977 (Preview)  |  Digital Collections  |  Library of Congress

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“The U.S. Copyright Office is governed by Title 17 of the United States Code, which requires the Register of Copyrights to maintain and provide public access to copyright records. This collection is a preview of a digitized version of the U.S. Copyright Office’s historical record books. The collection contains images of copyright applications and other records bound in books dating from 1870 to 1977. The collection offers a historically-important snapshot of the culture of the United States, primarily relating to copyrightable expression, authorship, and copyright ownership.

This collection is a digital preview of the physical collection and should not be relied on for legal matters.  To access the official public records in the copyright historical record books, visit the Copyright Office Public Records Reading Room. In the future, as part of its overall modernization efforts, the Copyright Office plans to incorporate digitized, searchable versions of the official historical record books into the Office’s Copyright Public Record System (CPRS), which is currently in a public pilot.

The collection will be made available online starting with the most recent volumes from 1977, proceeding through the Copyright Office’s internal administrative classification system in reverse chronological order. Images of record books will be added to this collection as they are digitized….”

Copyright Historical Record Books Collection Available Online | Library of Congress

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“The first 500 record books in the digitized Copyright Historical Record Books Collection are now available online. This collection is a preview of digitized historical record books that the Copyright Office plans to add to its Copyright Public Record System. This first release is part of a multi-year digitization project and includes applications for books registered with the Office from 1969 to 1977. The collection is being digitized in reverse chronological order.

The entire Historical Record Books Collection includes 26,278 bound volumes (over 26 million pages) of registration, renewal, assignment, notice of use of musical compositions, and patent records from 1870 to 1977. The Office is prioritizing digitizing records for works that are still under copyright protection. This project is part of a larger initiative within the Copyright Office to digitize and provide access to these public records not previously available online. Through digitization, the Office is also preserving these important historical and cultural records for future research. To find a specific registration record in the online collection, users will need to find the record book volume with the corresponding class and year. If the user knows, for example, the registration number they are seeking, the range of numbers located in each volume can be found in the collection item title. The documents within the historical record books are also indexed in the Copyright Card Catalog and available online in Virtual Card Catalog, and limited groups are listed in the Catalog of Copyright Entries. In the future, the Office plans to develop metadata to allow users to search by fields, such as registration number, title, and claimant via the Copyright Public Records System….”

[2112.02471] Grappling with the Scale of Born-Digital Government Publications: Toward Pipelines for Processing and Searching Millions of PDFs

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Abstract:  Official government publications are key sources for understanding the history of societies. Web publishing has fundamentally changed the scale and processes by which governments produce and disseminate information. Significantly, a range of web archiving programs have captured massive troves of government publications. For example, hundreds of millions of unique U.S. Government documents posted to the web in PDF form have been archived by libraries to date. Yet, these PDFs remain largely unutilized and understudied in part due to the challenges surrounding the development of scalable pipelines for searching and analyzing them. This paper utilizes a Library of Congress dataset of 1,000 government PDFs in order to offer initial approaches for searching and analyzing these PDFs at scale. In addition to demonstrating the utility of PDF metadata, this paper offers computationally-efficient machine learning approaches to search and discovery that utilize the PDFs’ textual and visual features as well. We conclude by detailing how these methods can be operationalized at scale in order to support systems for navigating millions of PDFs.

 

[2112.02471] Grappling with the Scale of Born-Digital Government Publications: Toward Pipelines for Processing and Searching Millions of PDFs

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Abstract:  Official government publications are key sources for understanding the history of societies. Web publishing has fundamentally changed the scale and processes by which governments produce and disseminate information. Significantly, a range of web archiving programs have captured massive troves of government publications. For example, hundreds of millions of unique U.S. Government documents posted to the web in PDF form have been archived by libraries to date. Yet, these PDFs remain largely unutilized and understudied in part due to the challenges surrounding the development of scalable pipelines for searching and analyzing them. This paper utilizes a Library of Congress dataset of 1,000 government PDFs in order to offer initial approaches for searching and analyzing these PDFs at scale. In addition to demonstrating the utility of PDF metadata, this paper offers computationally-efficient machine learning approaches to search and discovery that utilize the PDFs’ textual and visual features as well. We conclude by detailing how these methods can be operationalized at scale in order to support systems for navigating millions of PDFs.

 

About this Collection  |  Open Access Books  |  Digital Collections  |  Library of Congress

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“This is a growing online collection of contemporary open access e-books. All of these books have been made available for download on the Library’s website in keeping with the intent of their creators and publishers, which chose to publish these works under open access licenses to allow the broadest possible access and reuse. All books added to the collection go through a selection process whereby subject matter experts determine which works are in scope based on the Library’s Collections Policy Statements. Although the Library of Congress holds print copies of some open access books received through multiple routine acquisition streams, these openly licensed works can be made much more broadly accessible in their digital form. By collecting the e-books in addition to the print books, the Library commits to preserving the digital content and providing lasting access to this content.

The Library of Congress defines Open Digital Content as the following:

any digital material that is licensed for free and open use and redistribution, such as works under a Creative Commons (CC) license,
material that is not protected by any country’s copyright law, such as U.S. government documents and public domain content,
and copyrighted content that is available at no cost for which the Library has secured permission from the content owner to redistribute the content openly.”

[Open letter to two members of Congress in support of OA for CRS reports]

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“Thank you for your ongoing efforts to provide oversight and direction to the Library of Congress and for your service on the oldest continuing joint committee of the U.S. Congress. We respectfully request that you direct the Congressional Research Service to publish all non-confidential CRS Reports online….

Congress has endorsed public availability of non-confidential CRS Reports, as have former CRS employees, civil society, and academics. Indeed, long standing congressional policy 5 6 7 has allowed Members and committees to distribute CRS products to the public over the decades and now directs the CRS to prospectively make the reports publicly available. “Non-current CRS reports,” i.e., reports not published on CRS’s internal website after the 2018 Appropriations law’s enactment date, still have relevance for members of Congress, staff, and the public. These reports provide context for issues under deliberation and illuminate choices made by members of Congress concerning policy questions that still are relevant today. CRS Reports are often cited in significant historical works of scholarship. In fact, the continued relevance of non-current CRS Reports is why, in part, CRS maintains a digitized archive of some reports for use by CRS employees that often are shared with congressional staff….

Congressional Research Service Reports enrich the legislative process and help inform public debate. We appreciate your attention to addressing public availability of non-current CRS Reports and publication of all non-confidential CRS Reports in more flexible formats….” 

Law Library of Congress and Government Publishing Office Digitize Records of Congress, Release First Selected Volumes Online | Library of Congress

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“The Law Library of Congress, in collaboration with the U.S. Government Publishing Office, has digitized 287 volumes of the United States Congressional Serial Set and made them available on the Library’s website.

The release is part of a decade-long partnership to digitize more than 15,000 volumes of the U.S. Congressional Serial Set — the reports and documents of the House and Senate, including proposed legislation, committee reports and issues under investigation — dating back to the first volume published in 1817. The Law Library and GPO began this multi-year digitization effort two years ago….”

Library of Congress Releases Data for Free Download and Discovery | Library of Congress

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“The Library of Congress announced today its third release of records in its online catalog for free bulk download for research and discovery. The release supports the Library’s effort to continuously expand open access to its vast collections.

This MARC (Machine Readable Cataloging Records) release surpasses previous releases and adds more than 200,000 new records to the existing 25 million record database.

Releases of MARC data uniquely exhibit the Library’s mission. They enable researchers to engage with the unparalleled and rich source metadata at the Library, inspire discovery of Library collections and provide resources to inform future discovery within the Library and data communities….”

Library of Congress and Harvard University Form Historic Collaboration on Islamic Law Collections | Library of Congress

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“The Library of Congress and Harvard Law School have initiated an unprecedented, multifaceted joint collaboration to identify, select and assess the copyright status of materials focusing on national legal gazettes.

The effort, initially set for three years, will coordinate access to, knowledge-sharing, and legal analysis of Library of Congress’ collections related to Islamic law, including national legal gazettes, manuscripts and other materials. It will also improve a reader or researcher’s ability to search those sources, using new data science tools and faceted searches tailored to Islamic collections. The joint objective is to expand scholarly analysis of and greater public access to relevant legal materials….”

Update: 1201 Exemption to Enable Text and Data Mining Research | Authors Alliance

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“Authors Alliance, joined by the Library Copyright Alliance and the American Association of University Professors, is petitioning the Copyright Office for a new three-year exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) as part of the Copyright Office’s eighth triennial rulemaking process. If granted, our proposed exemption would allow researchers to bypass technical protection measures (“TPMs”) in order to conduct text and data mining (“TDM”) research on literary works that are distributed electronically and motion pictures. Recently, we met with representatives from the U.S. Copyright Office to discuss the proposed exemption, focusing on the circumstances in which access to corpus content is necessary for verifying algorithmic findings and ways to address security concerns without undermining the goal of the exemption….”