OCLC pilots WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry

New service is a cooperative effort to gather copyright status information in one union catalog

By Bob Murphy

OCLC is piloting a new service for libraries that encourages librarians and other interested parties to discover and share information about the copyright status of books.

The WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry is a community working together to build a union catalog of copyright evidence based on WorldCat, which contains more than 100 million bibliographic records describing items held in thousands of libraries worldwide. In addition to the WorldCat metadata, the Copyright Evidence Registry uses other data contributed by libraries and other organizations.

Digitization projects continue for books in the public domain, but books whose copyright status is unknown are destined to remain in print and on shelves until their status can be determined. The process to determine copyright status can be lengthy and labor-intensive. The goal of the Copyright Evidence Registry is to encourage a cooperative environment to discover, create and share copyright evidence through a collaboratively created and maintained database, eliminating duplicate efforts using the same cooperative model that built WorldCat.

“Building and maintaining a registry of copyright evidence is critical to support the promise of mass digitization projects,” said Catherine Tierney, Associate University Librarian for Technical Services, Stanford University. “OCLC can take on a crucial role in this kind of cooperative activity.”

The Copyright Evidence Registry six-month pilot was launched July 1 to test the concept and functionality. Users can search the Copyright Evidence Registry to find information about a book, learn what others have said about its copyright status, and share what they know.

During a later stage of the pilot, OCLC will add a feature enabling pilot libraries to create and run automated copyright rules conforming to standards they define for determining copyright status.

The rules will help libraries analyze the information available in the Copyright Evidence Registry and form their own conclusions about copyright status.

“The Copyright Evidence Registry builds on the WorldCat cooperative model envisioned by OCLC founder Frederick Kilgour,” said Chip Nilges, OCLC Vice President, Business Development.“OCLC, and its network of libraries and librarians, is uniquely positioned to take a leadership role in this cooperative effort to build a database of copyright status information for all to share.”

The WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry Beta can be accessed at the OCLC Web site. Catalogers should feel free to use their OCLC Connexion cataloging authorizations to log in. Others are welcome to create or use their current WorldCat.org authorizations.

OCLC is encouraging feedback from the library community on the Web site.

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