---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>
Date: 2009/7/17
Subject: NPG issue - other interested parties
To: Open Rights Group open discussion list
<org-discuss(a)lists.openrightsgroup.org>
Apposite comment on this issue on my blog - other QANGOs that try to
own the public domain:
http://davidgerard.co.uk/notes/2009/07/13/has-anyone-been-in-touch-with-the…
===
Roger Pearse Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Mr Webb,
Your comments on the British Library are very apposite, if a little
misconceived.
The British Library has refused, solidly, for 10 years, to my certain
knowledge, to digitise its collection of medieval manuscripts. It also
refuses to allow almost anyone to access them. Since it is based in
London, even people like myself who DO have clearance cannot in fact
go there very often. I asked them to digitise 3 manuscripts, each of
100 pages. I could photograph them in a day. They are quite sturdy.
They refused to do so. I offered to photograph them. They refused.
They agreed to photograph them only if I paid them £8,000. That’s £20
per click of the camera. And they wouldn’t put them online then. They
offered to allow ME to put them online, so long as I paid them £500 a
year for the rest of my life.
Yet the manuscripts have never been photographed at all! So, as you
remark, some fool could go in and steal pages. But the BL view is
better that, than that the images should appear on the web.
Preservation means photography, and the creation of many copies of the
images. To obstruct this is criminal.
So why does the BL do this? Because they are making money by selling
crude black-and-white (not even monochrome) images to scholars trying
to make use of the texts at massive prices (hundreds of pounds).
This seems to be the same motive as the NPG. Short-term greed, and the
hell with the public interest.
===
- d.