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science and the treasures of Europe, as the person able to go
to the library or museum in the big cities. The digital shift has
changed our ability to participate and share. It has lowered
the costs and removed the barriers. This has got to be good.
Europeana gives access to material wherever you are in Eu-
rope, or indeed the world, and it is leading to some great
collaborations in education, tourism and research. It permits
work that was not possible fve years ago. However, this shift
also redefnes who the user is and the networks that need to
be mobilised to make use of this cultural fuel.
Europeana is shifting from a portal to a platform to facilitate
its use by many more communities of users. The user of Euro-
peana material can be one step removed from the Europeana
website itself. They could be browsing a special interest site
such as Inventing Europe but using the material that is collat-
ed and enriched by Europeana, through the Europeana API.
New educational games are taking the material that has been
assembled to show history or geography or culture from many
angles. This is serviced by a platform infrastructure and the
demand is growing. The Europeana Network is widening to
include members from the creative industries, tourism, educa-
tion and research. These networks are facilitated by cross-bor-
der access to culture and they are creating new things from
old clothes.
As each country and each provider works towards the stan-
dards set by the Europeana Network, the interoperability of
the material allows it to be distributed into Wikipedia, into
Google Exhibitions or Field Trip, into school sites or tourism
applications the world over, placing the material of our cul-
tural and scientifc heritage institutions where the user is and
where they wish to use it.
However, this is where the difculties of cross-border access
come to the fore. The usability of the site or even its API is
hindered by the very fact that it aims to be cross-border. The
language barrier and issues to do with rights keep us within
the borders of a single country. Multilingualism for metadata
remains difcult and very few experiments to date have result-
ed in scalable solutions covering all the European languages.
This means that the problems of making the material work
in educational contexts or so that each of us might fnd and
retrieve objects of interest in our own language have yet to be
solved comprehensively. Rights cause another such border bar-
rier – an item cleared of rights in one territory does not mean
it can be accessed in another, as stated in the The New Re-
naissance report of 2011: “The European Commission should
consider ways and means to eliminate the diferences in the
rights status of digitised material between the Member States
in a context where cross-border access and use is the norm.”
Hopefully some progress towards this is being made with the
Copyright Reform Review. Solutions to these challenges lie in
the power of the network as well as technology. Crowd-sourc-
ing for multilingual translation has overcome much of the
problem for Wikipedia. We should apply it to overcoming the
problems facing Europeana as well as implementing the tech-
nical solutions. Equally, a revision of current copyright law to
bring it in line with the 21st century user expectations means
addressing the issues relating to cross-border access. Again, the
Europeana Network can play a strong role in changing the
status quo. It has started with our creation, as the Europeana
Network, of a consensual answer across libraries, museums
and archives to the Copyright Reform questionnaire, high-
lighting the issues the cultural and scientifc institutions face.
Europeana is not a piece of technology, it is the result of
many people working together to create cross-border access.
Between us, we have a long way to go but without the Net-
work we would be the poorer as our cultural and scientifc
heritage would be geo-locked in silos. Without the Network,
we would not have been able to promote the easy ability to see
an argument from many sides or to bring together paintings
in a collection or to mine the texts of newspapers for an un-
derstanding of relative importance of an event to our diferent
nations. It is only with the Network that we can work together
on things like digitisation, standardisation and rights labelling.
“Europeana connects Europe” is one of the stated impacts
Europeana wishes to show. With the Digital Service Infra-
structure, this becomes technically true but the real con-
nection comes from the people doing the work to make it
happen and that is the Europeana Network. Covering 32
European countries ofcially, with links to at least 30 more
throughout the world, the Europeana Network is growing in
strength all the time.
DR. JILL COUSINS is the Executive Director of the Europeana
Foundation, responsible for Europeana.eu and Director of The Euro-
pean Library. She is on the Board of Globethics and advises on the
development of other digital libraries.
BREMST DAS UR-
HEBERRECHT DIGITALE
BIBLIOTHEKEN AUS?
Gibt es ein Anrecht auf ein digitales Pfichtexemplar von allem für alle?
Treten kostenlose digitale Zugangsmöglichkeiten öffentlicher Bibliothe-
ken in Konkurrenz zu kostenpfichtigen Angeboten der Rechteinhaber?
Wie könnte ein fairer Interessenausgleich aussehen?
Antworten von
DR. MARTIN SCHAEFER
Liegt es nicht in jedermanns Interesse, das kulturelle Ge-
dächtnis Europas umfassend digital zu sichern, zu erschlie-
ßen und öfentlich zugänglich zu machen? Ist es nicht
regelrecht unanständig, sich einem solchen Interesse zu ver-
schließen oder auch nur in den Weg zu stellen? Kaum je war
das Thema so aktuell wie heute: Was sollen Bibliotheken
und Archive dürfen, ohne etwaige Rechteinhaber zu fragen
und vor allem: Was sollen die Nutzer dürfen?
Während in Europa die Europeana und in Deutschland
die Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek immer wieder auf urhe-
berrechtliche Schwierigkeiten stoßen, wenn es um Publi-
kationen geht, die jünger als um die 120 Jahre sind (die
urheberrechtliche Schutzfrist für Werke beträgt 70 Jahre
nach dem Tod des Urhebers), wird nun ofenbar in den
USA der Handstreich des kommerziellen Rivalen Google
mit seinem Book Project im Nachhinein gerechtfertigt und
von der Rechtsprechung „durchgewunken“. Judge Chin
(Southern District of New York) hat im Streit der Autoren
gegen Google zum Google Book Settlement geurteilt, die
systematische Digitalisierung, die Recherche und Anzeige
von „Snippets“ falle unter das Fair-Use-Prinzip, also die in
den USA geltende Generalausnahme vom Verbotsrecht der
Rechteinhaber. Kein Wunder, dass die EU-Kommission in
ihrer Konsultation von Ende 2013, für welche die Äuße-
rungsfrist gerade erst im Februar abgelaufen ist, dem Thema
„Access to Content in Libraries and Archives“ immerhin 13
von 80 Fragen widmete in einem Dokument, das vielleicht
die Grundlage für die künftige EU-Urheberrechtspolitik wer-
den könnte. Auch den deutschen Gesetzgeber beschäftigen
ähnliche Themen: Erst kürzlich ist die deutsche Umsetzung
der EU-Vorgaben zu den verwaisten Werken (§ 61-61c Urhe-
berrechtsgesetz) in Kraft getreten und im April kommt die
deutsche Spezialregelung zu den vergrifenen Werken hinzu
(§§ 13d, 13e Urheberrechtswahrnehmungsgesetz).
Immer lauter wird der Ruf nach weiteren Ausnahmen, im-
mer häufger „das Urheberrecht“ als Hindernis dargestellt,
das dem Aufbau öfentlicher digitaler Bibliotheken, Archi-
ve und Sammlungen im Wege stehe. In Teilen der Gesell-
schaft ist dieses Rechtsgebiet geradezu dämonisiert worden,
werden die Inhaber solcher Schutzrechte beschuldigt, sich
gleichsam als Usurpatoren zwischen die Kreativen und ihr
Publikum zu drängen, um beide auszubeuten.
So leicht sollte man es sich nicht machen. Es ist sicher kein
Zufall, dass gerade die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, die ja
von allen Verlagen und Tonträgerherstellern von Gesetzes
wegen mit Pfichtstücken beliefert wird, besonders sensibel
und diferenziert mit dem Thema Urheberrecht umgeht.
g