{"id":888,"date":"2007-01-22T10:21:05","date_gmt":"2007-01-22T10:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"\/ifbookblog\/?p=888"},"modified":"2007-01-22T10:21:05","modified_gmt":"2007-01-22T10:21:05","slug":"national_archives_sell_out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/2007\/01\/22\/national_archives_sell_out\/","title":{"rendered":"national archives sell out"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This falls into the category of deeply worrying. In a move reminiscent of last year&#8217;s shady Smithsonian-Showtime <a href=\"\/blog\/archives\/2006\/04\/corporate_creep.html\">deal<\/a>, the U.S. National Archives has signed an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.archives.gov\/press\/press-releases\/2007\/nr07-41.html\">agreement<\/a> with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.footnote.com\/nara.php\">Footnote.com<\/a> to digitize millions of public domain historical records &#8212; stuff ranging from the papers of the Continental Congress to Matthew B. Brady&#8217;s Civil War photographs &#8212; and to make them available through a commercial website. They say the arrangement is non-exclusive but it&#8217;s hard to see how this is anything but a terrible deal.<br \/>\nHere&#8217;s a picture of the paywall:<br \/>\n<center><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"nationalarchivespaywall.jpg\" src=\"\/blog\/archives\/nationalarchivespaywall.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"345\" \/><\/center><br \/>\nDan Cohen has a good <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dancohen.org\/blog\/posts\/national_archives_footnote_agreement\">run-down<\/a> of why this should set off alarm bells for historians (thanks, Bowerbird, for the <a href=\"\/blog\/archives\/2006\/04\/corporate_creep.html#c64437\">tip<\/a>). Peter Suber has: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.earlham.edu\/~peters\/fos\/2007_01_14_fosblogarchive.html#116924255496730320\">the open access take<\/a>: &#8220;The new Democratic Congress should look into this problem.  It shouldn&#8217;t try to undo the Footnote deal, which is better than nothing for readers who can&#8217;t get to Washington.  But it should try to swing a better deal, perhaps even funding the digitization and OA directly.&#8221; <strike>Absolutely.<\/strike> <b>(Actually, they <i>should<\/i> undo it. Scrap it. Wipe it out.)<\/b> Digitization should not become synonymous with privatization.<br \/>\nElsewhere in mergers and acquisitions, the University of Texas Austin is the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/intl\/en\/press\/annc\/austin_books.html\">newest partner<\/a> in the Google library project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This falls into the category of deeply worrying. In a move reminiscent of last year&#8217;s shady Smithsonian-Showtime deal, the U.S. National Archives has signed an agreement with Footnote.com to digitize millions of public domain historical records &#8212; stuff ranging from the papers of the Continental Congress to Matthew B. Brady&#8217;s Civil War photographs &#8212; and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[498,755,1059,1062,1366],"tags":[2635],"class_list":["post-888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digitization","category-google","category-libraries","category-library","category-open_access","tag-library-libraries-open_access-digitization-google"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}