Derclaye, Estelle --- "Conclusion" [2010] ELECD 795; in Derclaye, Estelle (ed), "Copyright and Cultural Heritage" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: Copyright and Cultural Heritage

Editor(s): Derclaye, Estelle

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849800044

Section Title: Conclusion

Author(s): Derclaye, Estelle

Number of pages: 10

Extract:

Conclusion
Estelle Derclaye

In the not so distant past, the role of libraries, archives and museums
was to allow people to come and see their collections physically and to
preserve them for the public to be able to do that. But now in the twenty-
first century, people understandably (also) wish to access cultural heritage
from their computer.1 And we should see this as an intrinsically good thing
as it means people have a growing appetite to learn about their culture
and history. Granting more access to cultural heritage can only increase
knowledge and, with it, understanding among people.
What to draw from the reflections made in this book? Is a global digital
database of cultural heritage possible? Yes and as we saw, there are already
initiatives in this respect. First, we do not need only a register, that is, a
list of information about works, but a full-blown database, a repository of
works. It goes without saying that it must be as comprehensive as possible,
as already pointed out in the introduction. Thus it has to go further than
books, so further than Google Book Search and similar projects and be
more like the World's Digital Library or Europeana in terms of breadth.
As Tanya Aplin rightly says at the beginning of her chapter, the challenges
are financial, organizational, technical and legal. The book mainly focused
on the legal challenges. Let us say a bit more about the other challenges
before recapitulating and adding further comments ...