[LIS-Forum] Writings of great Indians on an open access portal

sathya sathya at informindia.co.in
Mon May 12 12:19:38 IST 2008


Arun 
 
The simple solution lies in reducing the age of  copyright for all literary
works from the current 75 years or so to a more reasonable level of  say
less than 10 years. In case of  India it is some X number of  years after
the death of  the author!  Even patents have maximum of  14 years for expiry
date (Some countries, I think, have 17 years).  
 
OA champions should indeed focus on getting the law makers attention to the
exceedingly long life for copyright. But any changes in the copyright law at
global level is a bigger battle!  
 
Sathya
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From: Subbiah Arunachalam [mailto:subbiah.arunachalam at gmail.com] 
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Subject: Writings of great Indians on an open access portal


Friends:

In the US, the writings of the founding fathers of the country are being
brought into the public domain. Should we not do the same in India for the
writings of our great leaders (Gandhi, Nehru, Subash Chandra Bose, Patel,
Rajaji, Tagore and a large number of others)? We can do the same for our
great scientists (Srinivasa Ramanujan, J C Bose, S N Bose, M N Saha, K S
Krishnan, H J Bhahba and a number of others; Almost all papers of C V Raman
are already in the RRI archive). 

Best wishes.

Arun

==

Plan
<http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/2008/05/plan-for-oa-to-american-foundi
ng.html> for OA to American Founding Fathers' papers 
National  <http://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2008/nr08-102.html>
Archives Creates Plan for Online Access to Founding Fathers Papers, press
release, May 7, 2008. 

On Tuesday, May 6, 2008, Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein
submitted a report, entitled The Founders Online, to the Committees on
Appropriations of the U.S. Congress. This report is the National Archives
response to concerns raised by the Committees that the complete papers of
America's Founding Fathers are not available online. The Founders Online is
a plan for providing online access, within a reasonable timeframe, to
researchers, students and the general public. The report is available
<http://www.archives.gov/nhprc/publications/founders-report.pdf>
electronically at the National Archives website.

In announcing the completion of the report, Professor Weinstein said, "We
feel this plan would provide scholars and the public access to the best
available versions of the complete papers; it would also protect the
longstanding interests of the publishers and host organizations which along
with the Federal government have invested great resources in the past four
decades. Most importantly, it would build a monument to the Founders of our
nation in their own words."

The National Archives received suggestions from the editors of the papers of
John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George
Washington, university publishers, and others in crafting a blueprint for
providing access to the already completed print editions and the raw
materials for the editions to come. If carried out, the plan ensures that
interested readers worldwide can see the work in progress with the already
complete editions accompanied by transcriptions of the papers yet to be
published. To hasten the transition process, the National Historical
Publications and Records Commission plans to invest $250,000 as a
demonstration pilot project.

The plan outlines three basic steps that remain:

*	Digitizing the existing 217 volumes and publishing the Papers on a
single website to allow for research and inquiry across America's Founding
Era collections; 

*	Transcribing and otherwise preparing for publishing on the web the
remaining papers (approximately 90,000 documents) and replacing these raw
materials with authoritative annotated versions as these are completed; and 

*	Creating an independent oversight process to ensure that rigorous
performance goals are established and met by the parties carrying out all
aspects of the work.

 
<http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/2008/05/plan-for-oa-to-american-foundi
ng.html> Permanent link to this post Posted by Gavin Baker at 5/10/2008
05:33:00 PM. 


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