"For examples of materials with high merit and difficult rights status, Bruce Hartford of the American Civil Rights Movement website highlighted the sheer impossibility of determining rightsholders for many archival materials: internal documents created by Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s are orphans because SNCC no longer exists. A photograph taken by an unknown prisoner in a Southern jail of another prisoner is an orphan because the copyright is held by the unknown prisoner who took the original photograph. In a similar vein, Rick Prelinger aired a color video, possibly shot by an employee of the War Relocation Authority, of the 1944 release of Japanese-Americans interned at the Jerome War Relocation Center in Arkansas.

This is a crucial point that is rarely noted: orphan status may be most common for materials generated on the margins of society — by people whose names and presence were never recorded, sometimes because of persecution; or by informal or transient organizations, groups, and movements that never had an opportunity to create their own legacy. For this content — which includes some of the most important artifacts that a society is likely to produce, documenting both its struggles and those who speak without a recorded voice — formal interventions are unlikely to make a meaningful difference because there is so little ownership data to work with. In these cases, Fair Use is often the appropriate apparatus."

"Upon the close of the May 1 comment period, it is our intention to begin posting these 73 standards in HTML and begin the process of providing a unified, easy-to-use interface to all public safety standards in the Code of Federal Regulations. It is also our intention to continue this effort to include all standards specifically incorporated by reference in the 50 states. That the law must be available to citizens is a cardinal principle of law in countries such as India and the United Kingdom, and we will expand our efforts to include those jurisdictions as well."

"A patch-based non-local restoration and reconstruction method for preprocessing degraded document images is introduced. The method collects relative data from the whole input image, while the image data are first represented by a content-level descriptor based on patches. This patch-equivalent representation of the input image is then corrected based on similar patches identified using a modified genetic algorithm (GA) resulting in a low computational load. The corrected patch-equivalent is then converted to the output restored image. The fact that the method uses the patches at the content level allows it to incorporate high-level restoration in an objective and self-sufficient way. The method has been applied to several degraded document images, including the DIBCO'09 contest dataset with promising results."

"I've scanned pages of the September 1857 issue of The College Journal of Medical Science, OCRed these to html (to preserve some formatting) with ABBYY FineReader 9, and am converting those html files into LaTeX files.

The latest PDF version (as constructed on my computer) can be downloaded (via "view raw") from http://github.com/Vaguery/collegeJournalOfMedicalScienceSeptember1857/blob/master/work.pdf

A collection of scripts and checklists is coming out of this: scripts to do the heavy lifting translating self-contained HTML to TeX intended to be strung together into a single work, and checklists of small proofreading and hand-formatting tasks that need to be completed on each page.

The individual page TeX files are stitched together and typeset in ./work.tex, using XeLaTeX. Be sure to check the font assignments; I'm using purchased postscript fonts I own."

"Thinning of character images is a big challenge. Removal of strokes or deformities in thinning is a difficult problem.…"

"Hugin has now reached stable state: the software is recommended for general use."

""David Leung in sailor suit, 1911." Platinum print by Fred Holland Day. Another look at the work of this somewhat eccentric photographer."

"Beginning with a historical account of the spectral classification, its refinement through additional criteria is presented. The line strengths and ratios used in two dimensional classifications of each spectral class are described. A parallel classification scheme for metal-poor stars and the standards used for classification are presented. The extension of spectral classification beyond M to L and T and spectroscopic classification criteria relevant to these classes are described. Contemporary methods of classifications based upon different automated approaches are introduced."

"PictureIt is a web-based animation program that gives users the sensation of turning the pages of digitized rare materials that would be otherwise difficult, if not impossible, to view or obtain. Volume 1 of John James Audubon’s Birds of America was selected as the inaugural PictureIt book for a few reasons. Foremost, the eight volume set has special meaning as the first purchase for the Library by the Board of Regents of the University of Michigan. As well, the University of Pittsburgh had already digitized all volumes of the Birds of America set and was willing to share the images with the Library. And finally, the illustrated plates of this set were intricately completed, making them as much art work as scientific work. Volume 1 of Audubon’s Birds of America was also selected for the first PictureIt book because its complex images demonstrate the product’s embedded magnification tool which allows users to get up-close and view the details of each illustration."

"I personally scan the books I bought because I’m tired of thousands of them cluttering up my house, ending up lost at the bottom of a box marked Dishes, getting eaten by bugs, or attacked by acid inherent in the paper. If you don’t like the idea of reading electronic editions of books, stop reading here! Also, if you think format-shifting is intellectual property theft, stop reading here. There are as many reasons people have for scanning books as there are people:…"

"I was recently explaining all this to a colleague. To make my point, we Googled that question. Low and behold, there it was: asked and answered — verbatim — on Yahoo! Answers. How many legs does a fish have? Zero. Apparently Yahoo! Answers also knows the number of legs of a crayfish, rabbit, dog, starfish, mosquito, caterpillar, crab, mealworm, and “about 133,000″ more."

"Faro Measuring System's Laser ScanArm might bring back bad memories of the dentist, but in fact it's another 3D scanning solution--this one mounted to an articulated arm that not only helps you hold it steady, but records the scanner's position in space. Faro's Orlando Perez shoots and captures a mini Lady Liberty:..."

" The higher paranoid scholarship is nothing if not coherent—in fact the paranoid mind is far more coherent than the real world. It is nothing if not scholarly in technique. McCarthy’s 96-page pamphlet, McCarthyism, contains no less than 313 footnote references, and Mr. Welch’s incredible assault on Eisenhower, The Politician, has one hundred pages of bibliography and notes. The entire right-wing movement of our time is a parade of experts, study groups, monographs, footnotes, and bibliographies. Sometimes the right-wing striving for scholarly depth and an inclusive world view has startling consequences: Mr. Welch, for example, has charged that the popularity of Arnold Toynbee’s historical work is the consequence of a plot on the part of Fabians, “Labour party bosses in England,” and various members of the Anglo-American “liberal establishment” to overshadow the much more truthful and illuminating work of Oswald Spengler."

"...Google's snippet view CONTINUES TO BE ONE OF THE MOST MIND-BOGGLINGLY, INFURIATINGLY, AND SUBLIMELY USELESS SEARCH FUNCTIONS IN THE KNOWN GALAXY, AND QUITE POSSIBLY THE UNKNOWN GALAXY AS WELL (INCLUDING REGIONS REACHABLE ONLY BY STABLE WORMHOLES)"

Be sure to look at the background and silhouetted wires in this shot. See the comment, "That's one of the most amazing collections of overhead wires I've ever seen on Shorpy. I'll bet that it has a lot to do with the business on the ground floor of our featured building."

"This is stupid on so many levels that I forced myself to wait a full day before blogging about it so I wouldn’t rant incoherently."

"One person who hands out a lot of leaflets these days is Lynne Price, a local activist known affectionately as “Gobby Lynne”. Yet she gets much of her information about planning proposals, crime and so on from the internet. This illustrates one effect of the digitisation of information. As newspapers weaken and die, most people probably become less informed about local affairs, but a few motivated folk grow extremely knowledgeable. Ms Price will miss the Bedworth Echo, but not as a source of news. It was, she says, a useful way of getting the word out."

"Most of the Lyceum topics were ones that to modern sensibilities would seem unbelievably trite, pedantic, and didactic. It's hard to get into the 19th-century mindset and grasp how anyone could sit through these talks instead of, say, trimming one's toenails. But this was a popular pastime, in a society with no radio, no telephone, no movie theater, no TV. Faced with the absence of those things, I might wander down to the Lyceum hall too, to see what my friends were presenting on."

"In the short run, the Google Book Search settlement will unquestionably bring about greater access to books collected by major research libraries over the years. But it is very worrisome that this agreement, which was negotiated in secret by Google and a few lawyers working for the Authors Guild and AAP (who will, by the way, get up to $45.5 million in fees for their work on the settlement—more than all of the authors combined!), will create two complementary monopolies with exclusive rights over a research corpus of this magnitude. Monopolies are prone to engage in many abuses.
The Book Search agreement is not really a settlement of a dispute over whether scanning books to index them is fair use. It is a major restructuring of the book industry’s future without meaningful government oversight. The market for digitized orphan books could be competitive, but will not be if this settlement is approved as is."

"The Mutopia Project offers sheet music editions of classical music for free download. These are based on editions in the public domain, and include works by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Handel, Mozart, and many others. A team of volunteers are involved in typesetting the music by computer using the LilyPond software. Why not join them?! See the page on how to contribute for more information."

"OAIster is a union catalog of digital resources. We provide access to these digital resources by "harvesting" their descriptive metadata (records) using OAI-PMH (the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting). The Open Archives Initiative is not the same thing as the Open Access movement."

"While it’s fantastic to be able to instantly download an album from iTunes or Amazon.com to your iPod, many classic recordings will never make the jump to a digital store. If your music collection stretches back several decades, odds are you have at least a few beloved analog titles on cassette or vinyl. They need not languish unloved and unheard simply because they’re in an old format. With just a few steps, very little money, and a reasonable amount of time, you can bring those classic recordings into the digital era."

"The resolution passed by your honorable body at your last session ordering the printing of the report of the Board of Public Works in pamphlet form and placing the distribution of the same in the hands of said board I hereby disapprove of, for the following reasons:

Such publication is not warranted by the city charter, which on page 75, section 41, prescribes the manner in which such reports shall be published, namely, in the official newspaper of the city [emphasis added]."

"Distributed Proofreaders is an online community of proofreaders who strive to make Project Gutenberg the repository of the best free electronic books available. At any moment, hundreds of volunteers are working on different phases of saving history, one page at a time. Learn more by visiting www.pgdp.net or our newest site, www.pgdpcanada.net"

"... For some reason, Google has scanned two versions of my book American Sympathy, and its database doesn't seem to know they're the same book. Moreover, it also has a reference to what seems to be a free-standing copy of one of my book's chapters, not yet digitized, which I never published separately. I claimed that, too. And I claimed an "insert" in a scholarly anthology that reprints a journal article that overlaps a great deal with one of the book's chapters. I know for a fact that no one else has any right to that insert. Google's instructions say that if an insert reprints material also published in a book, the author should only claim either the book or the insert, but not both. Well, that makes sense as far as the lump payments go. But if Google is later going to sell ads on webpages or sell downloads, it doesn't make sense...."

"Now we would ask the average book publisher what they see themselves as? We would guess that 'rights manager and owner' wouldn’t be on the tip of most tongues. Some would say that publishing isn’t about books it’s simply about content and rights and understanding the market and channel to it. If we were to look at the trade as a rights trade what would that mean moving forward?

Why do we presume that the physical content will merely morph into the digital. History has surely taught us that media survives but has to adapt to new forms. Fiction is not about books of 75,000 words or 250 pages, its more about telling a good story that captivates, engages and stimulates readers. Why does this have to be any specific length? "

Starting at "Page Segmentation(1)" in particular...

"... Their procedures took the physical object as the unit of reproduction. Because the Barrett copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was collected in the form that it was, I photographed each newspaper number within it in order. When it came time to plan my own digital project, which included a facsimile reproduction of the Barrett object and a transcription of Stowe’s text, I had multiple choices. But I had already completed a digital reproduction of the Barrett object that included photographs of covers, end papers, and the pages of numbers that lacked installments of Stowe’s text. The theory, I would submit, is an effort to deal thoughtfully with an institutional procedure of reproduction that contrasted with my own interest in the transcription. Had I been in charge of the reproduction–not forced to engage against institutional practices–I might well have decided to reproduce only those pages that include Stowe’s text..."

"The ebullition of your thoughts makes me feel as if I had been attracted to within a few hundred miles of the sun and had his gas-jets in full view."

"We think they [Google] are doing great stuff," Kahle said in a 2006 interview with CNET. "If the materials would be made available for broad public search and educational use we'd be all for it."

"Malamud is spoiling for a major legal fight.

He has begun publishing copies of federal, state and county codes online -- in direct violation of claimed copyright.

On Labor Day, he posted the entire 38-volume California Code of Regulations, which includes all of the state's regulations from health care and insurance to motor vehicles and investment.

To purchase a digital copy of the California code costs $1,556, or $2,315 for a printed version. The state generates about $880,000 annually by selling its laws, according to the California Office of Administrative Law."

"See yonder!" said Tom, stretching his long arm into infinite space, "see yonder—there's a bee!"

"I think there are times in our lives when we could all benefit from the Armless Tiger Man's philosophy and (whether at school or work or at the Motor Vehicle Bureau) bellow out, "MACHINES! MACHINES! I hate them! I hate them!!" See if you don't feel better."

History links

"... that implement must have been peculiarly terrifick, which could sustain the weight of so many Brides, without detriment to its firmness, or elasticity."

I wouldn't want a Kirtas touching most of the fancy stuff I scan. Really. I don't trust me, let alone a robot.

"Unfortunately, some web sites alter the books you are reading on-line in subtle ways that you, the reader may not be aware of: they use blended books."

nonphotorealistic photography

"The extreme of scarcity is intensified by the extreme of ubiquity."

Wondering about type designers' license agreements.