Digitisation of the European cultural heritage is the challenge of the 21st century. Libraries, Archives, Museums, and other memory institutions have now the technological means to digitize their whole collections and make them available online. The potential for accessibility to cultural artefacts, with consequential benefits for research and study, is immense. However, in practice this type of undertaking is severely restricted due to the real or potential subsistence of copyright and related rights.
CIPPM is at the forefront of the research to develop solutions for the digitization of our cultural heritage. In 2013, the Centre Director, Professor Maurizio Borghi co-authored a monograph with Dr. Stavroula Karapapa titled ‘Copyright and Mass Digitization’ published by Oxford University Press. This book queries the normative and policy implications of this newly emerging framework of mass digitization in copyright law.
In July 2015 the EnDOW Project took off. This is a 3-year project co-funded by Heritage Plus and the European Commission, which sees the cooperation of several major European research centres (CREATe, University of Glasgow; IViR, University of Amsterdam; ASK, Bocconi University, Milan) under the leadership of CIPPM. The project developed the Diligent Search Tool, a pioneeristic platform for crowdsourcing diligent search with the goal of clearing the rights for the collections of cultural heritage institutions:
- Melanie Brown: “Exploring Article 8 of the Copyright Directive: Hope for Cultural Heritage”
- C. Op Den Kamp, B. Flueckiger D. and Pfluger – A Material-Based Approach to the Digitization of Early Applied Colours (2018)
- C. Op Den Kamp, The Greatest Films Never Seen (2018)
- K. Patterson, R. Deazley & V. Stobo – Diligent Search in Context and Practice” (2016)
- C. Op Den Kamp – The Paper Print Collection: How Copyright Formalities and Historical Accidents Led to Film History (2017)
- M. Borghi, K. Erickson and M. Favale – With enough eyeballs all searches are diligent (2017)
- D. Mendis and V. Stobo – UK: Extended Collective Licensing (2014)
- M. Borghi and S. Karapapa – Copyright and Mass Digitization (2013)
- M. Favale, M. Kretschmer, D. Mendis, F. Homberg and D. Secchi – A Comparative Review of the Treatment of Orphan Works (2013)