Abstract:
Great timing for us, as we record the podcast on the very day the US Appeals Court rules that yes, scanning in-copyright books for the purpose of creating an online index of them is indeed a transformative and therefore fair use. Huzzah! The way is clear for all kinds of things now. We also talk about a new digital humanities / libraries tool called BigDIVA that launched today, discussing mainly its plan to become a subscription-based paid service. That leads into a brief digression on the recent patent win by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation against Apple, which could potentially raise almost half a billion dollars for the University of Wisconsin system (just enough to make up for proposed budget cuts). We refrain from comment. Finally, Stephen Robertson reports on RRCHNM’s plan to build a new tool called Tropy, which would help researchers organize the pictures they take in archives.