Yet another digitization contract limits free access to public records
Submitted by jajacobs on Tue, 2008-03-25 09:33.
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has announced a draft "non-exclusive agreement with The Generations Network, Inc. (TGN) to digitize and further expand public access to archival holdings in NARA's custody." The contract restricts free public access for five years.
- DRAFT PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT AVAILABLE FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Posted for comment: March 10, 2008
Comments due: April 9, 2008
Send comments to: Vision@nara.gov or by fax to 301-837-0319
The contract specifies that NARA will receive digital copies of all holdings that are digitized as part of this agreement and "[a]s with all of NARA's digitization agreements, there will be no charge for researchers at any time to access the digital copies in any of NARA's research rooms" and that users will have "the opportunity to purchase copies of the documents in digital format" [emphasis added].
As the NARA announcement notes, projects like this "will enable the public to have electronic access to textual and microfilm records sooner than NARA itself can provide." Once again, lack of funding for public accessibility ends in a two-tier access: free if you get to a reading room, fee if you want to use the Web.
The proposed agreement puts restrictions on redistribution of the digitized records by NARA for five years.
For a period of five years following the donation [TGN "donated" copy of the Digitized Materials to NARA], NARA will not sell, make available for downloading, or otherwise provide in electronic form, the entire contents of the Digitized Materials or a major file segment thereof. During this five year period NARA's use of the Digitized Materials will be limited to (i) access by staff and researchers at NARA locations; (ii) production for a fee of digital images of a microform publication or a portion of a series of original records, with a minimum complement of metadata to enable the purchaser to describe, identify, locate, retrieve, and manage the images; 2 (iii) display of sample images on NARA's website or elsewhere to promote awareness of NARA's services and activities or for noncommercial educational purposes, and (iv) to reproduce portions of the Digitized Images on offline storage devices that are not accessible via Internet such as DVDs or CD-ROMs, with metadata created by NARA only, for sale to the public at rates established by NARA. In the case of (ii) and (iv) above, license restrictions on the materials as issued by NARA will limit their use to prohibit resale, distribution or republication of the Digitized Material in any format or media by the original customer or successive owner of the media.
After five years from the date TGN donates Digitized Materials made from original records, NARA will have full and unrestricted rights to use them, including the right to sell, make available for downloading, or otherwise provide in electronic form, the entire contents of the Digitized Materials or segments of them. [emphasis added]
See also: GAO/Thomson-West Contract Raises Questions
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Digitization Contract expands access to public records
You see the glass half empty; I see it half full. The proposal expands free access to public records. At current rates, it will take over 2,000 years to digitize all of NARA's holdings. (The New York Times)
The contract does not limit access to public records. The records themselves remain freely accessible as they always have been.
The digitized copies of these records become freely accessible at all NARA reading rooms. This expands, not contracts, free access to these public records.
The contract is non-exclusive, so should the taxpayer, the government or a private benefactor decide to allocate money to digitize the records, it can be done as though this agreement didn't exist. This agreement does nothing to limit free access to these records through exclusivity.
The contract makes the digitized copies of these records freely available to everyone after five years at no cost to the taxpayer, despite the expenses TGN incurs in digitizing the records.
This is a definite win for the public. TGN and other vendors with similar contracts are hoping that during those five years the digitization costs can be recouped. If they can, it will be a win for the vendor as well. I'm hoping it will be or five years from now the pace of record digitization will fall back to its current crawl.
2 different glasses
I think we may be looking at 2 different glasses here :-) You see the access glass. Yes the digitization of NARA records will eventually mean more access to those records. However, the contract does not define what kind of access the public will have, and does not define the standards under which those digital files will be digitized and stored nor the metadata standards.
However, take a look at the glass that we here at FGI are looking at for a second. That glass shows a dangerous precedent where a private company has complete control over distribution of and access to public records. Digital records will be stored off-line and will only be accessible at the 25 or so NARA research centers. This contract puts a high barrier around digitized public domain public records. For those with the means ($$ and high-speed internet access), or for those who only need 1 document, this system may indeed be fine. But for researchers analyzing large swaths of US history, or for those without the means, this system creates a heavy burden, a burden that to us here at FGI is too onerous.
My question to NARA is, Why did they have to sell control of access to public domain records for digitization to take place?
Access without Control is a net loss
Thank you for your comment. I think James did a good job in his response of outlining the essential reasons that we at FGI are troubled by contracts like this one and believe they deserve careful public scrutiny. I welcome the opportunity to address the arguments you make since similar arguments are often made to justify reducing free public access to public information. I believe that you minimize the importance of free public access to public information by characterizing this as a simple difference of opinion ("half full" vs. "half empty"). I believe that even if you like the access that this agreement creates, you should be worried about the restrictions it imposes and loss of control it mandates. I have created a new post to enumerate in more detail some of the problems with the NARA/TGN contract. See: The NARA/TGN contract as a bad precedent.
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