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Gallica Experiment: Offering Digital |
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Summary
Developped by the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Gallica is a platform providing access to public domain and copyrighted digital material. The project is part of a European program in which the BnF is the French aggregator for the implementation of « Europeana », the European digital library.
The Bibliothèque nationale de France has been digitising its public domain documents for more than 10 years; as a result, several tens of thousand books, images, periodicals and sound recordings have been put online. The valuable collections available via Gallica as well as the scientific, historical and cultural interest of the digital library make it a highly-appreciated service. To make it even better, the BnF has just started a wide digitisation and re-formatting programme (the files formerly digitised only in image mode are re-formatted in text mode) so as to enhance its heritage collection and improve search and viewing services.
To complete the digitised collections, an experiment is under way to enable wide access to copyrighted digital documents, via Gallica. The Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Syndicat national de l’Edition (French Publishers Association), the Direction du Livre et de la lecture (Book and Reading Directorate) and the Centre national du Livre (National Center for the Book) work together to find legal and technical solutions as well as a business model that will allow online access to recently published books in the strict observance of the copyright law.
The project is open to French publishers and e-retailers according to the following clauses. The model provides access to digital copyrighted items via the platforms of e-retailers accredited by the publishers of designated books. The publishers might also act as their own e-retailers and provide online access to their collections. The one-year experiment has started 14 March 2008, on the occasion of Paris Book Fair. From now on, several thousands of copyrighted documents will be indexed in Gallica. The experiment, which will help to better know the users’ practices, will be followed by an assessment carried out by the different partners. Gallica uses a federated search engine which allows the user to search both through the public domain collections and the copyrighted documents. Full text (if possible) and metadata querying will be available for the BnF’s digital collections. The reading and downloading of documents are also available via Gallica. The access is free and out of charge. For copyrighted books indexed in Gallica, the model selected should provide metadata and full-text search. The title of the document is listed in the results together with a short abstract that presents the context of the search. More information is available by clicking on the title. Gallica website then displays the full description of the document (table of contents, image of the first cover page, text of the back cover page, detailed description of the document), a short abstract in order to show the context of the search result. Then, it forwards to e-retailers websites for access to the documents which are protected by technical measures. These websites offer, for each document, a free and out-of-charge browsing through a display of pages’ sample. They also offer temporary rights for the reading and downloading of the documents depending on different technical and business models.
 Chart of the access platform to Gallica digital library. February 2008. ©BnF
The e-retailers wishing to take part in the experiment need to sign an agreement with the BnF. They must also have signed former agreements with publishers for the books they distribute.
The e-retailers wishing to take part in the experiment should be able to set up an OAI repository for the BnF to collect the documents metadata according to the OAI-PMH protocol: descriptive record, table of contents, wide format image of the first cover page, text of the fourth cover page, long description of the work, free access indicator...
A link (an URL) giving access to the digital document should also be provided. At the beginning of the experiment, any specific document should be accessible via one e-retailer only.
Eventually, the e-retailer should be able to provide the document content according to a simple XML formalism. The exchange of crypted data will be available via the FTP protocol. This content will be used only to index the document in the context of full-text search.
A technical charter was set up by the BnF. It indicates the appropriate standards to be chosen for the inclusion of data concerning copyrighted documents in Gallica website (formalism of transmission of documents contents, metadata format, protocols of data providing...).
To encourage the publishers to take part in the experiment, the French National Center for the Book (Centre national du Livre) proposes to support the digital delivery of copyrighted documents in the context of the implementation of the test-phase of the French prototype for a European digital library. The CNL Commission for « Digital Policy » regularly examines the requests.
One of the CNL selection criteria is that offers by candidate e-retailers and publishers should fit Gallica documentary policy.
The three main principles of the BnF’s digitisation documentary policy are as follows:
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Gallica
Experiment: Offering Digital Resources Legally Available
