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Bainton, Toby --- "The Public Domain and the Librarian" [2007] ELECD 156; in Waelde, Charlotte; MacQueen, Hector (eds), "Intellectual Property" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2007)

Book Title: Intellectual Property

Editor(s): Waelde, Charlotte; MacQueen, Hector

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845428747

Section: Chapter 8

Section Title: The Public Domain and the Librarian

Author(s): Bainton, Toby

Number of pages: 5

Extract:

8. The public domain and the librarian
Toby Bainton

1 INTRODUCTION
The librarian's mission is to help people find the information they need. This
goal remains valid even if the individual library users are unsure what their in-
formation needs really are. Very often librarians pursue this mission despite
their comparative lack of expertise in the library user's chosen topic. Increas-
ingly the librarian is intent on helping library users who may not have entered
a building called a library but are nevertheless using materials supplied, through
the intervention of librarians, to their desktop.


2 THE WORK OF THE LIBRARIAN
The concept of the public domain becomes important as soon as the requisite
information has been found. Library-based information is invariably recorded
information, traditionally in printed form but nowadays very often in digital
formats. As such it is likely to be subject to copyright or other intellectual prop-
erty rights. These rights are steadily increasing in extent, either through
prolongation of term or through the establishment of new rights. In the UK the
term of copyright was extended in 1995 from 50 to 70 years by the Duration of
Copyright and Rights in Performances Regulations1 and an example of a new
right is the database right, introduced in 1997 by the Copyright and Rights in
Databases Regulations.2 Intellectual property rights are important for every li-
brary user since they may well restrict how the information they have discovered
may be used. Only material in the public ...