Culture and Copyright, Coexisting: Preserving Culture in a Digital World

Abstract

From music to literature to film, an increasing amount of culturally significant information is being published in digital formats. Vendors like the iTunes Store or Audible are already specializing in digital-only information. With copyrights restricting libraries’ usage and thus collection of digital material, there exists the potential of culturally relevant information (i.e. songs, works of fiction, visual content) to remain under-archived by libraries globally. The paper shows that legal constraints prevent libraries from pursuing a collection of new digital content as exhaustively as would be preferred, thus obscuring the library from various cultural elements being published today. This paper also details ways in which libraries are attempting to enter new digital formats within their collections and offers new perspectives on Creative Commons as an alternative means to collect cultural material in their digital collections.