Access and reproduction policies of the digital material of seven national libraries

Abstract

We examine the access and reproduction policies of the digital material of seven national libraries that selected for the variation of their digital material and the diversification of their access policies. Our goal is to discover the differences among the implemented access policies of these national libraries. We analyze the access and reproduction policies that these libraries have implemented for their digital material showing the different levels of access, of the copyrights, and of the privacy and publicity rights. We emphasize the relation among acquisition method, copyright ownership, and access and reproduction policies, because, often, they define the policies. The implemented access policies differ in various aspects. We generalize them into one unified policy, which can implement the specific policies by varying some of its parameters. We study these parameters and explain their most useful alternative values and their semantics. We also foresee new policy parameters that will be appropriate to more complex policies that will be needed soon.