free the books!

Some colleagues of mine- so far Georgia Harper and Maria Gonzalez- have started a fascinating new blog, free the books, involving getting content to the public and the related copyright adventures. The subjects covered include orphan works, trying to determine what’s in the public domain and what isn’t, and UT’s partnership with Google. A bit part of the impetus behind this project is that last bit there- Google is scanning the Benson Latin American Collection, and trying to figure out what’s in the public domain is going to be a challenge. I’m really looking forward to this one!

8 Comments »

  1. Degrees said,

    December 25, 2007 @ 4:20 pm

    i too would like to know if public domain would be a challenge….

    Savoy

  2. geld lenen said,

    January 18, 2008 @ 6:57 pm

    Here in the Netherlands we also have “free books” for students etc. how is this in the USA? And especially for exchange students like me?

    Many thanks,

    GL
    The Netherlands

  3. Dwayne Charrington said,

    February 21, 2008 @ 11:57 am

    I am not aware of any scheme like this here in Australia which is a shame. We have free healthcare though so I guess that is a positive.

    – Dwayne Charrington.
    http://www.dwaynecharrington.com

  4. Samsul said,

    March 21, 2008 @ 5:44 pm

    Maybe you can check gutenberg.org

  5. John Rocha said,

    March 22, 2008 @ 12:46 am

    Hi

    I found your blog by looking for free books to see what connected with the theme of my blog, http://freebooksplus.net/blog/.
    There are loads of ways of getting legal free books including audio books over the radio and I’ll be looking at them regularly. I also offer advice on the best free ways to process the book whether print or audio and I’d love to have comments to help me see what readers value most. Let’s all contribute to more legal free books

    John Rocha

  6. hypotheek said,

    May 26, 2008 @ 4:19 pm

    Well, I posted a comment last weekend and it’s deleted. What’s the matter with commenting from abroad?

    Thanks,

    Hypo

  7. Carlos said,

    May 27, 2008 @ 1:52 pm

    Absolutely nothing is wrong with commenting from abroad. Here’s my issue: most of the comments here are obviously from people who are attempting to increase their page rankings. That is mildly annoying. The complication, though, is that according to institutional policy, UT resources can’t be used in ways that include advertising- which means that if we get spam or advertising on our blogs, we can be shut down. There are some pretty obvious problems with that particular interpretation of the rules, but that’s what I’ve got to go by now. I try to err on the side of communication, but for a lot of posts I’ll either have to delete them entirely or remove the link from the post, like I do with anything referring to mortgages in whatever language. 😛

  8. Tony Dean said,

    July 9, 2008 @ 3:59 am

    Marvelous!
    I never knew about:”Benson Latin American Collection”.
    And Google is going to index it?

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