MyBib eL is a provisioning platform of digital copies for archives, libraries, museums and publishing houses. Due to different legal requirements in different fields of law, these digital reproductions can be subject to special property rights in order to protect interest of rights holders as to
- Copyrights
- Personality rights
- Remota (i.e. banned and challenged books), which may only be viewed by authorised persons
- GDPR or Trade Secrets Act
As soon as only one protective right from one of the aforementioned fields of digital reproduction law applies, the use has to be restricted concerning persons, places and/or time periods.
The variety of rights such as searching, viewing (without printing/downloading), duplication (printing/downloading) is partially still subject to restrictions based on location, person or number of accesses. Against this background, the diversity of rights results in a wide range of different rights profiles.
With many applications in the environment of archives, museums and libraries, a large part of the digitised material is public domain material. Therefore, its use is not confined and it should be accessible to the public by using a standard browser without any restrictions.
This so-called “hybrid mode” that means a mixed provisioning of protected and publicly accessible digitised material is also supported by MyBib el.
1.1 Classic Application Scenariosadd section
Classic application scenarios for MyBib eL in the environment of libraries, archives, museums and publishing houses are:
- Providing works protected by copyright according to §60 UrhG (Act on Copyrights and related Rights), displaying and printing of specific extracts exclusively on the premises of the respective institution.
- Remota as before but extended by the authentication and authorisation of the user (Note: This is not allowed for works protected by copyright as according to GDPR, there is no sufficient reason for this authentication)
- Contents for which the rights are held by the publishing company as EMMA, Kicker
- Provisioning of documents for national/international interlibrary loan (IFLA Voucher/OCLC-WorldShare)
1.2 Implementation of Protection Requirementsadd section
MyBib eL provides a multidimensional rights system for the implementation of this variety of requirements. This system checks persons, devices and/or locations concerning their respective rights for displaying, printing or downloading against the property rights of each individual document.
The current version V3.0 meets the requirements of the UrshWissG (Copyright Knowledge Society Act).
Due to the need to protect digital copies with legal rights, the transmission between server and display device is encrypted.
In order to prevent misuse (e.g. display (partially) permitted, print/download prohibited) by the user (operator liability), digital copies requiring protection can only be accessed with the MyBib eL Viewer. This must firstly be registered and activated on the MyBib eL server.
The MyBib eL Viewer is connected to the MyBib eL server through a “tunnel” comparable to a VPN. In addition to data transmission, the digital copies are also encrypted. The MyBib eL Viewer decrypts the data a short time before displaying it.
The procedure is similar to the streaming of movies. Here, however, instead of starting with a film we use digital copies of texts, maps, photos, etc.. Crucial for the protection is that there does not remain any re-usable data on the client when the server-client-connection is disconnected.
MyBib eL provides corresponding interfaces (Restfull API) in order to integrate an electronic reading room for 3rd party applications like OPAC, Discovery-System, publishing companies’ websites or DFG viewer. These interfaces allow searching and, depending on the legal status, provisioning of the corresponding data by providing new meta data, displaying or printing data. As far as it is allowed, also scaled data are provided.
Note: Public domain works do not require a viewer. These can be viewed with a current web browser, see e.g. the Forward of 1878-1933 at http://fes.imageware.de/fes/web/. A look into the past is worthwhile and covers a broad spectrum from politics, science and everyday life such as the weather on "27.08.1929".
1.3 Examples for Works Encumbered with Third Parties’ Rightsadd section
Works subject to copyright: This includes all works whose authors are still alive or the death of the author occured less than 70 years ago. For example, Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein died in 1955 and their works will be in the public domain in 2026. These provisionings not only concern “classical books”, but also, for example, photographs, maps, drawings, cartoons and dissertations. These works can be viewed at terminals according to §60e, 4 UrhG. According to the framework agreement between the Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Countries in the Federal Republic of Germany and the Verwertungsgesellschaft Wort, the works may be displayed and parts (max. 10% of a work) may be printed or stored.
Authentication and authorisation of users is not necessary and is also “controversial” according to the GDPR. Crucial criteria, however, is that the reading places are located on the premises of the respective institution (library/archive/museum) and that the institution has the power of disposal over the reading places. This also excludes installation on a user pc/laptop.
Restrictions such as no OCR and comparison against the number of works in the collection have been eliminated with the abolition of the old § 52 b UrhG as of February 28, 2019 and a new agreement KMK-VG Wort.
Note: Non-scientific newspapers/journals may be digitised (archive copy), but are excluded from presentation according to §60 UrhG.Remota: In contrast to works subject to copyright restrictions, remota may only be viewed by authorised persons, i.e. authentication and authorisation of the user is necessary. But with remota the display is not restricted to the library itself, unless the work is at the same time protected also by a copyright. The work can (if UrhG does not apply) also be displayed in the faculties. For protection reasons, however, access should be restricted to the location of the personal computer and person and the downloading/printing rights should be withdrawn.
Personal research data: Personal research data such as studies or questionnaires are subject to other legal provisions, but are to be treated as remota in terms of access, i.e. restricted to access locations and to authorised persons. Under certain circumstances, it might be advisable to withdraw the print/download rights.