Dame Lynne Brindley responds to Digital Britain report conclusions
17 June 2009
Chief Executive of the British Library calls for a coherent UK national digital strategy to include mass digitisation of content and digital literacy skills
16 June 2009, London - Dame Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive of the British Library has responded to Lord Carter's long-awaited Digital Britain report by urging the Government to address three critical pillars of digital research and education:
- the need to digitise the 'goldmine' of content held by national institutions;
- the need to update the UK's intellectual property regime for the 21st century
- the urgent need to develop digital literacy skills for all.
Digitising content
Dame Lynne said: "I welcome the fact that Lord Carter specifically referenced the British Library's Nineteenth British Century Newspapers digitisation programme as an example of how new business models can enable national institutions to work with commercial partners and funding bodies to make millions of pages of historic content available online to researchers and the public. We are sitting on a goldmine of content which should be considered integral to the UK's digital strategy. To support Digital Britain we need to deliver a critical mass of digitised content - sustained public investment, along with the innovative business models cited in Lord Carter's report, will enable us to achieve this."
Intellectual Property (IP)
On the issue of reforms to IP regulation, Dame Lynne said, "The issue of orphan works is of critical concern to all institutions that wish to digitise large volumes of legacy content. I welcome the proposal to address the issue of orphan works, and we are keen to work with the Government to devise a regulatory framework that is fair, transparent, affordable and which permits the mass digitisation of historic content. We will also be working to ensure that the needs of researchers are included in any future amendments to the copyright exceptions regime in areas such as the preservation of archive material."
Digital literacy
Dame Lynne continued, "Digital literacy skills are absolutely essential to ensure that the investment we are making in infrastructure and content provision is not wasted. Lord Carter's report devotes a chapter to this critical issue and I look forward to working with the sector skills councils (e-skills UK and Skillset) on researching the digital literacy requirements of the next generation of researchers and information users."
For more information on the British Library's digital and IP programmes see: www.bl.uk/digital www.bl.uk/ip
For more information please contact Ben Sanderson at the British Library Press Office, ben.sanderson@bl.uk T: +44 (0)1937 546126 M: +44 (0)78100 56848
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