open access today are in response to these concerns. At its foundation, the issue for scholarly authors and their readers is simply meaningful access to out-of- print and unavailable works. Enter HathiTrust Over the last year or so, authors began to contact the University of Michigan Library, requesting that HathiTrust open the full text of their works for public access. This interest corresponded to the increased visibility of the titles resulting from public access to the bibliographic information available through HathiTrust. In response, the University of Michigan Library developed a simple agreement form for HathiTrust that allows HathiTrust to obtain permission from the copyright holder to make digital copies and reproduce the full text in HathiTrust’s repository without restriction.1 This short agreement lets the author retain all of his or her rights, and the grant of rights is non- exclusive. This allows HathiTrust to make and distribute reprints or other paper copies for noncommercial scholarly purposes. The author does need to promise (“warrant”) that they are the copyright holder of the work and can authorize the proposed copying and distribution. HathiTrust asks the author to indicate whether they still possess the copyright, whether the publisher transferred (“reverted”) the work back to the author, or whether the copyright was obtained in some other way (such as transfer, gift, divorce decree, or inheritance). A space for “other” is included allowing the copyright holder to indicate his or her particular situation. The agreement requires the author to confirm that the work does not violate the rights of others and that all permissions needed were obtained that would allow the full use of the work in HathiTrust, including the creation of digital copies. The agreement form includes such key information as name, mailing RLI 269 16 Opening Up Content in HathiTrust ( C O N T I N U E D ) APRIL 2010 RESEARCH LIBRARY ISSUES: A BIMONTHLY REPORT FROM ARL, CNI, AND SPARC Opening Content through MPublishing Thinking about authors, publishers, and long-term preservation and access as an ecosystem pervades libraries and is certainly evident within the newly created MPublishing group at the University of Michigan Library. To create MPublishing, the library brought together the Scholarly Publishing Office, University of Michigan Press, Deep Blue (the university’s institutional repository), administration of the Text Creation Partnership, and the Copyright Office under the leadership of a new Associate University Librarian for Publishing, Maria Bonn. One example of MPublishing’s ecosystem approach is demonstrated by Jim Ottaviani, who directs Deep Blue and works tirelessly to engage campus authors, to help them deposit their work in Deep Blue, and to encourage open access on a practical level. The University of Michigan’s Scholarly Publishing Office is developing an authors’ reprint service for sales (essentially at or just above cost), digital access, printing on the Espresso Book Machine, or distribution via Amazon. In addition to committing the majority of its scholarly titles to be full-text viewable within the HathiTrust, the University of Michigan Press has welcomed the use of Creative Commons licensing by its authors to encourage wider distribution and access to the author’s work. MPublishing is also exploring ways to engage with open educational resources and open courseware with Open. Michigan (based at the University of Michigan Medical School). For more details, visit the MPublishing Web site http://www.lib.umich.edu/mpublishing/.
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