This Giving Tuesday as you donate to the Adopt-A-Book campaign one of the areas in the library’s digital collections database that your Giving Tueasday donation will assist us in growing is the number of digitized books in the database. When APRL Digital was first conceived and began to be populated, the APRL staff focused on digitizing and uploading complete runs of journals, most notably the American Philatelist, the Philatelic Literature Review, the Collectors Club Philatelist and the Postal History Journal among others.
Just as we have with the journal runs that we digitize and upload to the database, there are copyright permissions that must be obtained before we can include them in the database. With books, there are certain copyright opportunities that allow a library such as the APRL to digitize and upload materials for public viewing.
The first instance are what are known as books in the public domain that are considered in a general sense “copyright free.” These are books in which no copyright license was obtained when first published and therefore in some instances are available to be copied and disseminated. But even with works identified as "copyright free" in this instance authors may still retain certain rights to their work.
The other instance in which books can be copied or digitized occurs when a book’s copyright has expired or has been forfeited. As a general rule the term of copyright protection expires 70 years after the death of the latest living author of the work. There can be exceptions to this copyright provision as well as the aforementioned "copyright free" instance, since copyright law is ever-changing and open to further and more specifc interpretation in each instance, but "70 years after death" generally speaking is the accepted term of copyright protection for most books.
Given that, the APRL has a number of books in its collection that through your gift on Giving Tuesday to the Adopt-A-Book campaign will assist us in digitizing. Books that are either copyright free; their copyright has lapsed due to the passage of time; or the APS is the copyright owner all qualify for consideration. Here is just a small sample of the the possible books in the APS collection that are suitable for digitization:
A Catalogue of the Postage Stamps of Peru by Edward B. Evans, (1887).
Check List State of New York Stock Transfer Tax Stamps, 1905-1909 by B. Forster, (1909).
Essays for United States Postage Stamps by Edward H. Mason, (1911).
The Great Mail: A Postal History of New Orleans by Leonard V. Huber, (1949).
Stamps of the Orange Free State by A. E. Geldhof, (1938).
United States Famous Americans Series of 1940 by George C. Hahn, (1950).
Double Your Impact through the Generosity of our Matching Donors!
On December 1st only, your impact will be doubled thanks to the generosity of our matching donors, among them Dr. Peter McCann and Bryan Lorber, who have pledged to match up to $7,000 of your gifts, dollar for dollar.
Meet Giving Tuesday Matching Donor Dr. Peter P. McCann
“I would like more people to understand that the APRL, one of the fundamental parts of our American Philatelic Center, is not just a beautiful well-stocked physical “library”, but is a dynamic 21st Century data center that can provide almost any aspect of philatelic-related knowledge to any user anywhere in the world. One does not need to be in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, USA to use their fabulous resources.”
Dr. Peter P. McCann is Past President of the American Philatelic Society (APS) and a current APS Director at Large. He is also the current Chairman of the APS Awards Committee, Chairman of the John N. Luff Awards Committee, and a member of the APS Committee for the Accreditation of National Exhibitions and Judges (CANEJ).
His further philatelic affiliations include being the Former Vice Chairman of the Council of Philatelists of the Smithsonian National Postal Museum, and Past President of the American Association of Philatelic Exhibitors, the American Philatelic Congress and the British Caribbean Philatelic Study Group.
Among the many honors that Dr. McCann has received are the John N. Luff Award for Outstanding Service to the APS, the Alfred F. Lichtenstein Memorial Award for Service to Philately, the Bernard A. Hennig AAPE Award for Excellence and Improvement in Philatelic Judging, and the Philatelic Foundation Neinken Medal for Distinguished Service to Philately.
Dr. McCann is also a Fellow of the Royal Philatelic Society of London, a Fellow of the Royal Philatelic Society of Canada, and a Trustee of the Philatelic Foundation. In 2007, Dr. McCann signed the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists (RDP).
Dr. McCann’s collecting interests are the postal history of several British Caribbean islands, currently Dominica. He has exhibited nationally garnering 8 Grand Awards, 3 Reserve Grand Awards, and internationally, and published more than 50 articles and three books.
We thank Dr. Peter P. McCann for his generosity in being a matching donor this Giving Tuesday and and his ongoing support of the APRL and its digitization efforts.