This is pretty awesome: Kopinor (the Norwegian copyright-handling agency) and the Norwegian Nasjonalbiblioteket (National Library) have announced they're comprehensively putting Norsk Litteratur fra hele det 20. århundre på nett -- making some 250,000 20th century works of Norwegian literature (essentially all of it), freely accessible online (big caveat: only to Norwegian IP addresses ...) at Bokhylla.no.
Some 50,000 works -- from 1690s, 1790s, 1890s, and 1990s -- are already available there -- and soon it'll be a whole lot more.
In-copyright titles will only be accessible online (i.e. you can't download them -- as you can the out of copyright ones), authors and publishers will be remunerated (presumably much like the British Public Lending Right) -- and books can be withdrawn from circulation upon request (don't do it, authors, don't do it !).
See also, for example, Kaja Korsvold's summary article in Aftenposten, 250.000 bøker blir tilgjengelige i Norges digitale bibliotek; no doubt the English-language media will pick story this up pretty soon too .....
Some 50,000 works -- from 1690s, 1790s, 1890s, and 1990s -- are already available there -- and soon it'll be a whole lot more.
In-copyright titles will only be accessible online (i.e. you can't download them -- as you can the out of copyright ones), authors and publishers will be remunerated (presumably much like the British Public Lending Right) -- and books can be withdrawn from circulation upon request (don't do it, authors, don't do it !).
See also, for example, Kaja Korsvold's summary article in Aftenposten, 250.000 bøker blir tilgjengelige i Norges digitale bibliotek; no doubt the English-language media will pick story this up pretty soon too .....