Licensing of scientific audiovisual media in Germany

Abstract

TIB has set up a competence center for non-textual material with the goal to collect, archive and present scientific audiovisual media among other non-textual material to its users via its portals. The acquisition of the necessary rights for the audiovisual media which enter into TIB s collection profile is complex. The market for scientific information is international and does not end at national borders. Thus the scientific audiovisual media which TIB licenses are produced in Germany but also in other countries. Challenges are encountered regarding the German national law and, when collaborating with licensors from other countries, with other national laws. This paper aims at describing the legal framework within which TIB has to build up services and the challenges which TIB encounters when licensing electronic audiovisual media in Germany with a special focus on currently valid and new developments in European and German legal deposit and copyright law. With more than 6 million media units, 25.000 journal titles and about 12,5 million patents, the German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB) ranks as one of the largest specialized libraries worldwide. It is jointly financed by the federal government and the federal states (“Lander”) of Germany. TIB is a member of the Leibniz-Association, an umbrella organisation for 86 institutions conducting research and providing scientific infrastructure.