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toc =About this wiki= This wiki is meant for transcribing the text parts of: Gibbs, J. (1739 - Second ed.) A book of architecture containing designs of buildings and ornaments. London : printed for W. Innys [etc.], 1739, on the basis of its image-only version in http://www.e-rara.ch/zut/content/titleinfo/203786. This book is a classic, and has been often republished: some commercial print editions are still available.

=Research and Accessibility= Gibbs' introduction is also a masterpiece of image description, as nowadays required by accessibility guidelines: hence a paradox with the present e-rara web version for this book, reachable from http://www.e-rara.ch/zut/content/structure/203786, and in the PDF version [|<> book of architecture containing designs of buildings and ornaments [32,51 mb]], which only uses text images without text equivalents, which cannot be searched in detail and are completely inaccessible to blind people. Hence this transcript attempt

=About E-rara's Terms of use= (section edited on April 7, 2010, due to changes in these terms of use. 1270641746) Until March 29, 2010, E-rara's Terms of Use said (from the version of the [|Conditions d'utilisation archived on 2010-03-29]):

> Les documents publiés dans le portail e-rara.ch sont accessibles gratuitement pour un usage privé, ou encore à des fins de recherche et d'enseignement. Toute exploitation commerciale est interdite. Des données ou des tirages isolés peuvent être diffusés, accompagnés des présentes conditions d’utilisation, et sous réserve de leur observation. Le stockage de ces documents sur un autre serveur est soumis à une autorisation écrite de la direction du projet e-rara.ch. > Les documents numériques sont publiés sous la licence Creative-Commons suivante: []. > Le format d’affichage est généré à partir d’images de haute résolution (en principe 300 dpi) au format Tiff. Ces images (masters) sont gérées et archivées par les bibliothèques qui conservent les documents originaux. Leur achat et leur utilisation sont soumis aux règlements tarifaires des bibliothèques concernées.

This was rather puzzling, considering that e-rara offers digital versions of books that are in the public domain, to which neither copyright law nor creative commons licenses can apply. Copyright law - and hence creative commons licenses - do not apply to mere scanned images either, as scanned images are neither creative nor individual works, as specified in the definition of copyrightable works stated e,g, in par. 1 of art. 2 of Swiss Copyright law http://www.admin.ch/ch/f/rs/231_1/a2.html. True, par. 2 of the same article lists photographs among the works that can answer the definition in par. 1: a photograph taken by a human being is something individual and creative. But a book page scanned by a machine is not.

But the most puzzling aspect was the contradiction between the CC license used, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ch/, which explicitly allows redistribution of the works, and " Le stockage de ces documents sur un autre serveur est soumis à une autorisation écrite de la direction du projet e-rara.ch." (hosting these documents on another server requires a written authorization from the direction of the e-rara.ch project).

The present version (April 7, 2010) of the Conditions d'utilisation, in http://www.e-rara.ch/doc/page/termsOfUse?lang=fr do not mention the Creative Commons license anymore:

> Les documents publiés dans le portail e-rara.ch sont accessibles gratuitement pour un usage privé, ou encore à des fins de recherche et d'enseignement. Toute exploitation commerciale est interdite. Des données ou des tirages isolés peuvent être diffusés, accompagnés des présentes conditions d’utilisation, et sous réserve de leur observation. Le stockage de ces documents sur un autre serveur est soumis à une autorisation écrite de la direction du projet e-rara.ch. > Le format d’affichage est généré à partir d’images de haute résolution (en principe 300 dpi) au format Tiff. Ces images (masters) sont gérées et archivées par les bibliothèques qui conservent les documents originaux. Leur achat et leur utilisation sont soumis aux règlements tarifaires des bibliothèques concernées.

Moreover, in a discussion about these Terms of Use on the Facebook page about e-rara made by Zentral Bibliothek Zurich, a difference between the French and German versions emerged: there is no equivalent in the German version of the sentence "Toute exploitation commerciale est interdite." in the French one. This discussion disappeared on March 31, 2010, but it is reconstructed from e-mail alerts in [|note 1] of [|E-rara.ch: Ancient Books, Public Domain and Moral Barriers]. =28 images out of 331=

However, only 28 images out of the 331 the digital version of Gibbs' "A book of architecture containing designs of buildings and ornaments" are being used here - hence hosted on the wikispaces.com server. More precisely, I have used the images from http://www.e-rara.ch/download/webcache/304/203793 to http://www.e-rara.ch/download/webcache/304/203821 in the series for Gibbs' book, which goes from http://www.e-rara.ch/download/webcache/304/203788 to http://www.e-rara.ch/download/webcache/204120

Moreover, they are in the low-resolution jpg version, not in the high resolution .tiff format, whose buying and usage, according to the quoted TOU, is submitted to the tariff regulations of the relevant libraries.

Therefore, while hoping that in a near future, e-rara will clarify their reasoning about permitted use and copyright when referred to books that are in the public domain and to their scanned images, these 28 out of 331 jpeg files are used here towards their transcription, for the sake of research, and accessibility for all.