Description of rights-protected objects using standardised rights information

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Achim Bonte; Katrin Stump
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 554780052

An important basis for the sustainable digitization of rights-protected objects and their provision is standardized rights information of digital objects as well as information on the validity period of this information. Standardized rights information is already comprehensively assigned to freely accessible digital objects. Regarding digital objects with restricted access, the application of standardized rights information is still patchy for several reasons. Among other things, there are higher requirements for the rights information because, on the one hand, it should inform users about the restrictions and their reasons. On the other hand, it should be possible to evaluate it automatically, for example to enforce necessary technical restrictions or to adjust the restrictions once the applicable validity period has reached. Yet, the rights information should not be captured redundantly and it should be possible to adjust it with as little effort as if for example, the rights status or the kind of restriction changes. In this project, particular consideration is given to requirements for digital reproduction that are created with Kitodo.Production and provided in presentation systems accordingly to DFG-guidelines. The exchange of objects and their metadata between the production and presentation systems creates additional challenges for possible solutions compared to integrated systems in which the indexing, creation and provision of the digital objects are carried comprehensively. Several objectives are pursued in order to meet the diverse requirements. Firstly, professional objectives are being pursued, as for example determining the required rights information, creating missing rights information, including for example the description of the "verwandte Schutzrechte" and creating guidelines for capturing rights information in the widely applied metadata standards. Secondly, the project pursues technical-professional goals, such as adapting the Library Rights Machine-readable Language (LibRML) to the requirements of the DFG guidelines and the related requirements profiles. Thirdly, technical objectives such as the creation of a tool for integrating LibRML information into the metadata files or making it available in other ways are being pursued.

• DFG Programme: Cataloguing and Digitisation (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)