Coyle, Karen

I recently attended a local "hackfest" sponsored by the government of the county in which I reside. This "App Challenge" was one of a series of events encouraging citizens to invent new ways to use the considerable open data resources of the county, and to make those available to others. The meeting was held at the local high school, and to my surprise, over sixty people turned out, many from the far corners of the county. The group was notably diverse. There was one contingent, however, which was not in evidence: librarians.

Most of us are aware of the basics of U.S. copyright law, including the categories of copyrightable and non-copyrightable works. Some materials are explicitly exempted from copyright in this country, a key example being U.S. Federal documents. Another exempted category is that of facts and compilations of facts that have no creative component. As you might imagine, "modicum of creativity" is itself very difficult to define. This question of facts versus creativity comes up in the discussion of ownership and copyrightability of library catalog data.