Cross & Cockade (USA) on CD-Rom

[charles]

I am wondering if there is any interest out there in converting the twenty-six years of Cross & Cockade (USA) to CD-Rom. It is such an incredible resource, but only available to the few that have complete sets, of which I am one.

Can anyone advise on the legal copyright issues? Is this something that can even be done?

In terms of conversion, the less expensive approach would be to photographically scan every page, but the better approach would be to make optical character recognition of the text so that it could then be searchable.

Does anyone know of a company that could do this work?

I would be happy to head-up this effort if (1) there's interest in it (2) it's legally permissable (3) and a business plan makes sense to cover the production and distribution costs.

Does anyone know where all the original material is, which might make for much better reproduction.

I am thinking that, if this is succesful, similar efforts could be made with the English magazine 'Flight,' the German magazine 'Flugsport' and possibly Motor, as well.

[retread]

Unfortunately I cannot be of any help in the areas in which you request information. However, I think it is a tremendous idea. I would certainly be interested.
Weldboy

[MilesC]

I would love to buy a set, however, I suspect it would cost considerably more than $40. You would have to approach the editors of CnC (USA) as they undoubtedly hold the copyrights to their magasine. Photographic reproduction would be costly, scanning to pdf files would be possibly cheaper but they wouldn't all fit onto a single CD as the pdf files would not be text but images. Obviously, scanning to text would be best, but then you are looking at possibly re-editting the whole lot. A daunting task to be sure.

[wolfenbill]

You may not have as big a problem as you think. Marvin Skelton, one of the early members of C&C and a Houston attorney, and I discussed doing just this thing about 2 years ago. We have access to complete sets of C&C(US). In fact the only reason I did not start this earlier is that I do not have the necessary software to do the archiving. I do not remember what the legal ramifications are but I seem to remember that since most, if not all, the original founders are no longer with us, it's quite possible that the publication is now in the public domain. Another reason I've dragged my feet is that it would be a much more valuable item if the whole thing was indexed. Please be aware that this would be a labor of love but well worth the effort. It would also be an invaluable way to introduce a lot of new guys to the vast amount of information available. I believe the original issue was in 1960. Anyway, if you want to pursue this further I would be more than happy to assist you and bring in Marvin for assistance as well. We are both issue editors for "Over the Front". Marvin has also contributed many, many articles in both publications as well. I would recommend not dragging our feet any longer. Marvin is a P-51 pilot from WWII (never made it overseas) and these guys will not be with us much longer.

[FinnN]

I'd certainly be interested in any (who am I kidding - all!) of those CDs!

On copyright the CnC volumes will certainly be within copyright still. Precisely who owns it depends on the contracts (if they existed) between the authors and the publishers. It will either be with the authors of the individual pieces (or owners of the photographs/negatives), their heirs until 70 years after their deaths, the editor (in the case of anonymous contributions) or even possibly 70 years after publication! Whichever it may be, someone somewhere will own the rights. Because of the nature of what you're doing I'm sure whoever owns the copyright would be likely to give permission.

For the other magazines/journals the same thing applies under UK copyright law (I believe US law is more lax when it comes to early publications - before 1921?) - most likely it would be 70 years after the death of the editor.

If any of the things you're considering reproducing is Crown Copyright and published before 1969 then copyright expires 50 years after first publication - which covers everything from the WW1 period of course.

As far as scanning them in is concerned you'll find it's a mammoth task - I can say this from experience as I'm in the process of scanning in a large number of magazines and air publications myself. In my case I'll be bending the copyright laws a little on some of the magazines (War Illustrated for example) but as they're not intended to be sold, I own originals of everything that I'm reproducing and they're all contemporary publications, I'm not expecting to be pulled up on it. I would say that PDF is probably your best bet with an invisible OCR layer (Acrobat will do this) if your scans are clean. It won't be a perfect match, but you'll be able to read the original and do searches unless the text is extremely corrupt. Add a table of contents manually and you probably have the best of both worlds with a minimum (but still a lot) of effort. As mentioned it's unlikely that the whole lot will fit on a CD unless you have access to electronic files (which probably don't exist, and certainly won't for early CnCs where presumably things were pasted up for reproduction).

Any commercial company would charge astronomical fees for doing all that (just straight scanning will cost a small fortune) so unless you have the backing of a publisher or some funding body/museum (as was the case with the Trench Map CD I believe) you may well be better off having a go yourself.

I hope all that makes some sort of sense!

Have fun
Finn

[wolfenbill]

I just talked to Marvin Skelton and he has been corresponding with the editors and management of Over the Front. They are already considering putting OtF and C&C (USA) on CDs. They know that it will not be a moneymaking effort but consider such a step absolutely necessary to help preserve the information and make it easily available to all interested parties. I'll keep you posted on the progress of this endeavor.

Heck, it probably would be a good idea to have
World War One Aero do the same thing.

[Amy]

I've been s-l-o-w-l-y indexing my old Cross & Cockade issues. It's a terribly painful process, but the payoff is great!

Now what'll happen is, I'll get C&C indexed on my own and then they'll publish an index!

[Rick]

Now what'll happen is, I'll get C&C indexed on my own and then they'll publish an index!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * R.

[Cigogne]

I've heard that they are planning to do it in PDF format and this will make each issue fully searchable which will make an index almost unneccessary. If they were to offer a DVD version with full search capability then there will be no need for an index. The whole thing will be searchable.

Cigogne

[Cigogne]

Copyrights to Cross & Cockade? Since OTF is the successor organization I have heard that they have the copyright to C&C. I've heard this from more than one source.

Cigogne