Report on the existing legal framework for Libraries and Archives (LA) industries in EU

Under the auspices of the reCreating Europe project, the work presented in this report responds to the growing need for a sector-specific analysis of European digital copyright law vis-à-vis cultural heritage institutions (CHIs). The research carried out within Task 5.1 - European legal framework for GLAM industries: from closure to Openness of the reCreating Europe’s Work Package (WP) 5 dedicated to Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (GLAM) aims to deliver a comprehensive legal mapping of EU and national copyright provisions impacting the sector. This report is the first result of such endeavor. It outlines the research outcomes stemming from the specific focus on the European copyright regulation affecting Libraries and Archives (LA). A complementary analysis on Galleries and Museums (GM) will be delivered in Month 18. Consistently with the specific aim of the Task, the embraced methodology is a two-tiered systematic legal analysis. The first tier is represented by the collection and systematization of, respectively, EU and national legal sources. The second tier foresees a cross-jurisdictional analysis, which displays the degree of harmonization of copyright rules, main points of convergence and divergence among the selected copyright systems, thus setting the floor for further qualitative, quantitative, and comparative research. The conducted research on LA-relevant copyright provisions offers three main preliminary results. First, the systematized EU copyright legal framework shows a growing sensitivity and focus on LA, as well as CHIs in general, and a considerable body of sector-specific mandatory copyright exceptions and limitations. Second, the relevant national copyright regulations turn out to be significantly harmonized, despite the presence of optional provisions at EU level. Third, the patterns of convergence and divergence between the legislative approach of the Member States with regards to specific provisions (e.g. public lending, uses by LA and/or at their premises for purposes of preservation, private study or research) corroborate the need for a sound process of copyright modernization, capable of effectively tackling legal uncertainties in the digital environment.