## Text Creation Partnership

Transcribed by hand. Owned by libraries. Made for eveyone.
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# Why Libraries?

The TCP is a unique partnership between public and private sector institutions. Because this work is funded and jointly owned by libraries, we are ensuring that the content of these early modern books—which, after all, is in the public domain—will remain accessible to scholars and the wider public, even if they are not affiliated with an academic institution that has purchased access to the image database.

The TCP is mindful of the long-term needs of libraries, scholars and the larger society. TCP projects are notable for the quality and cost-effectiveness of their content, as well as for the underlying principles of the Partnership that:

- Convey robust rights of use to scholars;
- Protect the public domain rights of the larger society to access out-of-copyright materials;
- Present the user with accurately keyed, modern-font texts that are faithful to the spellings and organization of the original works;
- Ensure that this content will migrate forward through shifts in technology to represent editions of enduring value to libraries.

The net effect of the TCP initiatives has been to maximize the respective strengths of commercial and academic digital library development for the long-term benefit of researchers and students.

In addition, the TCP offers a number of important benefits to the library community:

- Entrusts conversion of important but difficult works to the university community, supporting appropriate scholarly review and intervention;
- Draws upon community expertise to develop the scope and standards underlying such projects;
- Carries forward the work in a cost effective manner by distributing the costs across many academic institutions, as well as encouraging substantial contributions from commercial partners;
- Ensures that Partner libraries co-own the resulting text file with robust rights to manage, re-use, and distribute the file as they see fit – including the right to distribute texts beyond their campus or community authenticated users to other partner institutions.