2015-08-27

Assessment

Podio reminder. Email and phone consults count.

Copyright

Using NYU workshop for grad students as starting off point, what do we think would be useful here?

• IFLA/NYU Best Practices Doc linked from that is also helpful

Takedown policies: there may be well-founded requests for takedowns, or poorly-founded requests. Check original licensing and start there -- we may have traceable permissions.

Toolkit Issues

Catskills: have clear provenance for items from Brown DRS, but what about items that have been submitted to website?

• Make good faith effort to contact submitter / photographer. Track down if still around, document as best you can, be willing to take things down.

Granting rights: Infinite Ulysses has a good example of an extensive policy, not all projects will need something so extensive.

In many cases, Toolkit projects will be faculty-led, where the library may provide labor, but the principal investigator is not staff in the library. There may be a distinction, in terms of both branding and IP, between those projects internal to the library (Arader, Studio Showcase), and those where the PI is clearly external (Holocaust Awareness, Catskills).

• In the future, we may have two types of projects, and need to think about which are library-led and which are externally-led.

Some digital collections may have library copyright statements at the footer of each page, making it unclear when some content is new and copyrighted (say, text on the website) and some is public domain (an image or other digital object used on the web page)

Specific examples:

• In work with rare materials from special collections, faculty have copyright of translation, e.g. they translate a letter from the 1700s into modern English. Transcription not necessarily copyright-able. The more transformative a new work is, the more the creator has a claim to new copyright. Simple transcription, less so. Annotated letters more so. Modernizing English and encoding are both transformative, with claim on new copyright.
• When items are in special collections, if take images you would need to check with owning library. Many special collections claim reproduction licensing over their items, and exact reproductions like photo images are "not allowed". The right way forward depends on the license/contract in place with owning special collections. Licensing and contract trumps rights. Particularly when items are not digitized yet, definitely want to check with owning library and cite originals, linking back to owning library, making it clear where physical copies are.
• Our Archives duplication agreement says: visitors can photograph things, but are allowed to use those images for personal use only and have to sign agreement to the effect before allowed to take pictures.
• Whenever using subscription resources, must look at terms of use and original license. Translations are generally more transformative, but always need to check terms of use on what reproduction and translations are allowed.
• When using special collections from other libraries, and you determine you need library permission, it's good to get their permission in writing.
• When working on internal library projects, we will want to keep this paperwork for ourselves.

Questions for Us Later

Do we need clear permission to duplicate or publish copyright statements on our archives pages? Toolkit pages? Giving our users clear re-use permissions. Archives has a current duplication agreement for physical items, but should we have one for born-digital / toolkit projects?

What other template verbiage do we want? See Best Practices in Digital Humanities, we should include an opt-out statement, How should we expose the rights statements for Toolkit items? We want a generic statement for Toolkit projects that outlines re-use.

How do we develop a takedown policy that we can publicize?

There are likely well-developed policies around these issues, developed by other DH groups.