Page 203 - Building Digital Libraries

CHAPTER 8

Copyright is ultimately a matter of defining and managing acceptable
risk—eliminating risk is not possible. No copyright law is clear enough to
not be open for interpretation. Staff and content providers might not be
aware of an outside party’s legitimate interest in a resource. People make
mistakes. Even if your repository contains only items that are within the
public domain, it is still possible to encounter copyright issues, as the pho-
tographer Carol Highsmith learned in 2016 when Getty Images sent her a
letter accusing her of copyright infringement and demanding payment for
a photo she took and donated to the public domain.
It is important to be aware that people do not necessarily own the rights
to things they create—and they may be unaware of this when they contrib-
ute materials to a repository. Especially in academic settings, authors often
transfer reproduction rights to publishers, but they may not ever have had
rights to the work if it was done for hire, contains proprietary information,
or other circumstances apply. Fortunately, many publishers explicitly allow
works to be added to institutional repositories or posted on personal web
pages. However, libraries can still unknowingly infringe upon the copyright
holder’s reproduction and archival rights, and they need to respond quickly
when this occurs.
When setting up a repository, it is also important to consider how
coauthored materials will be handled. Ideally, the primary content creator
submits materials. Coauthored materials require all authors to authorize the
archiving and redistribution of a work. How does the organization secure
these rights or ensure that the content submitter has secured redistribution
rights for the repository? An organizational policy on copyright and the
submission of works into the repository must define what documentation
is necessary when content submitters place questionable materials into the
digital repository. An organizational copyright policy helps to protect the
institution in cases where proper rights were not secured, but the item was
still submitted to a repository. It gives the organization a process they can
follow and simplifies the submission process. What’s more, organizational
policy can lay out how proper documentation will be retained and stored
in the case of future disputes.
As a repository evolves and becomes more widely used within an
organization, questions regarding the inclusion of materials not specific to
an organization or content creator are sure to come up. Can a website or
a group of web documents be archived for long-term access in the digital
repository? Can digitized slide collections be made available through the
digital repository? The archiving and redistribution of materials for which
the organization has no direct ownership or rights present a prickly prob-
lem for repository administrators, particularly if this content is not vetted.
Organizations need a clear understanding of how materials enter the
digital repository, and the problems that may arise throughout the submit-
tal process. Having a policy in place empowers repository administrators
to make informed decisions regarding the types of items that can and can-
not be submitted to the repository, while giving content providers a clearly

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