Page 204 - Building Digital Libraries

Access Management

documented path for submitting content. A policy helps to resolve disputes
and protect both the content submitter and the digital repository from
potential legal challenges over the redistribution of an item.
This book dedicates considerable discussion to planning and imple-
menting a digital repository platform. Likewise, organizations must cre-
ate an equally careful plan for addressing copyright issues with regard to
the digital repository platform. As a content provider, digital repository
administrators need to be concerned with issues relating to how materials
are assigned copyright, as well as the access-management requirements
required by specific licenses. Repository planners will also need to create a
plan to deal with the inevitable problems relating to the access of individual
materials. Your library can reduce its legal exposure by setting guidelines
for the types of licensed content allowed in the digital repository and by
creating a policy for reviewing submitted work.
Risk can be minimized if your library observes due diligence with
copyright and access control issues and responds quickly to complaints.
If your repository contains resources that are subject to different rights
and permissions, errors will be less likely and will be easier to identify and
resolve if the ingest process requires proper documentation such as releases
and permission forms which are linked to individual resources.
One of the most difficult aspects of hosting a digital repository is man-
aging the license restrictions. Today, a number of license families exist that
grant or restrict a broad range of rights regarding the reproduction and
use of a work. As a content provider, it is the responsibility of the digital
repository to provide access mechanisms that faithfully protect a document
according to the license terms supplied by the document’s author. A model
that allows users to set their own distribution terms will potentially prove
to be untenable, since access to documents could become uneven and dif-
ficult to manage.
Organizations hosting a digital repository need to take the proactive
step of defining the license terms under which authors may distribute their
works within the digital repository. This means defining the types of materi-
als the repository is willing to accept to meet its overall goals and mission.
Defining these terms gives the digital repository administrator the ability
to administer documents more easily, since access-management restric-
tions become narrowly defined by the acceptable distribution terms. The
challenge for the institution comes in selecting a set of licenses that allows
authors the freedom to share or restrict their work, while still meeting the
goals and mission of the repository.
Fortunately, digital repository developers can use standard licenses.
Standard rights statements make it easier for users to understand what they
can and cannot do with a resource, and these licenses can be processed by
harvesters, search engines, and computer programs.
The purpose of the repository determines which standard licenses might
be most appropriate. For example, the Creative Commons license family
provides a set of license options that grant the redistribution of a work or

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