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Re: Need a Little Help



No one has talked about what text you want to have on your notice.  The amount of text may influence the approach you follow.

I think you are right on target to ask for text that meets copyright and property concerns.  If you are making your copies under the provisions of Section 108 of the Copyright Act, then your copies must follow the requirements of that Act.  It requires that:

>the reproduction or distribution of the work includes a notice of copyright
>that appears on the copy or phonorecord that is reproduced under the
>provisions of this section, or includes a legend stating that the work may
>be protected by copyright if no such notice can be found on the copy or
>phonorecord that is reproduced under the provisions of this section.

Since most archival material does not contain a copyright notice, in most cases you will need to have a legend on the copy stating that the work may be protected by copyright (but note that if your item does contain a copyright notice, you will need to copy, that, too).

The Copyright Management Center at IUPUI has developed two recommended forms of the notice to be used when a notice of copyright is not present on the item (see <http://www.iupui.edu/~copyinfo/copying.html>).  The first states:

>"The work from which this copy was made did not include a formal copyright
>notice. This work may be protected under U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.
>Code), which governs reproduction, distribution, public display, and certain
>other us es of protected works. Uses may be allowed with permission from the
>rightsholder, or if the copyright on the work has expired, or if the use is
>"fair use" or within another exemption. The user of this work is responsible
>for determining lawful uses."

This suggested form of notice includes more information than the law actually requires, but they feel it is helpful (if wordy).  They add:

>If your objective is only to comply with the law, consider using this
>statement: "This material may be protected by copyright."

As for the property side (or to make it easier for a patron to track the source of the copy), they suggest including a statement such as:
"IUPUI University Library, Special Collections and Archives (317) 274-0464."

When I was at the National Library of Medicine, we had our statement as a template in a word processing package.  We would pull up the template and add in the designated spot the name and collection number for the collection.  For example, the completed notice might read:
From the Bobs Tusa Collection, MSS0001, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD.  WARNING: This material may be protected under U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code).

We found it very helpful when trying to answer patron requests to know from where a mysterious copy came.  I know some repositories will also add box and folder number to the identification, but that was too hard for us.  The legend was then taped to the edge of the copier platen.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Peter B. Hirtle
Co-Director                                pbh6@cornell.edu
Cornell Institute for Digital Collections     607/255-4033 (ph)
2B Kroch Library                                   607/255-9524 (fax)
Cornell University                <http://cidc.library.cornell.edu/>
Ithaca, NY  14853
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