PROJECT - rrlc.org...The presentation that we’re going through today was adapted from and courtesy...

PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR DIGITIZATION PROJECTS

The presentation that we’re going through today was adapted from and courtesy of the Public Library Partnerships Project. The project was spearheaded by the Digital Public Library of America with the other partners that you see on the screen. The goal of the project is to provide digital skills training for public librarians and also connect them with state and regional resources for digitizing, describing, and displaying their content online. This material applies to all library types, and also to museums, historical societies, archives, etc.

INTRODUCTIONS

• WHO ARE YOU?

• WHY ARE YOU HERE TODAY?

• WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON?

Before we look at our agenda for this class, let's do a quick round of introductions. If you could answer these questions when you introduce yourself, that will help me and also the rest of the class get to know you a little.

Modules

• Planning for Digitization

• Selecting Content

• Understanding Copyright

• Using Metadata

• Digital Reformatting

• Promoting Use

Here are the modules that we will cover today. Some have more content than others, and we can be flexible with how much time we spend on a module depending on your interest level. I’d like this to be a very informal class where we do more discussion than just me talking.

We’ll aim to cover the first three modules before lunch, but we may get into the Metadata discussion if we move quickly. I want to reserve time at the end for additional questions, or discussion of your particular projects and issues you have.

EXAMPLES OF DIGITAL COLLECTIONS

Before we get started, let’s look at couple examples of digital collections so we’re all thinking in the same vein as we go through this.

DEFINITIONS

• Metadata - a formal scheme of resource description, applying to any type of object, digital or non-digital. Traditional library cataloging is a form of metadata. from Understanding Metadata, NISO, http://bit.ly/1yMOPJx

If you’ve already been involved in digitization projects, you’re probably familiar with metadata. But if you haven’t, it’s important to understand what it means. This definition is from the National Information Standards Organization. We can think about metadata as the catalog record for our item - but instead of describing only the original item, we also include information about the digital reproduction, including technical information.

http://bit.ly/1yMOPJx

PLANNING FOR DIGITIZATION

Planning for digitization is our first module. Making a plan and following your plan is the foundation of project management for digitization projects.Planning takes time, and a well thought out plan will help you complete a successful, high quality project within the timeline you determine and using the resources that you’ve been approved to use. Sounds like a cliche at this point, but it’s not as simple as just digitizing things and putting them online. There are many steps between sticking something on a scanner and making it available online. We’ll talk about some of the criteria of a good project in this module.

When you’re thinking about a digitization project, the first things that may come to mind are time and money. And believe me, you will need both of those things in some form. But when you’re planning a project, you need to think about the ultimate goal.

You want to create a useful collection that is worth the time and money you’ll put into it. As you’re forming the initial idea in your head, ask yourself some questions. Is this material useful to the intended audience? Can you make it accessible in a way that users will get what they need from it on an intellectual level?

THE PROCESS

Let’s talk about the process of digitization so that we can begin to form a plan. We can simplify the project management process into four areas to begin the discussion:

THE PROCESS

• SELECT

Selection of material that will be part of the digital collection.

THE PROCESS

• SELECT

• CATALOG

• REFORMAT

When we say catalog an item, we mean create create a metadata record. The metadata will help make the item accessible in various ways, and will include information about both the original item and the digital reproduction. That’s why I have catalog and reformat here on the same slide - you need info from the reformatting process to fully catalog the item, and for me the two things happen in tandem.

THE PROCESS

• SELECT

• CATALOG

• REFORMAT

• SHARE

And in our overly simplistic view, the final step in the process is sharing what you have created so that people can use it.

ACCESS & DISCOVERY

• online

• fully described

• intellectual access

• useful to searchers

When we say make it accessible, we’re talking about accessibility not only of the digital content, but also the intellectual content.

By digitizing and sharing something that was previously not discoverable, you’re contributing to the larger historical record, adding to the corpus of knowledge.

By taking the time to fully describe the items, adding the appropriate intellectual access points (like subject headings), you’re making the item or collections discoverable and useful to the people who might be looking for information.

PRESERVATION

Preservation is also something you need to think about when planning for digitization. You may want to digitize an item to help preserve it - if it’s old and falling apart, letting people use a digital surrogate would save wear and tear on the original item. Or some items are just not going to stand the test of time - like old newspapers, and digitizing them is the only way to preserve the intellectual content.You should also think about digital preservation - the management, storage, and sharing of the digitized resources over the course of time. We will talk a little about it later, but we could have a whole class just on digital preservation.

PARTNERSHIPS COMBINE FORCES

Plan for partnerships, if it makes sense for your library or your collection. There are likely other organizations you could work with that may have complementary collections, or expertise or other resources to make your project better. There are great examples of local digitization or digital humanities projects that are based on partnerships. I’m thinking specifically of the Sibley Watson project.If you’re in a public library, you might partner with your local historical society on a project. Academic libraries and archives can partner with other departments on campus, and with students who can help do some of the work as part of their class or for credit.Partnerships can yield additional material for the digital collection, and also additional time, money, or manpower. For example if you partnered with us (RRLC), we can provide time and manpower to help get your project onto New York Heritage or one of the other statewide projects that we contribute to.

Questions to think about

Let’s talk about some of the issues you’ll need to consider as you begin planning your digitization project:

WHERE?

• Where will your digital project live?

• host your own

• partner host it

• Where will the master copies of the digitized files live?

• host your own

• cloud

• what about digital preservation?

Consider where the finished digital project will live. When I say the finished project, I mean the online presentation of the digitized items and the associated metadata.

WHERE?


• host your own

• partner or vendor host it


• host your own

• cloud


Does your organization have a digital collection management system already, and online access for end users? Or will you work with a partner to host the digital collection - such as NY Heritage? You could also work with a vendor to host your project, although that’s not ideal. There may be times when you want to do that - when you don’t have access to contribute to a project like NY Heritage, or want something very specialized, like a fancy way to display books or something.

WHERE?


• host your own



• host your own

• cloud


The master or archival digital files are the high quality digital files that are uncompressed and lossless, such as a TIFF file. Best practice is to create the digital file one time with the highest quality you can manage or makes sense, and then use that master file to many any additional copies of that file you might need. That way, you’re scanning an item once and not touching it again for that purpose. As part of the project management and planning, you’re going to want to estimate how much space your files might take up so you can make decisions about where to store them

WHERE?


• host your own



• host your own

• cloud


You could host your own digital files on an internal server or hard drive. Some people still save their images to discs like DVDs, but I don’t really advise that. You want to keep multiple copies of your files on some sort of spinning media that can be checked for file integrity. Discs just sit there until you need to use them, and you don’t know what you’re going to get when you put it in your computer and look at the files. Cloud storage is an option, and with things like Amazon AWS or Glacier, you get a pretty affordable storage option.What about the storage and long-term preservation of the digital master files? You will have spent time and money creating the digital files and the associated data, and that should be preserved for the long term.

WHEN?

• deadline?

• when can you start?

• how long?

• what about your partners?

If you have a deadline, you can work backward from there to form a timeline. You’ll need to estimate how long the various portions of the project will take. If you’re not sure, it’s better to over-estimate. Or talk to colleagues who may have experience and get their perspective.If you’re working with partners, you need to account for their time and schedule constraints.

HOW?

• in-house staff?

• partners?

• vendor?

• buy equipment?

Who will do which part of the project? If you’re working with partners, is it a good idea to create a memorandum of understanding? Does everyone have the tools and equipment they need, or do you need to purchase? Will some or all of the work be completed by a vendor? We will talk about that in more detail in a later section, but it is important to research vendors and get quotes (for cost and timeline) in order to plan.

WHY?

Understand why you want to digitize materials because those whys will help you make decisions about where, when and how you do things.

PLANNING RECAP

• The Process

• Access & Discovery

• Preservation Issues

• Partnerships

• Where, When, How & Why?

SELECTING CONTENT CRITERIA

As we move into the next module, think about those questions and how the answer might vary depending on they type of material that you select for the project.

SCOPE, SIZE, & CAPACITY

Make conscious decisions about what you’re taking on, and to make sure you don’t bite off more than you can chew.


• Clearly define the project’s scope

• what is the focus? subject? material type? owner?

• are you excluding anything?

• What size project is right for you?

• consider a pilot project

• are your expectations realistic?

• What is your facility’s capacity?

• for in-house projects, will you share the equipment with others?

• does your vendor have any projects in line ahead of yours?

Defining the scope of your project will give you clarity on what should or should not be included.











What is the focus of the project? You could develop a subject-focus collection - one room school houses in Monroe County. Or a material specific collection like Photographs (but hopefully this will also have a secondary focus on subject or something else that will limit it - not every single photograph that your institution owns). Or you might have a collection of materials put together by one person, or even a collection of archival or manuscript material by a single person, or a family. It depends on how your collections are organized and what makes sense.Make conscious choices and distinctions. Don’t dilute the story you’re telling through your digital collection by including things that are tangentially related.











Consider also the size of the collection that you want or are able to create.











Each item that you digitize and create metadata for, it has a time and possibly dollar cost attached to it, so you need to consider how much you can handle. If you honestly have no idea how big a collection you want to do, or how long or how many resources it would take, consider doing a very small pilot project of 10 items or so. That can usually be accomplished by a single person and will give you a benchmark on things like how long it takes to scan, create metadata, the size of the digitized file, etc. Make sure your expectations are realistic - it isn’t realistic to assume that a single volunteer could process 1,000 items in a month when they work for 4 hours a week.











Consider the capacity of whatever facility or equipment that will be used for digitization.











If you’re doing the work in-house - consider where the equipment is located, if others will also be using it. Will the same people be doing the digitization and the creation of metadata? If not, you need some kind of plan for how the staff can work together to get both done. If you’re working with a vendor, get a clear timetable for when your work is anticipated to start and finish. Ask to be updated monthly or on a timetable that makes sense. We’ll talk more about working with vendors in a later module.

UNIQUE & ORIGINAL

When making selections for what to include in your collection, focus on items that are unique and original whenever possible.

UNIQUE & ORIGINAL

• choose unique, not ubiquitous items

Select items that are unique. If your library has 100 different photos of the same historical building, you probably don’t need to digitize all of them. Choose the one (or a few) that represent the building and show different angles of it. Creating a digital collection is about selection and curation, not putting everything you have online just to digitize it.

UNIQUE & ORIGINAL


• use original items, not copies

It may seem obvious, but it’s worth mentioning - you should select original materials whenever possible because they will yield the best digital surrogate. You would be better off digitizing an original photograph than a copy that was printed in the newspaper. You’d get a better digital image from an original letter rather than a photocopy of the letter.

UNIQUE & ORIGINAL



• newspaper clippings are problematic

Newspaper clippings are hard to digitize for various reasons. Most of the time they aren’t in the greatest physical shape, especially if they’ve been mounted into a scrapbook or something like that. They won’t produce a very clear digital copy - you’d get a better image from the microfilm, if it exists. Many times, with clippings, the article has been separated from the newspaper title, date, and page number, and you need that information to make a determination about copyright. We can talk a little more about newspapers in the copyright section.

UNIQUE & ORIGINAL



• newspaper clippings are problematic

• don’t duplicate what’s already digitized

Do some research before you digitize something that’s been published like a book or newspaper, or something from a famous or prolific creator. There is a TON of material already digitized in sources like the DPLA, HathiTrust, the Internet Archive, Google Books, the Library of Congress. It doesn’t usually make sense to digitize something that’s already available online, but there are some exceptions. Talk about NYSHN and Fulton History.

PHYSICAL FORMAT & SIZE

Match your items to the equipment you have for digitization.


• are there any formats that you or your vendor aren’t able to digitize?

• AV formats, microfilm, oversize materials, 3D objects

Match your items to the equipment you have for digitization. Might not be a good idea to include microfilm in your digitization project if you don’t have a microfilm scanner. If this is your first digitization project, keep it simple and work with one or two formats - 2D images and text-based materials are the simplest and can be scanned on a flatbed scanner, which most organizations already have access to.




• Some formats a higher priority?

Some projects may place a higher priority on certain types of times, and that is something that you can decide when you’re working on the scope definition. You might place a higher priority on colorful and visual items like photographs or postcards if you’re creating a collection that needs to be visually interesting, or to showcase library or museum material to a donor, for instance.




• Some formats a higher priority?

• Include time to transcribe handwritten or audio items

Some formats, like handwritten text materials and audio recordings, really benefit from another level of description - transcription of the words into machine-readable and searchable text. You can certainly put up images of letters and digitized audio recordings without a transcription, but those items will be much less useful to students and researchers without that extra level of intellectual access. Don’t underestimate the amount of time it takes to transcribe handwriting and audio - anyone who has squinted over a cursive handwritten letter from the 1800’s can attest to how long it takes to transcribe.

QUALITY

The quality of the original item will impact the quality of the digital reproduction.

QUALITY

• Be wary of fragile & brittle items

Fragile and brittle materials will be difficult and time consuming to scan. You may want to choose those types of items for your project because creating a digital version will reduce wear and tear on the original, but the scanning process itself will cause damage to the item and should be considered carefully.

QUALITY


• Compare items with similar content

In many cases you may have one or more items with similar content - if one of those items is in better shape than the others, choose to digitize that one. It will save the other items form further damage, and will result in a better digital reproduction.

QUALITY



• Discuss fragile item handling with your vendor

If you do work with a vendor and have fragile items, talk to them about their procedures for handling and digitizing those items. Ask for written confirmation of their procedures, and any policies they have concerning fragile items. Many vendors reserve the right not to digitize items if they are in very poor condition, so you should be aware of that ahead of time.

QUALITY




• Evaluate the clarity of items

We’ve already said this, but it’s very important - choose items that are clear - fuzzy or out of focus images or materials with fading text will not produce a very good digital reproduction. When you create the digital reproduction, your aim should be to produce a copy that is as close to the original as possible, so using editing tools to manipulate the scanned image is not good practice. That type of work also adds processing time to each item and therefore isn’t the most efficient way to complete a project.

QUALITY




• Evaluate the clarity of items

• Avoid damaged items in most cases

Damaged items present another set of challenges beyond being fragile or brittle. Damage can include more innocuous things like being faded, ripped, missing portions. More serious types of damage can include damage from pests, water damage, mold, etc. If you see these types of damage in items in your collection, it’s indicative of a larger problem. Either the damage happened in your facility, and you need to re-evaluate your environmental conditions, or the items came in damaged, and you may need to re-evaluate your donation or acquisition policies to exclude damaged items. In any case, damaged items do not make great candidates for digitization, and in some case may present health hazards.

WHAT DO YOU KNOW?

What you know about an item is just as, if not more, important that the visual representation of it, especially with images.

Let’s look at this image. What do you know about it by looking at?There’s water, trees, what looks like a bridge, maybe a waterfall since it’s rushing water. Do you know where it is, or the context of the image. What is meaningful about it? On its own, we have only a minimal understanding of this image based on our assumptions and our prior experience. We can probably also agree that this isn’t the greatest photo - it’s a little blurry, and it has lost a little clarity in blowing it up to screen size here.

http://nyheritage.nnyln.net/cdm/ref/collection/p277601coll3/id/356

View of the Genesee River at the Middle Falls in Letchworth State Park during the Flood of 1972

Now, you can see the title of the image, which is only one field of the metadata record, and this has already provided much more meaning and context than just looking at the image.This image is part of NY Heritage and comes from SUNY Geneseo Milne Library’s “Flood of 1972, Genesee River in Letchworth State Park” collection. The reference URL to the item is in the lower left corner.All of this to say that if you have items in your collection that you don’t know anything about, those items are not good candidates to add to your digital collection. You won’t be able to fully describe those items or provide enough context to make them meaningful to anyone.

http://nyheritage.nnyln.net/cdm/ref/collection/p277601coll3/id/356

Next, let’s look at how the organization of our content impacts selection.First off, here is a situation I like to call “we have some stuff”

Next, we’ve got a collection that looks like it might have some kind of discernible organization.

ARRANGED & DESCRIBED

Finally, in the main image here, we have a nicely processed collection, most likely arranged and described pretty well.Which one of these scenarios do you think will be easier to work with for a digital collection? Right. And a well-described collection will yield better metadata, because a majority of the intellectual work has already been done.

RIGHTS & ACCESS

Always consider rights and access issues when you’re selecting content for your project.

RIGHTS & ACCESS

• Consider rights as part of the selection process

It should go without saying that if you don’t know the rights to an item, it’s probably not a great candidate for digitization.

RIGHTS & ACCESS


• Follow your institution’s rights management guidelines

Be clear on your institution’s approach to rights management. For some larger institutions, you need to get approval from the copyright office or a similar department in order to to digitize and/or put things online.

RIGHTS & ACCESS


• Follow your institution’s rights management guidelines

• Strive for maximum openness

Consider how restrictive rights may impact a user’s ability to access the collection. For example, there may be a case where an university has the right to digitize and make something available to their staff, faculty, and students. The collection may be particularly use for a certain discipline or class, but it will take some technology to keep the collection restricted from viewing outside the university.We’ll talk more about copyright in the next module.

SELECTION CRITERIA RECAP

• Scope, Size & Capacity

• Unique & Original Items

• Physical Format & Size

• Quality

• Knowledge About the Item

• Arranged & Described Material

• Rights & Access

UNDERSTANDING COPYRIGHT

The third module is Understanding Copyright. Copyright is the most intimidating part of digitization in general, for most people. Unless you’re a larger institution with lawyers or copyright experts at your disposal, you may feel pretty alone when it comes to dealing with copyright. You’re not - we are all struggling through copyright issues, but there is a method to finding your way through the maze.

STANDARD DISCLAIMER:

I am not a lawyer

I am a librarian. And many of the people you’ll find doing this work are just like me - you learn as you go and you strive to know enough about the law that you feel comfortable with the digital projects you work on.This is not meant as a substitute for legal advice, or a comprehensive review of the nuances of copyright law. This is meant for copyright beginners, and I hope that this module will give you more confidence in evaluating the copyright status of your content, and a better understanding of the issues and risks involved.

GOAL

• After this module, you should feel confident

• assessing the copyright status of an item

• identifying content for digitization

• creating useful rights and access metadata

And I also want to warn you - this section is dense. We’ll try to follow a coherent structure and thought process, but we’ll have to pop out to address and define different issues.All of this will be available, with the notes, in PDF - so you can go over this again when you’re actually working with collection materials.

DEFINITIONS


• Copyright - A form of protection provided by the laws of the United States for "original works of authorship”… "Copyright" literally means the right to copy but has come to mean that body of exclusive rights granted by law to copyright owners for protection of their work. from the US Copyright Office list of definitions http://bit.ly/2gWYsES

Let’s go back and add a definition to our list. Copyright - protection granted to original works of authorship. Copyright has come to mean a suite of rights that protect original works from unlawful duplication, distribution, publishing, etc. You often hear the terms copyright and rights used interchangeably when talking about digital items.


http://bit.ly/2gWYsES

WHY DO WE HAVE COPYRIGHT?

Copyright law is about balancing the protection of creators with the public interest of access to works.


• to protect creators and publishers

Copyright law protects creators and publishers, giving them exclusive say in how their content is reproduced and distributed. Copyright protection is governed by terms, which limit the amount of time that a work is protected.


• to protect creators and publishers

• ensure that the public has unrestricted access to content (eventually)

Copyright terms are limited in order to ensure that the public will eventually have unrestricted access to content. As the term of copyright expires on a work, it passes into the public domain, and there are no restrictions.

COPYRIGHT IN DIGITIZATION PROJECTS

Copyright is important no only for those who are digitizing content, but for those who are using the digitized content.


• Copyright helps project managers determine

• whether to digitize something

• level of risk that digitized content might pose

In the context of what we’re talking about today, copyright will help you decide if an item should be digitized, and if it poses any risk. Many institutions are willing to accept some level of risk, and we’ll talk about that in a minute.


• Copyright helps project managers determine

• whether to digitize something

• level of risk that digitized content might pose

• Copyright helps end users determine

• what they can and cannot do with the content

For end users, copyright - or the Rights Statement as we’ll talk about in the Metadata section - will tell users what they can do with the digitized content - can they make their own copy, or add things to the copy, or distribute it to others? End users probably don’t think about copyright as much as information professionals do, and we need to make it as easy as possible for them understand how to use the content responsibly. We’ll talk more about good ways to do that later on.

EVALUATING CONTENT

Evaluating content for copyright issues should be part of your selection process, as we talked about briefly in the last module.

EVALUATING CONTENT

• How many of these questions can you answer about your content?

• Do you know the creator(s)?

• When was it created?

• Was it ever published? If so, by whom?

• Any external info on copyright restrictions (such as a deed of gift)?

• Have contact with donor to ask if any copyright restrictions apply?

These are some questions you should try to answer during your item selection process.

EVALUATING CONTENT







Knowing the creator is a big help in determining if the item is under copyright protection. Without knowing the creator, you can still determine if it’s protected using other criteria, but it may be harder.

EVALUATING CONTENT







Date of creation is probably the most important piece of information you need when evaluating for copyright. Since our current copyright laws are based on periods of time following date of creation, this is very important. Not to say that no one has ever digitized something without knowing the date - that certainly happens, and we can talk about that in a few minutes.

EVALUATING CONTENT







When we ask if it was published, we mean something different than you might expect. When you think of “publishing” something, you might imagine a book that is written by an author, then printed, the marketed and distributed by a publishing company or agency. And that certainly is a published work. But in the context of copyright, a published work is something broader. Publishing really means to make available or distribute to the public. We’ll talk more specifically about the publishing aspect in a few minutes.

DEFINITIONS



• Deed of Gift - The deed of gift is a formal and legal agreement between the donor and the repository that transfers ownership of and legal rights to the donated materials. from the Society of American Archivists http://bit.ly/2h3yCzr

Before we talk about the next question, let’s add another definition to our list. Deed of gift. Does anyone want to define that for us?



http://bit.ly/2h3yCzr

DEFINITIONS



• Deed of Gift - The deed of gift is a formal and legal agreement between the donor and the repository that transfers ownership of and legal rights to the donated materials. from the Society of American Archivists http://bit.ly/2h3yCzr

A deed of gift is a legal agreement that transfers ownership of materials from one entity to another.



http://bit.ly/2h3yCzr

EVALUATING CONTENT







Back to our list of questions, do you have any info on the copyright restrictions - say something that was recorded in the deed of gift? If you don’t already use deeds of gift at your institution you should. It’s best practice to have a donor sign a deed of gift that clearly addresses copyright issues, among other things. Best case scenario is the donor signs over all copyright to the institution, but some donors won’t want to do that. You can include a provision that allows for digitization and online reuse of the content.

EVALUATING CONTENT







And if you don’t have a deed of gift specifying these things, can you at least get in touch with the donor to find out about copyright issues or potentially ask them to sign off on the digitization and online reuse?

Answering these questions will help you determine if and how an item is protected by copyright.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

The low hanging fruit in any digitization project are works in the public domain. And what does it mean to be in the public domain? Works in the public domain can be used freely without any risk of copyright infringement. This is good because you can go ahead and digitize to your heart’s content. But be aware that users aren’t required to attribute the digitized image to you if they use it - it’s good practice, but not a legal requirement.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

• rights expired or forfeited

• copyright has expired

• failed to renew

• copyright owner makes the work public domain (CC0)

• copyright law does not apply

• published the work without a copyright notice

• copyright law does not apply to or protect that type of work

So how do works become public domain? In the simplest of terms, works in the public domain include works where the rights have expired or been forfeited, or works to which copyright law does not apply. Let’s look at this more closely.

PUBLIC DOMAIN


• copyright has expired (pre-1923)

• failed to renew





Items published before 1923 are in the public domain. Remember our discussion a few minutes ago about what constitutes publishing in the eyes of copyright? Distribution to the public. Let’s pause for a second and play a game called Published or Unpublished.

PUBLISHED OR UNPUBLISHED?

It’s not a real game, we’re just going to sort these items into the two categories. But I do have chocolate for everyone so it’s like you’re already winning.Likely published UnpublishedBooks LettersPosters Most photographsBrochures Postcards with writingPamphletsBlank Postcards**copyright law affords the most protection to unpublished, creative works. We’ll talk about that in more detail after we finish with public domain.

PUBLIC DOMAIN



• failed to renew (1923-1963)





So getting back into our public domain list - sometimes people fail to renew their copyright and works become public. This is a fun one - works published between the years of 1923 and 1963 are governed by the 1909 Act, which provides an initial copyright protection term of 28 years, and an additional 28 years of protection if you renewed your copyright with the US Copyright Office. Which many people did not know that they needed to do.You can investigate and pursue these failed to renew works at the copyright office, but it takes some research and it just might not be worth your time.More fun info:When the 1976 Copyright Act was passed, Congress added 19 years to the renewal term, bringing it from 28 years to 47, for a total of 75 years. Copyrights already in their renewal term got the extra 19 years automatically. Copyrights in their initial 28-year term on 12/31/77 got the 47-year renewal term as long as the copyrights were renewed in their 28th year.

PUBLIC DOMAIN








Next on our list of rights expired or forfeited - copyright owners who purposefully place their work in the public domain. Has anyone heard of the Creative Commons? Let’s hear from them because they can describe it better than I can:https://vimeo.com/13590841So CC0 is Creative Commons license that purposely puts works in the public domain.You may have noticed that I am using lots of images in this presentation, but most of them are not cited or attributed. That’s because they are all CC0 with no attribution required. I got them on a site called http://pixabay.com and it is very useful for presentations. Check it out some time.

PUBLIC DOMAIN






• published the work without a copyright notice (1923-1977)


Moving on to situations where copyright law does not apply. A work is published without copyright notice between 1923-1977. Law requires that works published during that time display some type of copyright mark, such as

• © 1961 Fred Astaire

• Copyright 1961 Fred Astaire

You needed to use these notices to make your copyright valid if it was published between 1923-1977. If you didn’t, work isn’t technically “published” and copyright law does not apply, so check your items - if it was created and published (as defined by our earlier classification), and does not bear some sort of copyright notice, it’s in the public domain).

PUBLIC DOMAIN







• works created by federal government employees as part of their job

Documents created by federal government employees as part of their job;In some states, documents create by state governments are public domain, but this is a murky area. It may not surprise you that in New York State, the question has been subject of court cases and seems to favor copyright protection for NYS documents.

PUBLIC DOMAIN, CONTINUED…

• if you digitize something in the public domain, you should not claim copyright protection on the digitized content

• however - if you make a creative addition to a public domain work - mustache on the Mona Lisa - that new work is protected

UNPUBLISHED WORKS

from http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

Copyright law is designed to offer the most protection to unpublished material, especially creative materials. Look at the top row of this chart in particular. Unpublished materials like the correspondence we discussed earlier gets a longer term of protection – the life of the author plus 70 years. That means you add 70 years to the year that the creator passed away and only THEN does the item fall into the public domain.

http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

Let’s review some examples

1950 “Elect Bonner Democrat for Governor” poster.

Was it published?

Is it in the public domain?

CourtesyMontanaHistoricalSocietyResearchCenterviaMountainWestDigital Library

1950 “Elect Bonner Democrat for Governor” poster.

Was it published?


CourtesyMontanaHistoricalSocietyResearchCenterviaMountainWestDigital Library

Yes it was published because it’s a poster. What does it say in the tiny print at the bottom left??? It’s not a copyright notice. So, yes, this item in the public domain because it was published between 1923 and 1977 and it has no copyright notice.

1833 letter from Sophia Hawthorne to her mother

Was it published?


Courtesy of The New York Public Library

No it wasn’t published. Yes, it is in the public domain because it is more than 120 years from creation (and more than 70 years since the creator’s date of death).

1920 Ward Line Mexico cruise pamphlet

Was it published?


Courtesy of the Smithsonian.

Yes, it was published because it’s a pamphlet distributed to the public. Yes, it’s in the public domain because it was published before 1923.

Drawing by Marshall Davis, an artist for the Defense Visual Information Center, of a card game at Ramey AFB

Was it published?


Courtesy Department of Defense via NARA.

No, it wasn’t published we don’t think because it’s a drawing (although it’s kind of hard to tell). But YES! It’s in the public domain because it was created by an employee of the federal government.

1964 menu from the automated restaurant on wheels, New York Central Railroad

Was it published?


Courtesy Museum of the American Railroad via the Portal to Texas History.

A menu!!! This is a different kind of item we haven’t talked about yet. Is it published? Yes. It is distributed widely to any and all passengers on this train and beyond. Is it in the public domain? Look at the bottom for that copyright notice because 1964 is between 1923 and 1977. Lucky for us, that sentence at the bottom is about the placement and use of waste receptacles on the train. No copyright notice. So yes, this is in the public domain!

OPTIONS FOR COPYRIGHTED WORKS

So what if you want to digitize something that’s protected by copyright? You have some options.


• Wait to digitize it

• Items published 1923-1963 that renewed copyright might enter public domain in 2019

• Get permission from the copyright holder

• Due diligence checklist http://bit.ly/2ga8UqH

• Orphan works - digitize at your institution’s discretion

You can wait until the item enters public domain to digitize it. For items published in the 1923-1963 time window, if the copyright holder did file the renewal paperwork with the copyright office, the material will be protected until at least 2019.

http://bit.ly/2ga8UqH







Try contacting the copyright holder for permission. Sometimes the owner is willing to let you digitize the item and make it available. You should follow a due diligence checklist when contacting copyright owners. There is a good checklist in the book Managing Digital Audio Video Resources for Librarians by Matthew Mariner. It’s on Google books at this link.








When you can’t identify the creator or publisher of an item after research, you have an orphan work. For example, photographs - something you will likely find at every library and cultural heritage institution - often fall in the orphan works category. Maybe there’s a date and some minimal information written on the back of the photo, but no mention of the photographer, and no real way to find out. That’s an orphan work. Consider your institution’s comfort level with risk. Many institutions digitize orphan works, but some do not. It’s a decision that you have to make.


FAIR USE OPTIONS

Fair use is another part of copyright that we often talk about in libraries and educational institutions.

FAIR USE OPTIONS

• Fair use is a set of guidelines, not law

• Use gets tested in court cases - rulings have implications for other organizations

• Summaries of Fair Use cases from Stanford U http://stanford.io/2gk3sot

Fair use is talked about in Section 107 of the Copyright Law - but it’s not actually a law. It’s a set of guidelines describing the ways that copyrighted material may be used without the permission of the copyright holder. We’ll look at the guidelines in just a second.

http://stanford.io/2gk3sot



FAIR USE OPTIONS



• Summaries of Fair Use cases from Stanford U http://stanford.io/2gk3sot

The guidelines get tested in court cases - someone will sue someone else for copyright infringement - and the argument is made that the copyrighted material was used fairly, under these guidelines. The court decisions decide fair use on a case by case basis, and the rulings set precedent and have implications for other people or organizations that may have been using copyrighted material in the same way.




FAIR USE OPTIONS



• Summaries of Fair Use Cases from Stanford U http://stanford.io/2gk3sot

If you’re interested in looking at Fair Use cases to see how the courts rule, Stanford University Libraries put together a nice Summaries of Fair Use Cases at the link here, but we don’t have time to really look at them now. We will talk about one case briefly in a moment.




FAIR USE GUIDELINES

Fairuse=YES Fairuse=NO

Purpose Nonprofitortransformative

Commercialorduplication

Nature Factual Creative

Amount Smallamount�(relativetooriginal)

Completeworkorheartofthework

Market Doesn’thurtmarket�fororiginal

Hurtsmarketorthereisapotentialmarket

Courtesy Mary Minow via Peter Hirtle

This is a chart showing fair use guidelines in a simple way. Fair use is non-commercial, doesn’t duplicate a work in its entirety, and doesn’t hurt the market for the original. Looking at this chart, it seems that digitization doesn’t fall under fair use. However, there are times when it can. This is not the only scenario where you can use fair use to digitize, but it’s a prominent example:

The Author’s Guild v. Hathitrust, No. 1:11-cv-06351-HB (S.D.N.Y., October 10, 2012).

• preservation • access for disabled patrons • full-text search capability

Libraries that provided Google with books to scan were protected by fair use when they used the digital scans for three purposes: preservation, a full-text search engine, and electronic access for disabled patrons who could not read print versions. The Author’s Guild lost this case. The court found that three purposes for which the books were scanned were transformative, and they did not find any evidence of financial harm.

RISK ASSESSMENT• Assess your institution’s

comfort level with risk

• risk-averse

• less cautious

• Mitigate your risk

• documentation

• due diligence

You need to be clear about your organization’s tolerance for risk.



• risk-averse

• less cautious


• documentation

• due diligence

Some institutions are risk averse - they don’t want to risk being liable for any damages and are very cautious about what they digitize. Other organization are less cautious and take the approach that they will take down any material that they find out was actually copyrighted.



• risk-averse

• less cautious


• documentation

• due diligence

If you follow the guidelines and thought processes that we’ve talked about, you can mitigate your risk. Document everything you’re doing, and that includes getting sign offs from donors when they gift material to your organization, and documenting your process for attempting to obtain permission to digitize, even if the copyright holder never respond to you. Do your due diligence in trying to find the copyright holder and get permission.PETER HIRTLE email example

WHAT COULD HAPPEN?

• Take down notice (official)

• You must act expeditiously to remove, or disable access to the material

• Take down request (not official)

• Consider the legitimacy of the request

• Push back if your institution has a higher tolerance for risk

So, say you do digitize and orphan work, or an item where the copyright holder has been unresponsive to your attempts to get permission. What could happen if the copyright holder shows up later?

WHAT COULD HAPPEN?






You could receive a take down notice. This is an official, legally binding notice, and you must take down the copyrighted material.

WHAT COULD HAPPEN?






Or you might receive a take down request, which is just that - a request. It’s not legally binding and you should consider the legitimacy of the claim before you take the material down.

WHAT COULD HAPPEN?






And if you receive a request that’s not legally binding, push back if you can. We’re here to provide access to information and cultural heritage materials, and we should stick up for the rights of our patrons to have access. I’m not advocating that you go around infringing on copyright, but don’t be so risk averse that you never digitize anything. It’s fairly rare for a library or cultural institution to get a take down notice or request- places like the NYPL and Hathitrust only get 10 a year and they don’t all turn out to be valid.

RIGHTS & USE STATEMENTS

• Use metadata to clearly indicate

• rights status

• whether/how it can be used

Once we have digitized something, we want to make it as easy as possible for users to understand the copyright status and how they can use an item.

RIGHTS & USE STATEMENTS

• Use metadata to clearly indicate:

• rights status http://rightsstatements.org/en/

• whether/how it can be used

Rights status - is the work protected by copyright? Is it an orphan work?Use statement - describes if and how someone can use the digitized material.rightsstatements.org is a joint project of Europeana and the DPLA - with the help of people from all over the world, they have developed a list of 12 rights statements that can be applied to your digitized items. They list clearly what each statement means, and it is very likely that one of the statements will apply to items in your collection.This is very important work - this helps us all have a common language to use in our metadata, and will make it much easier for other cultural orgs and the end users to understand rights and use materials responsibly.

http://rightsstatements.org/en/

http://rightsstatements.org/en/

RESOURCES & TOOLS

• Digital Copyright Slider http://bit.ly/2hgG0KL

• Copyright Genie http://bit.ly/2hgJLj9

• Copyright Term and the Public Domain (from Cornell) http://bit.ly/2gaLhyw

• State Copyright Resources (from Harvard) http://bit.ly/2gCgj3e

These are some great resources to help you as you’re looking into copyright for your items.

http://bit.ly/2hgG0KL

http://bit.ly/2hgJLj9

http://bit.ly/2hgJLj9

http://bit.ly/2gaLhyw

http://bit.ly/2gCgj3e

http://bit.ly/2gCgj3e

RESOURCES & TOOLS

• Copyright (from Hathitrust) http://bit.ly/2gaQd6m

• Fair Use (from Stanford) http://stanford.io/2h646oj

• Copyright Basics (from U Michigan) http://bit.ly/2gTUUFE

• When Works Pass Into Public Domain (Lolly Gasaway, UNC) http://unc.live/2gaUHK5

And here are some more.

http://bit.ly/2gaQd6m

http://stanford.io/2h646oj

http://bit.ly/2gTUUFE

http://bit.ly/2gTUUFE

http://unc.live/2gaUHK5



COPYRIGHT RECAP

• What is copyright

• Evaluating content

• Public domain materials

• Unpublished works

• Options for copyrighted works

• Fair Use

• Risk assessment

• Rights & use statements

• Resources & tools

We have covered a lot of copyright info and I don’t expect it all to stick. But you’ll have this presentation as a resource to move forward with.

PROJECT - rrlc.org...The presentation that we’re going through today was adapted from and courtesy...

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Transcript of PROJECT - rrlc.org...The presentation that we’re going through today was adapted from and courtesy...