Comments on: Special collections and the public domain

By: Mark Bellamy LL.M.

Mark Bellamy LL.M. — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 19:00:37 +0000

to Veronica Cabrera et.al.
In the U.S. and indeed anywhere where a country has joined the Berne convention, you cannot claim copyright in a public domain works. In all instances, sweat of the brow or plain hard work is insufficient to convey copyright. It fails in its attempted being of trans-formative and a new and different creative work.

By: ragesoss » Libraries and copyfraud

ragesoss » Libraries and copyfraud — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 02:28:08 +0000

[...] http://stevelawson.name/seealso/archives/2009/02/special_collections_and_the_public_domain.html [...]

By: Copyfraud

Copyfraud — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 02:54:25 +0000

[...] Special collections and the public domain (Steve Lawson) [...]

By: Steve Lawson

Steve Lawson — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:03:57 +0000

Phoebe, I think it is entirely possible that curators at such an institution would think it was a miserable cheapening of their collection to see one of “their” photographs on the front page of Wikipedia.

By: Phoebe Ayers

Phoebe Ayers — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 01:45:47 +0000

Nice post! I’m familiar with Sage’s great work on Wikipedia (and am a librarian myself) and one of the things that is understood on the Wikipedia side — but perhaps not on the library side — is that letting the images be used on Wikipedia ensures that they will be seen by thousands and thousands more people than will ever see them in the Huntington or in scholarly books that are written based on those collections. Sage is working on a project to feature Darwin items on the main page of Wikipedia for Darwin day; that single act of featuring a photo on one of the highest traffic websites in the world would expose more people to the image and the work of the Huntington’s conservatorship than almost anything else I can imagine. Yes, the library needs to keep itself afloat with copying fees; that’s fine. But what’s the end goal here?

By: Steve Lawson

Steve Lawson — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 21:55:41 +0000

Veronica, that sounds like a reasonable policy to me. If you look, neither Sage Ross nor I said that a library shouldn’t charge for making that reproduction for a patron, and in fact we both specifically said we weren’t talking about that. It’s dictating what happens after, or charging extra for the right to publish that doesn’t make sense for public domain images.

By: Veronica Cabrera

Veronica Cabrera — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 21:45:36 +0000

It always surprises me when people want work done for free. Just because an item is in the public domain, doesn’t mean that the reproduction process should be free. If people want a high resolution item that needs to be scan, than they have to pay for the process since institutions have to pay their employees doing the work and for the equipment used.

San Jose State Special Collection reproduction policy kind of clears up the issue of copyright for items of public domain, as they do not claim copyright, but physical ownership.

Permission to publish is granted only insofar as the rights of San Jose State University are concerned. The Special Collections Department can only claim physical ownership of the material and has not determined the identity of possible claimants of copyright for many of the materials in the collections. Responsibility for identifying and satisfying any such claimants where copyright is uncertain must be assumed by users wishing to publish this material.

By: Karin Dalziel

Karin Dalziel — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:21:35 +0000

Thanks for a great write up about this difficult topic. I have seen changes in this area- some places are bound to change slower than others, but I do think it’s progressing. :)