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Post #8: Important Discussions of Copyright and Digitization in Archival Spaces

 

This week’s discussion in Temple’s Archives and Manuscripts course concerning the protocols of copyright in the archival realm is one that many a researcher might find vital. As a traditional historian, I tend to utilize physical books and monographs. However, I often utilize more contemporary research materials for my papers such as online articles, audio, and countless of other digital sources to input into my papers and assignments. I, like many other researchers, would like to avoid being guilty of copyrighting another’s work and or utilizing a work when it should be restricted or was wrongfully, whether intentionally or unintentionally, made to be used publicly. In Dharma Akmon’s Only With Your Permission: How Rights Respond (Or Don’t Respond) to Requests to Display Archival Materials Online, it is disclosed that many archives try to take multiple measures to ensure that works with complicated rights issues are not digitized to mitigate potential cases of copyright.[1] Though this is no doubt a precautious measure and a safe one, having a more abundant arsenal of sources allows more research opportunities for researchers. This being said, in an ethical sense, it would be better to safeguard the records, collections, and other items in archives whose creators and donors wish for the access of said material(s) to be restricted. Though there are many primary steps (both legally and common-sense wise) in ensuring that lawsuits do not occur against an archive due to the misuse of digitized records, there can always be a new method in which someone may purposefully or accidently copyright another work. In this case, reviewing the protocols and resources available via archival websites and throughout the web, these occurrences can certainly be thwarted or taken care of in the most ethical sense possible.


[1] Dharma Akmon, Only with Your Permission: How Rights Holders Respond (or Don't Respond) to Requests to Display Archival Materials Online, Archival Science 10 (2010): 46.

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