Introduce Balance in Rights Management

Librarians and archivists often make extremely conservative assumptions about the risk involved in copying unpublished materials. Many institutions have time-consuming, overly-cautious procedures to ensure vigorous compliance with copyright law—sometimes without a full understanding of the law or of the negative impact their procedures have on achieving their mission. If access is the goal, then any unnecessary restriction is counterproductive.

The digital age has induced still more caution, creating the ironic situation where, just when users ought to be getting improved access, they're not even getting as good access as they could through interlibrary loan, in-person visits, and analog copying. The result constrains research and limits what should be entering the scholarly record.

This activity was initiated as a response to suggestions by staff from RLG Partnership institutions. The idea was refined at the 2009 RLG Partnership annual meeting and an advisory group has been formed to provide guidance.

Developing streamlined, community-accepted procedures will establish a community of practice that will cut costs and boost confidence in our ability to increase visibility of and access to unpublished materials.

Scope: This activity will examine strategies for analyzing and developing acceptable risk behaviors and recommend practices for libraries and archives.

Audience: While a variety of experts will be involved in the activity, the beneficiaries will be archivists, special collections librarians and museum curators. The outcomes will also be of interest to administrators, general counsels, and researchers.

Methodology: We anticipate holding an invitational seminar, broadcast in real time, that collects imaginative thinking by experts from archives, special collections and the law.

Likely topics include:

• The nature and extent of the problem and why change is necessary
• Copyright law relating to unpublished materials
• Undue diligence – the difficulty and impact of following the rules
• Throwing out the gauntlet – who exactly is being sued and what is at stake?
• Examples of taking chances
• Balancing risk and benefit to society

Outcomes may include:

• Guidance on identifying low-risk collections
• Community practice--a small number of things that we agree constitute due diligence
• Good disclaimers
• Good take-down policies
• Good terms for deeds of gift

• Ricky Erway (lead)

Advisory Group:

• Joanne Archer, University of Maryland
• Jeanne Boyle, Rutgers
• Eli Brown, Cornell
• Sharon Farb, UCLA
• Elizabeth Smart, BYU
• Jenny Watts, Huntington
• Diane Zorich (Museum Consultant)
• Ricky Erway, Merrilee Proffitt and Jennifer Schaffner, OCLC Research

Project lead: Ricky Erway

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