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Re: Thanks to each one who answered my question on patrons and scanne rs



Well, it's Friday for me as I won't be in the office the rest of the
week.  But I wanted to respond on the query about allowing patrons
to use their own scanners, and especially on the situation
described, where someone wanted to scan your images and then
sell them, and had what seemed to me to be a lotta gall to say he
wouldn't guarantee a credit line.  Here's the door, Mr. Smith,
thanks so much for coming in.  Don't call us, we'll call you.

Actually what motivated me is a couple of requests lately by
different sources; one local, one online, to ask us to provide
"content."  The first was a local guy who worked for a local
geneaology company--lots of those in Utah, believe me--who
wanted to scan all of our mining photos and put them on CD.  At
first he presented it as doing a favor for local historical societies
and museums, all of which had residents displaced from the little
towns of Bingham, Lark, and others when the Kennecott mine ate
their towns.  Fine, we have lots and lots of such photos.  Then it
comes around to how his company wants to set up their scanner in
our reading room, scan all those images, and then put them up for
sale on their website.  We'd have to give them the rights and would
get a 15% fee for each one they sold.

The next was similar in motivation and promises; it was an online
vendor with a proprietary web-viewer of some sort, who wanted to
digitize our film holdings and do the same thing, even down to our
cut: 15% of whatever they sold.  They said they had "content" from
every state but Utah and Alabama or somewhere, and that we were
the best source.  I looked at their site; could never get the viewer to
work, and failed to see how our old home movies of floating in the
Great Salt Lake or skiing at Alta in 1952 would fit on their glossy,
hip-hop, must-be-the-start-of-the-latest-style website, so I told them
no.

I told both of them no; I didn't like the idea of signing us up for
something I wasn't sure I trusted, and besides, why should we get
15% when we could get 100% by doing it ourselves?

Back to work,


Roy Webb, C.A.
Multimedia Archivist
Special Collections
J. Willard Marriott Library
295 South 1500 East
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah   84112
(801) 585-3073  //  fax (801) 585-3976
rwebb@library.utah.edu

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