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Re: Ethics of Copies
At 02:12 PM 1/31/01 -0500, Erik Nordberg wrote:
I've told him about standard professional
courtesy in "not depositing
copies at other institutions,"
Erik:
You had better tell me about this professional courtesy as well, because
I find nowhere in the Archivists Code of Ethics or in the SAA/ALA
Statement on Access any indication that archives should hoard their
materials.
What I do find is the provisions in the Copyright Law under Section 108b
that allows archives to reproduce entire unpublished copyrighted works
precisely for deposit for research use in another library or
archives. This is about the only time the copyright law allows one
to make a copy of an entire copyrighted work without the permission of
the copyright owner. The copyright law recognizes that having
multiple copies of unique items distributed to other repositories is such
a great public benefit that the normal rights of the copyright owner
should be waived. And it has been quite common for people to
microfilm manuscripts, both medieval and modern, and deposit them in
other libraries for the ease of the researcher. If anything, I
would argue that standard professional courtesy is just the opposite of
what you suggest (even though I know that many institutions flaunt
it).
In short, your unnamed repository should only make copies of the
material if they are to be deposited in another institutional
archives. There is not a "risk that the new museum's archives
will retain the copies and provide reference access as part of their
'public' collections" - it should be a requirement! The first
archives may ask that they be contacted for permission to publish or
duplicate, but this would seem to me to be as far as professional
courtesy needs to go.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Peter B. Hirtle
Co-Director
pbh6@cornell.edu
Cornell Institute for Digital Collections
607/255-4033 (ph)
2B Kroch
Library
607/255-9524 (fax)
Ithaca, NY 14853
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