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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What I do find is the provisions in the Copyright Law under Section 108b that allows archives to reproduce entire unpublished copyrighted works precisely for deposit for research use in another library or archives.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)
Cornell University                <http://cidc.library.cornell.edu/>
Ithaca, NY  14853
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