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Re: use of postcards on a commercial website



The issue that a record is owned by a public agency does
not, in itself, make the record a "public record."   In short, I
can purchase or receive by gift, a diary, but copyright to the
unpublished diary may still rest with the creator or his/her
heirs.   My ownership also would not permit me to publish and
sell copies without copyright agreements with the creator or
his/her heirs---and oftentimes they want royalties.

What many librarians and others fail to recognize is that while
librarians have "indemnified" themselves to copyright violations
by insisting that users do their own copying in front of copiers
with large signs that the copier is subject to any copyright
violation, that for archivists and librarians working with
primary research materials, copyright liability falls on the
staff and repository doing the copying.   That we are a
public institution has no effect on the enforcement of
copyright or changes copyrights of materials held in
our possession.

This is a simplistic answer but I begin to wonder every
day if my next staff person should not be an attorney.

Dean


Dean DeBolt
University Librarian
Special Collections and West Florida Archives
John C. Pace Library
University of West Florida
11000 University Parkway
Pensacola, FL  32514-5750
Tele:  850-474-2213;   Fax:  850-474-3338

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