Digitisation Projects: Copyright

This guide outlines the various options available to those undertaking digitisation projects, considering the entire workflow from planning, hosting, copyright, digital imaging, metadata, software, web publishing tools etc.

What Are The Rights / Permissions Of The Items?

You will need to factor in time to check out copyright situation of your materials. Consider:

Who owns the copyright of the materials? Physical ownership of an item does not mean you own the copyright. Copyright lasts for the lifetime of the author and for a period of up to 70 years after the author’s death. Different content types (e.g. musical / sound recordings) may have different date spans.

Do you need to consider “third party” copyright? For example, a photographer may be the copyright holder of their photographs published within a book. Works may incorporate images, text, film, graphics, music and sound as well other audiovisual material; this all increases the likelihood of layers of rights, many or all of which will require clearance.

How do you want to use materials for which you don’t have copyright? Copyright holders may be happy for you to make available their materials or portions of materials for research / academic use, but not for commercial use.

What if the copyright owner cannot be found? If, after extensive searching, the owner of a copyrighted work cannot be found, this is deemed an “orphan work”. EU and Irish copyright law facilitates making orphan works representing Europe’s cultural heritage available online through digitisation projects: Directive 2012/28/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council on Certain Permitted Uses of Orphan Works

Orphan Works Database
The Orphan Works Database, hosted by the European Union Intellectual Property Office, provides information related to orphan works contained in the collections of publicly accessible libraries, educational establishments and museums, as well as archives, film or audio heritage institutions and public-service broadcasting organisations established in the Member States.

What steps should I take to help mitigate any potential risks? Use credit lines to show the works in which rights are owned by third parties; make it easy for users to understand the terms under which content can be accessed and used by including copyright statements and licences. Please refer to UCD Library’s Copyright guide for more information. UCD’s Corporate and Legal Office can advise on more in-depth copyright queries; please contact them at corporate.legal@ucd.ie