Recently Asked Questions

Our local public library has started a collection of donated yearbooks from the high school. They requested to receive or purchase new yearbooks as they were published. As the yearbook contains underage students, information about their sports and clubs, we felt that this was protected personal information and should not be publicly accessible. The understood "agreement" when participating in the yearbook implies that this publication is available only to the current school population. People who are not enrolled, employed, or related to a current student have theoretically been ineligible to purchase a yearbook (it really doesn't come up so no formal policy is in place). We feel that it is a mismatch between telling students to not share personal details and then willingly handing over a roadmap of what meetings and practices they will be attending. Thank you!

We at [redacted higher ed institution] are considering digitizing our past yearbooks and storing them in an institutional repository which has the option of materials being password protected or available publicly. We are also considering using these photos in future advertising materials. I was wondering what is the best practice for determining the copyright status of the photographs in these yearbooks? Should we attempt to contact the subjects of the yearbooks to inform them that their yearbook photos will be published in our institutional repository or used in school advertising?

We are putting together a commemorative calendar as a fundraiser to celebrate the library's 90th year. We're using old photographs that the library has and also photographs from old yearbooks. Is there an issue with copyright infringement in doing this?

Recently, our library has been given a collection of photographs that were previously on display in a local business location. These are photos of the customers of the business, many are children. These photos span several decades and are important to many. 

We would like to digitize these photos and make them available via the internet because we believe these to be of sentimental, cultural, historical and academic value to our region and beyond.

The photos were given to our library by the business that had previously displayed them and also produced the photos. What are the issues of rights and permissions raised by making these images freely available online, especially given that many of those in the photos are children? Thanks for your help.

We are in the process of transferring old VHS tapes to DVD and then to a secure internet cloud. 
The tapes are ours ranging from 1988- 2001, we taped specific classes with numerous instructors who were aware of the taping process. Since the tapes belong to us are there any copyright issues in reproducing and offering access to for a fee through our Lakeside Learning Center, or reproducing as a DVD and selling? 
We also have very old cassette tapes of a similar nature. We possess them and instructors being taped were fully aware. 
We would like to offer these as an MP3 for paid access.