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?

I received a request from a former student of [a local high school] in which her name appears on a yearbook page citing student activities. As the page is part of a whole PDF of the entire yearbook, "removing her name" would require taking down the entire yearbook.

If the library that scanned and uploaded the yearbook to the internet received permission from the high school to do so (the yearbook is tagged as In Copyright) does the student have a reasonable request?

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?

A member asked about a request for the library to provide copies of photos from yearbooks for a class reunion.