Recently Asked Questions (RAQs)

[My library's] community is calling for a member of the staff to have a seat on the board as a voting member. However, I am searching for something in the trustee handbook or DLD regulations that explicitly states this. I am not aware of any library that has ever had a staff member sit on the board as a voting trustee. I'm not inclined to agree because there are multiple knock-on effects they have not contemplated (e.g. changes to by-laws, number of seats on the board, not to mention the ethicality of a staff member sitting on a body that directs hiring/wages/appointments etc.). Of course, local by-laws are also in effect, but those do not state staff cannot be on the board, it's always just been common knowledge.

Any help/advice you could provide about the ethical question, as well as perhaps the legal one, would be very helpful.

Many thanks.

Our museum has an item on long-term loan that is potentially pretty valuable--a 200-yr old document.

We no longer wish to have this item in our custody unless it is gifted to us outright, and no longer on loan.

The gentleman who loaned it to us lives out of state and is considering donating the item to us, but is currently consulting with his attorneys to decide if he should gift the item to us (a non-profit museum) for tax deduction benefits or ask us to return it to sell the item elsewhere.

He is basing this decision on appraisals done by a company that has not seen the object in question in person for nearly 20 years (the length of time it has been on loan to us), and only has photographs to go by. These appraisals were paid for by the potential donor.

Our museum does not do appraisals, nor can we afford one of our own, so we have no way of knowing if the item is worth what he says it is. Is there any potential legal ramification to us if we decide to accept the item into our collection as a donation with the value he has listed (around $20,000)- i.e. in a situation like a tax audit?

Is bonding recommended for small public library director?

Since the 1970s, Villa Maria College has published an annual anthology of student work called Skald (https://www.villa.edu/campus-life/skald/). This anthology is printed and distributed to students, faculty, staff, and prospective students who visit our admissions office. The anthology is also shared with the Columbia Scholastic Press Association as part of their Crown competition.

While we have made the most recent edition available on our college website using the Issuu tool, we would like to digitize the older editions and make them available as a collection in New York Heritage or New York Historic Newspapers. However, as far as I am aware, we have never formally asked the students to waive their copyrights or give us copyright permissions for digital publication as part of the anthology submission process. We certainly would not have asked about alternate format publication copyrights when the magazine was first established as these formats did not yet exist for the general public.

My question then is, would we be within copyright law to digitize and place these magazines online? Villa owns the copyright to the magazine as a whole and the design and layout as the original publisher, but I want to make sure that the copyrights of the individual pieces within the anthology will not supersede our copyright and create legal liability for the college.

My association library is updating our meeting room policy. I've read Ask the Lawyer's previous advice on meeting rooms, as well as ALA's guidance. I have two questions that I can't find guidance on:

1. Private Use: We have only one meeting space that's used for library programs and by outside groups. It's adjacent to office space and a kitchen, so staff may need to walk through the meeting room at any time. When people reserve the room, we do tell them that it's not completely private for that reason so they know what to expect.

Our current policy states that the room "may not be used for private social functions, such as showers, birthday parties, wedding receptions, etc. unless permission is granted by the board of trustees." In practice, we have groups of card players, knitters or private meetings (local businesses, homeowners associations) regularly at no charge. If someone rented the room for a party, we would charge. I see those private meetings or activities as different from parties. Are we able to differentiate between types of private uses of the space?

2. Different fees for residents: If we charge fees, can we have different charges for people in our service area vs. people from out of town? We do live in a tourist area, and people will meet here as a destination. If a local non-profit reserves the room, I'd like it to be free, but if a non-profit that's not located in or serving our area wants to book it, I'd want to charge them. For out-of-town profit-making entities, I'd want to charge more. Can we set whatever fee structure we want?

For context, our chartered to serve area is our town, but we receive a tax levy from a larger area (our school district). We'd consider school district residents local.