An Archivist's Guide to Copyright: Navigating Risk Management

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Description

This book provides a foundation in the law to support a risk-management approach for archivists to use in assessing their own collections and institutional circumstances.

Copyright. The very word can make an archivists eyes glaze over. Fear of copyright can sometimes make everything an archivist doespreservation, reference, digitizationfeel like a prelude to an unintended lawsuit.

Readers learn core parts of the law, how to apply basic tools to address archives-specific issues, and learn effective use of existing exceptions and limitations. The book's goal is to provide archivists with the ability to navigate copyright to achieve the ultimate archival mission: to preserve the broadest array of heritage material and enable as wide a use as possible.

This book:

- Provides a foundation for how to read the copyright law, review legal literature, and navigate authoritative websites and news sources;
- Promotes a clear understanding of the separate rights of authors, owners, and users and how these rights relate to institutional and general cultural archives;
- Clarifies the relevance of the historical landmarks in copyright legislation and case law;
-Outlines the basics of related laws and rights regimes (e.g., privacy, publicity, moral, and cultural property rights) to understand when and how copyright does and does not relate to them;
-Surveys recent legislation and court cases, especially those relating to fair use, sound-recordings, and alternative dispute resolution;
- Guides archivists in a multi-factor analysis to support the decisions needed to manage copyright issues and risks.

Author Bio

William Maher, University Archivist Emeritus, has 45 years of experience as an archivist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, first as Assistant University Archivist (1977-95) and then, from 1995-2022, as University Archivist and Director of the University Archives.

In addition to multiple U.S. and international conference presentations on copyright, since 2000 Maher has regularly taught the Society of American Archivists workshops on Copyright Law for Archivists. Since 2011, he has served as the Head of Delegation to represent SAA at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). At 20 sessions of WIPOs Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights, he has succeeded in making archival practice and the needs of archives users intelligible to policy makers and has helped advanced the archives agenda to obtain an international standard for library, archives, and museums exceptions to copyright.

During his long career, Maher has served as Program Officer related to library and archives projects at the National Endowment for the Humanities (1985- 86). He was elected Vice-President / President (1996-97 / 1997/98) and Treasurer (1991-94) of the Society of American Archivists (SAA); and Secretary-Treasurer and President of the Midwest Archives Conference (1981-85 and 1987-89 respectively) and is currently co-chair of the SAAs Intellectual Property Working Group. In the International Council on Archives (ICA), he was a member of its Executive Board (2011-18) and Chair (2010-18) of the ICAs Section on Archives of Universities and Research Institutions. He holds degrees from Case Western Reserve University, Washington University, and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

As the author of one book and 28 articles, he is a regular speaker on archives and history, cultural heritage, university archival administration, and copyright law.