Library Repositories and the Documentation of Rights Leslie Johnston, University of Virginia Library NISO Workshop on Rights Expression May 19, 2005

Digital Collections University and College libraries all possess digital collections, whether acquired by license or created locally by the library or by faculty. It is not so simple that some collections are copyrighted and some are in the public domain; rather, all collections have varying copyright status, varying access restrictions, and varying use restrictions, whether assigned by contract (such as limiting access to the university community) or desired by the holding institution (e.g., limiting to non-commercial uses). To document, manage, preserve, and deliver wildly varying digital collections, libraries are creating both Institutional Repositories and Digital Library Repositories.

Institutional Repositories The most common Institutional Repositories are those where faculty supply the content and the metadata, including any information about rights (if known), for preservation and delivery. Content most often includes articles, books, theses, and dissertations, and the research data used to support them.

Digital Library Repositories A Digital Library Repository is one used to manage, preserve, and deliver locally authored, cataloged, and mounted digital content. This content may include images, digital surrogates of books, finding aids, electronic records, GIS data, social science or scientific datasets, audio, video, and websites. What is collected includes media files, metadata, and context, which can be as simple as documentation of the relationships between the content objects or as complex as collecting the look and feel and applications needed to deliver and use the content.

Example – Digital Images in a University Library Digital Content Repository The University Library acquires digital image content (metadata and media files) by license (contract) with vendors and other institutions, as well as creating its own digital image collection. This collection must be managed, preserved, and made available for use to the university's community, keeping in mind any and all copyright and use restrictions required by contract or required/desired by the University for its own content. The collections will all be managed using a single repository, and delivered through a single user interface. Any search that a user performs will include results that are highly variable in terms of copyright status, license terms, access limitations, and use limitations.

Collection Example One The Library acquires digital images and metadata from a vendor. The vendor holds copyright for all of the metadata, and some but not all of the images (but are themselves licensed to redistribute them), and, while allowing access to the metadata and thumbnail images, requires that access to the larger media files be limited to the university community. The uses of the images are also proscribed to non- commercial uses.

Collection Example Two The Library acquires digital images and metadata from a museum. The museum holds copyright to the media files and metadata, and allows the University to make the collections publicly available. The use of the images, however, is proscribed to non-commercial uses.

Collection Example Three The Library creates digital surrogates of photographs, books, and manuscripts in its collections. Some of the original physical items are in the public domain, while others are not. The Library holds the copyright to the media files and the metadata, but must respect any copyright restrictions inherent in the original objects, and must respect any use restrictions that might have been placed on material upon deposit by original owners (such as for manuscript material) or that are desired by the Library, such as limitations for non- commercial use.

Collection Example Four The Library creates slides to be digitized and direct digital images from books for use in instruction. The Library holds the copyright to the media files and the metadata, but must respect any copyright and use restrictions inherent in the original images from the publications, which is usually unknown. The Library includes these images in its collection, limiting access to the university community under an interpretation of fair use and setting restrictions for non-commercial use.

Collection Example Five The Library acquires digital images and metadata from a faculty member's personal collection. Some images were created by the faculty member (personal photography), some images may have been acquired by license (such as for a publication), and some images may have been acquired off the web. The copyright status of some of the images is unknown. Some images were licensed to the faculty member for a specific use, which may not extend to collection and redistribution by the Library. The Library includes these images in its collection, limiting access to the university community under an interpretation of fair use and setting restrictions for non-commercial use.

Digital Images in a University Library Digital Content Repository For all of the examples: –Documentation of copyright, licenses, and access and use restrictions should be spelled out, documented, and encoded in the metadata for this collection. –The documentation of rights should be communicated through the repository interface. –Any user groups to whom restrictions apply must be identified, and users must be identifiable as members of all the groups that they belong to. –Policies that correspond to access restrictions should be potentially be enforced programmatically through the repository.

How a Rights Expression Standard Could Help Consistent encoding of rights and licenses potentially makes it easier to associate objects with their rights and licenses in a standard way. Consistent encoding of rights and licenses potentially makes it easier for users to compare rights and licenses and understand variations. Consistent machine actionable encoding of rights makes it potentially easier to enforce access rights programmatically. Other programmatic rights enforcement is often difficult or not desirable. Consistent encoding of rights make it easier to share and aggregate objects and be assured that rights and licenses will accompany objects and be enforced as appropriate. This is key in developing trust relationships between repositories.