A KSG student approached the desk this week with a question about the permissibility of using a news photo (found on the web). She had reproduced it on the title page of her thesis and wondered if citing her source was enough or if she'd need to determine if copyright restrictions applied.
In the process of getting her a "reasonable" answer, I ended up on the OGC (Office of General Counsel) website.
There's quite a lot of helpful information there, including a set of links to copyright resources from other agencies (including Stanford).
Also worth noting is the wonderfully clear, 24 page document
produced by the OGC specifically for the Harvard community.
The ARL "Know Your Copyrights" (which I posted
about on February 13th) is really aimed at course-related questions. The OGC manual is broader in scope and probably good to have in your arsenal when copyright questions come your way at the desk. And if a patron needs something "definitive" rather than simply "reasonable," you should probably direct him or her to the OGC's "Contact Us" form on the site.
2 comments:
Sue, this is great to know about. What was the outcome of the student's question? Did she have to obtain permission for the photograph?
In a follow-up email, she told me she'd decided to cite the photograph but was not going to pursue permissions to use it in her unpublished thesis. She seemed to have reassured herself that she'd met the criteria (loose as they are) for "fair use" -- and the Stanford site was extremely helpful in that regard. She has the OGC information, too.
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