Using Rightsstatements.org for DPLA Collections

Overview

In an effort provide users with simple, standardized information about how items available through Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) can be used, DPLA recommends that all items that are harvested from CARLI Digital Collections into DPLA use one of the 12 standardized rights statements from Rightsstatements.org.

From the Rightsstatements.org website:

"Currently, there is no global approach to rights statements that works for a broad set of institutions, leading to a confusing proliferation of terms. Simplifying the use and application of Rights Statements benefits both contributing organizations, which share their valuable collections online through aggregators such as Europeana and the DPLA, and the people who engage with those collections.

"RightsStatements.org provides 12 standardized rights statements that can be used by cultural heritage institutions to communicate the copyright and re-use status of digital objects to the public. These statements provide a minimum, baseline standard for organizations contributing to the DPLA, Europeana and any other digital aggregator that adopts the RightsStatements.org standard.

"RightsStatements.org establishes the vocabulary that every organization can use to talk to their audiences about copyright and related rights in a meaningful way. It provides the technical and governance infrastructure to support their development and adoption, and ensure their on­going relevance."

Please note that Rightsstatements.org is a collaboration between United States-based and European organizations.  Some of the rights statements presented may pertain to organizations from only one location or the other.

CARLI Recommendations and Procedures for Using the Rights Statements

CARLI participates in the Illinois Digital Heritage Hub. Only collections from CARLI Digital Collections/CARLI CONTENTdm that sign consent forms with the Illinois State Library are harvested for use in DPLA. For collections that will be harvested for DPLA, CARLI highly recommends using both of the two following fields in all metadata records.

Contact Information Field 

A Contact Information field containing contact information for the institution--at minimum an email address and/or phone number. The field properties in CONTENTdm for this field should include:

• Field name: Contact Information
• DC map: None
• Searchable: No
• Hidden: No
• Required: Yes

Information used in this field will depend on how you would like viewers of your items to contact you.  Examples of information for this field: "Please email the Library Archives at archives@abclibrary.edu for more information" or "Please contact ABC Library at either library@abc.edu or 1-312-555-5555 if you have questions about this item."

To add a new Contact Information field and populate every item in the existing collection with the same metadata, please see Adding and Populating a Metadata Field in a Preexisting CONTENTdm Collection

Rights Field

A Rights field containing one of the 11 United States-applicable standardized rights statement from Rightsstatements.org.  The field properties in CONTENTdm for this field should include:

• Field name: Rights
• DC map: Rights
• Searchable: Yes
• Hidden: No
• Required: Yes

The following is an example of how the statement should appear in the Rights field:

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted. This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. In addition, no permission is required from the rights-holder(s) for educational uses. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/

As DPLA and other digital platforms move toward the semantic web and a linked data environment, we anticipate that there will be a wider adoption of (and, required use of) using URIs as values for Rights. Rightsstatements.org and Creative Commons make available their rights statements as URIs. We encourage IDHH contributing institutions to use URIs in the Rights field values in addition to textual statements.

For a full list of all the Rightsstatements.org statements that can be copied and pasted into the Rights field, a CONTENTdm Project Client metadata template, or tab-delimited text file for import into CONTENTdm, please click below.

Additional Reading and Helpful Links about Copyright and Rights Statements

General Information and tutorials on Copyright

Remember: The copyright holder is not necessarily the institution that provides access to the resource, similarly digitization by the owner is not a significant enough transformation to legally justify a new copyright status for the digitized resource. When attributing a rights statement, it is recommended that the statement on an item be clear as to how a user can interact with the resource (use, permissions, reproductions, etc.) and if the statement is describing the original or digital item.

The U.S. Copyright Office

Cornell University tools

Copyright Information Center

Copyright Term and Public Domain in the United States by Peter Hirtle

Librarycopyright.net tools

Fair Use Evaluator

Digital Copyright Slider

Copyright Basics by the Copyright Clearance Center (YouTube video)

University of Texas Copyright Crash Course

Stanford University Libraries' Copyright and Fair Use

University of Minnesota Copyright Services

Digital Library of Georgia: Securing Permission to Digitize and Display Collections Online

Additional Information about Rights in DPLA and Rightsstatements.org

RightsStatements.org—Why We Need It, What It Is (And Isn’t) and What Does It Mean for the DPLA Network and Beyond? 2-part presentation by Emily Gore and Greg Cram
 
DPLA Rights Guidelines