Thursday, April 29, 2010

Strategy: Well-intentioned practice for putting digitized collections of unpublished materials online

After the March 11 seminar entitled “Undue Diligence: Seeking Low-risk Strategies for Making Collections of Unpublished Materials More Accessible", the speakers, presenters and attendees worked on a document entitled “Undue Diligence: Seeking Low-risk Strategies for Making Collections of Unpublished Materials More Accessible.” Ricky Erway said:
We purposefully called it “well-intentioned practice,” because we do not intend for it to be guidance for crossing all the I’s and dotting all the t’s – nearly impossible for collections of unpublished works, but rather a set of actions that the profession agrees are reasonable.   It is designed to embolden librarians and archivists to be more proactive in providing access to digitized collections of unpublished materials. 
This one-page document provides good advice for institutions without creating a list of rules to be followed. Some of it seems obvious, but are likely ideas that we forget when thinking about a strategy.  Definitely worth reading, bookmarking and telling others about.

1 comment:

Susan D'Entremont said...

Thanks for this, Jill. I work with some institutions that are completely frozen by copyright issues & therefore doing nothing; and others that are completely unconcerned - "We own the physical object, so we can do what we want with it." This document provides a reasoned approach on this issue, and I've already forwarded it to our members. I also love the fact that it is only one-page, so people might actually be able to read it and digest it!