Dear All,

My suggestion under this rubric was merely because I often receive
inquiries about departmental slide collections (some of which include 2
and a 1/2 inch glass lantern slides!) and didn't want an opportunity to
go by. However, I'd not meant to imply this was the only thing it was
fit for OR that slide digitisation was a problem free area - I think
we're all well aware that it isn't. 

My suggestion that departments/institutions collaborate was specifically
so that a reasonable body of material could be digitised, with the
intention of making it available to other departments, which included
tackling such issues as James observes with regard to copyright. In
other words, this seems to be an opportunity to put together a slide
digitisation project *with sufficient funding* to support the
identification of copyright and possible purchase of appropriate usage
licences.

It is true that "use for teaching purposes" is generally fine/low risk,
but problems particularly arise when you make things widely available.
The Archaeology Image Bank (http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/learning/image_bank/)
took the approach of accepting digitised images whose copyright was
owned by contributors and watermarking them with an acknowledgement and
then making them freely available to anyone who agreed to the terms of
use (not-for-profit teaching), a condition of using the site.
 
Outside this, my understanding is that slides owned by departments
(particularly when taken by members of staff of sites etc.) is that if
the original was taken under a museum photography licence or without a
licence being required then it is fine digitise it and use it, provided
the member of staff (or the department as owner - particularly if it was
taken with departmental equipment) agrees. But I am not a copyright
lawyer! 

The issues James (and others) have raised here are both simple and
complex, the best guides are provided by:

TASI (The Technical Advisory Service for Images), see 'Copyright on
Digital Images' http://www.tasi.ac.uk/advice/managing/copyright.html
(content updated October 2006)

And/or

The Arts and Humanities Data Service, 'Copyright and Other Rights Issues
in Digitisation'
http://ahds.ac.uk/creating/information-papers/copyright-introduction/
(content updated March 2006)

Hope that helps,
Eleanor


-----Original Message-----
From: The Digital Classicist List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of James Cummings
Sent: 12 June 2008 14:32
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [DIGITALCLASSICIST] Project Funding: ENRICHING DIGITAL
RESOURCES (JISC)

OKELL E.R. wrote:
> This JISC funding call must be responded to at institutional level, 
> but there appears to be room within it for the digitisation of 
> Departmental slide collections, provided that such activity is 
> undertaken across departments (e.g. History, Classics, Art, History of

> Art, Mediaeval Studies) or across universities (e.g. several Classics 
> Departments with undigitised slide collections or small collections of

> artefacts converted to digital images or digital 3D models with a view

> to entering these where appropriate into the Archaeology Image Bank 
> http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/learning/image_bank/ or constructing something 
> similar).

Just to note one of the sometimes overlooked problems of digitisation of
slide libraries: copyright infringement.  I know of many academic slide
libraries which contain materials which infringe upon others IPR.  I.e. 
the slide library has taken donations from lecturers who have taken
slides of photos in books, or passed on images which belong to others,
etc.  Just because the objects are Classical, and never in copyright,
doesn't mean the original photograph is not encumbered with someone's 
IPR!   This is why wholesale scanning of some slide libraries is 
difficult -- for each image you need to ascertain its provenance and
copyright status.  Of course, this is all about risk, in this case risk
of civil (remember, copyright infringement itself is not a crime) legal
proceedings by someone/publisher who believes they hold the IPR to the
original image or other work.  While I welcome any loosening of the
copyright laws personally, I'd suggest that any project planning to
digitise slide libraries make it very clear how they are going to deal
with this problem, especially if it is an inter-institutional one.  (And
for my money saying that you'll only make it available to project
partners is not the right answer.)

Just am unkempt thought,
-James
--
Dr James Cummings, Research Technologies Service, University of Oxford
James dot Cummings at oucs dot ox dot ac dot uk