Thanks to everyone who responded to my query over this.

As I feared the situation appears to be that when documents are accepted in lieu the agreement does not include transfer of the copyright (if held) but just of the physical document. [This seems a bit of an oversight to me but  I don't know how much of a disincentive handing over such rights would be to owners, perhaps MLA might be able to consider this now that they have taken over the scheme.] Therefore the copyright remains with the original copyright owner, whoever that may be. Thanks to those who did their best to explain who the copyright holder might be in certain circumstances, to those who sympathised with my problem and to those who recommended Tim Padfield's book Copyright for Archivists (my copy is beginning to look rather dog-eared).

Here are my thoughts on some of the suggestions I received:

1. Use composite images that show a range but not any detail - I have resorted to this before but there comes a point where you need to show an individual document in some detail.

2. Select things that are out of copyright - good advice but we have found it difficult to do as so many of the interesting documents in our collections will be subject to copyright until 2039.

3. Obtain a general licence from the copyright holder rather than having to get permission every time you want to use an image - at Beds & Luton we have decided to revise our terms of deposit to be more specific about this and we intend to write to certain known copyright owners to get an agreement with them; including the representative of the family whose collection, accepted in lieu of tax, prompted my original query. Although this will by no means clear copyright on all the documents we hold it is hoped that we can get agreements for many of our most important estate and business collections which will give us a reasonable pool to draw from for web exhibitions etc.

4. If after you have done your best you cannot trace the copyright holder and you still feel that you need to use the image put on a disclaimer - we will definitely be doing this. With the best will in the world and even if you know who the creator was, it is unlikely that copyright holders can be traced for many documents so we will do risk assessments on the images we want to use and where necessary take the risk but with a clear statement that should a copyright holder come forward we will gladly either remove the image or come to an agreement about it's use.

I will also be contacting a few organisations that I know have put on web exhibitions and ask them how they went about the copyright issue and we will be running a spreadsheet to keep track of what we believe the copyright situation  to be for any image that we use.

Thanks again



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