Ancestors

Toot

Written by John Overholt on 2025-01-21 at 21:58

Houghton is in the process of digitizing a collection of 19th century photographic portraits of African Americans. More than 100 are online so far. https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/repositories/24/resources/12085/digital_only

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Descendants

Written by Sensible Crone on 2025-01-21 at 22:02

@overholt The Sheldon in StL had a marvelous exhibit of such 19th portraits, maybe of St Louisans specifically. This was a few years ago. So beautiful. Also, The Sheldon, though a music hall, is also a great museum.

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Written by John Overholt on 2025-01-21 at 22:15

@susiemagoo I grew up in Kirkwood, but it sounds from Wikipedia like the museum part postdates me.

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Written by Jessamyn on 2025-01-21 at 23:46

@overholt This is a neat project! Do you know offhand if Harvard is claiming copyright of the scans it's making of what I presume is public domain material or if they're just making them available? I clicked around what I though was a reasonable amount of time before asking you and couldn't find it stated anywhere.

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Written by John Overholt on 2025-01-21 at 23:58

@jessamyn We have a blanket HL policy that we claim no additional rights in public domain material that we digitize. (I won’t say you’ll never find something in our maze of systems that says otherwise, but the policy overrides that.) https://library.harvard.edu/policy-access-digital-reproductions-works-public-domain

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Written by Jessamyn on 2025-01-22 at 00:41

@overholt Thanks for that. I'm never sure with stuff in archives if there might be other restrictions on the collections. Appreciate it.

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Written by karen coyle on 2025-01-22 at 01:17

@overholt @jessamyn I’ve never understood how you can claim rights in a mechanical copy. I know that archives do, but I can’t imagine that it would survive a legal challenge. That said, yeah for HL’s sensible approach!

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Written by Cory Doctorow on 2025-01-22 at 03:38

@kcoyle @overholt @jessamyn You can't, in the US, though it doesn't stop people from claiming copyright on verbatim reproductions of public domain work.

In the UK it's a little muddier, but still just as gross.

Only creative work attracts a new copyright. Making a faithful duplication that by design does as little interpretation as possible does not give rise to a new copyright.

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Written by Matthew Murray 🦇 on 2025-01-24 at 23:54

@pluralistic @kcoyle @overholt @jessamyn My understanding is that it does vary by country and that, for example, Italy's Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape places restrictions on how things you think would be public domain can be used. https://www.mondaq.com/italy/copyright/1289608/extraterritorial-application-of-the-italian-cultural-heritage-code-the-court-of-venice-orders-ravensburger-to-cease-the-marketing-of-its-puzzles-with-the-image-of-the-vitruvian-man

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