Week 2: What Is Digital History?

Wikidot site

WordPress site

What Is Digital History?

• Thomas and Ayers' four characteristics of digital history
• Spiro's Proposed values for digital humanities
• Wikipedia definition [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_history]

• Will Thomas and Ed Ayers' "The Difference Slavery Made" AHR article [http://www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/AHR/]

Copyright?

• Copyright in unpublished works (this covers most material in archives) lasts for at least the life of the author plus 70 years; a term which is longer than it used to be.
  • There is a special exemption for libraries and archives to make digital copies of materials for the sole purpose of preservation.
  • Works published in the U.S. before 1923 are in the public domain.
  • A “fair use” is a use for which you do not have to ask permission. You cannot know in advance whether a use is fair; a judge must determine whether the use was fair after the fact. There are four factors for judging whether a use is fair. All four must be considered; if a use meets one criterion but not another, the use is likely to be judged unfair:
    • the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
    • the nature of the copyrighted work;
    • the amount and substantality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
    • the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

There are several tools to help you discover whether a work is copyrighted and whether a planned use is fair, including:

• The Digital Copyright Slider at [http://www.librarycopyright.net/resources/digitalslider/]
• The Fair Use Evaluator at [http://www.librarycopyright.net/resources/fairuse/]
• Library of Congress's database of copyright registers published after 1978 [http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&PAGE=First]
• Stanford's Database of Copyright Renewals [http://collections.stanford.edu/copyrightrenewals/bin/page?forward=home]
• Digital Image Rights Calculator [http://dirc.vraweb.org/]

Who holds copyright?

• Copyright.com database for published works permissions [http://www.copyright.com/]
• Writers, Artists and their Copyright Holders Database (WATCH) [http://research.hrc.utexas.edu/watch/]
• Locate publishers that are out of business [http://tyler.hrc.utexas.edu/fob.cfm]
• A Guide to Copyrights, Trademarks and Patents in Print and Beyond [https://www.uprinting.com/copyright-guide-trademarks-and-patents-in-print-and-beyond.html]

Securing Permission

• Sample permission letter for GVDHA basic-permission-agreement
• Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org

Locating Public Domain Materials

There are also some search tools that help you discover items that you are free to use and re-use:

• Google Advanced Search at [http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en]
• Wikimedia Commons at [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page]
• The Internet Archive at [http://archive.org]

Permissions Logs

For your use:
RTF
PDF

To record copyright for Greenwich Village Digital Archive:

• Use the form
• Edit the Google Spreadsheet.

Lab

• Archives and Manuscripts databases accessible through Bobst
  • Max Eastman search in ArchivesGrid
  • Washington Square Park search in ArchivesGrid
• Photographs and other Visual Images
  • • Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
    • flickr Commons
    • Wikimedia Commons
    • artStor
    • Corbis-usually not free
    • Getty Images - usually not free
    • Digital Public Library of America

• Videos
  • Google Video Search
  • Paley Center