External Ethics, Values, and Legal Affairs Standards

Guidelines

• ACRL/RBMS Guidelines Regarding Security and Theft in Special Collections
  [Endorsed by SAA]

  These guidelines identify important issues that collection administrators should address in developing adequate security measures and a strategy for responding to thefts. While directed primarily toward special collections in the U.S., many topics are also applicable to general collections and to special collections in other countries.

• Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Special Libraries

  A statement of reasonable approaches to fair use developed by and for academic librarians. It represents a consensus on practice (based on research and interviews) regarding how copyright law and fair use comes into play in relation to core library functions.

• Guide to Implementing Rights Statements from RightsStatements.org

  RightsStatements.org provides a set of standardized rights statements that can be used to communicate the copyright and re-use status of digital objects to the public.

• Principles to Guide Vendor/Publisher Relations in Large-Scale Digitization Projects of Special Collections Materials

  This document sets out nine principles to be considered when negotiating with vendors regarding mass digitization of rare and unique materials.

• Protocols for Native American Archival Materials
  [Endorsed by SAA]

  These Protocols establish a foundation for archival practice in caring for culturally sensitive records, and center Native American communities in the discussions of preservation and access to these materials. They call on the profession to “recognize that the conditions under which knowledge can be ethically and legally acquired, archived, preserved, accessed, published, or otherwise used, change through time.”

• Statement on the Fair Use of Images for Teaching, Research and Study

  This statement sets out six uses of copyrighted still images that the Visual Resources Association (VRA) believes fall within the fair use doctrine in the educational and scholarly context.

Best Practices

• Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia (A4BLiP) Anti-Racist Description Resources
  [Endorsed by SAA]
• Well-intentioned Practice for Putting Digitized Collections of Unpublished Materials Online (W-iP)
  [Endorsed by SAA]

  "Well-intentioned Practice for Putting Digitized Collections of Unpublished Materials Online" (W-iP), prepared by OCLC Research, offers a framework for an assertive approach to digitization of unpublished archival materials whose rights holders are often difficult to identify and contact.