Jackie Dooley (OCLC Research) has written an excellent overview post of the 2014 Rare Books and Manuscripts Preconference, which took place June 24-27, 2014, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Posts from both Dooley and Merrilee Proffit (OCLC Research) discuss the plenary talk by Michelle Light (University of Nevada, Las Vegas), “Controlling Goods or Promoting the Public Good: Choices for Special Collections in the Marketplace” [posted slides and text of Light’s talk]. Light presented results from a survey on the rights/reproduction policies of 125 special collections in US research libraries, “to better understand how we, as a profession, handle permissions and fees for those who wish to publish or distributed our content for commercial gain.”
Thanks for highlighting our posts! Another comment about Michelle’s paper: her ultimate objective was to say (paraphrased) “stop charging permissions fees for publication–this inhibits use of our materials, and that’s not in our best interests.” Peter Hirtle from Cornell has been saying this to archivists for years, and Michelle’s fantastic presentation has highlighted it for the rare book and special collections audience.
Note that Merrilee’s post includes a link to the UNLV permissions policy that Michelle updated just prior to the RBMS meeting. It’s an excellent model.