The Behind the Veil project principal investigators worked closely with Duke Libraries' copyright librarians to assess the standing of copyright, ownership and use of the entire collection in order to determine to best publish the collection materials in the Duke Digital Repository and honor the legacies and wishes of the interview participants. The decisions reached in the publication of the collection were done so with arduous thought and interrogation of the materials. The following is a brief summary of the outcomes of this intentional work, understanding that there are deep and sometimes complicated implications of them.
Ownership -
Interviews: Upon evaluating the permission forms distributed to the participants of the oral histories, it was determined that the language established the interviewee and interviewer as joint creators of the interview, with the ownership of the recordings conveyed to Duke University. This ownership transferred the physical recording and content of the recording to the institution but allowed Duke University to ability to make these interviews available online with explicit permission from each individual participant. The ownership status also granted the institution the ability to apply a Creative Commons license to nearly all interviews (see below).
Photographs: Upon evaluating the permission forms distributed to the participants who shared images/photographs from their personal collections with the interview team, to be reproduced as photographic slides, it was determined that the slides are owned by Duke University as physical entities within it's collections. This ownership status allowed the institution the ability to digitize and publish these reproduction slides in the Duke Digital Repository.
Project Records: Upon evaluating the project records within the Behind the Veil collection, it was determined that these materials were created by team members while under the employ of Duke University, and as such the body of project records are owned by Duke University. This ownership status allowed the institution the ability to digitize and publish the project records in the Duke Digital Repository,
Copyright -
Interviews: After assessing ownership status of the interviews, the recordings published in the Duke Digital Repository were designated with a Creative Commons License. The license applied to the interviews is Creative Commons Attribution/Non-Commercial 4.0.
Photographs: As noted above, the ownership of the photographic slides is within Duke University's purview, however the institution is not a creator or co-creator of the original image that was reproduced. The copyright holder of the image is the person(s) who took the original photograph. There is no identifying information within the collection that attributes the majority of the images to a creator, therefore, in most cases the copyright holder is unknown. Duke University has no claim to the copyright of these images.
Project Records: After assessing ownership status of the project records, the records published in the Duke Digital Repository were designated with a Creative Commons License. The license applied to the project records is Creative Commons Attribution/Non-Commercial 4.0.
Use -
Interviews: The license applied to the interviews is Creative Commons Attribution/Non-Commercial 4.0. This license allows for use of excerpts, quotes, and full interviews for any non-commercial publication/work without requesting permission from Duke University's Rubenstein Library. Any/all uses must be attributed to Duke University and can be recorded as - [Collection Content Title], Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South, Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University
Photographs: Please consult the rights statement in the collection item metadata to ascertain the use status of an image within Behind the Veil. These use rights are determined by a number of factors including but not limited to, who the creator is (known or unknown), when the image was capture and if it is in the public domain, and if rights were turned over to Duke University.
Project Records: Project records are metadata only in the digital collection. If a researcher would like access to these records, please contact the Rubenstein Library through this link - https://rubenstein.libanswers.com/index. Reusing these materials will be assessed in consultation with the Director of the John Hope Franklin Research Center and Rubenstein Library Research Services
