The role of the archivist in managing (or not) copyright

Hi, Cristen.

You have done such as great job with your wiki page. Very impressive!

As I mentioned in another post to you, I think you have plenty to talk about with the sections you have already outlined, but I wonder if (perhaps under the fair dealing section) you might consider talking about how archivists interact with users around copyright? For example, I think with the new amendments to the law that just passed, archivists are now required to inform the patron that “the copy is to be used solely for research or private study and that any use of the copy for a purpose other than research or private study may require the authorization of the copyright owner of the work in question,” but it no longer requires that the archivist be satisfied that this is the case. So, before the change, it was (supposed to be) way more up to the archivist to make a judgement call about how the patron was using material...which gets into some uncomfortable areas probably best left for the Archives and Power page.

However, I also know that a tactic for a long time was to sort of turn a blind eye and leave copyright compliance with regard to fair dealing up to the patrons, so there have been a variety of strategies to deal with fair dealing and patron expectations over the years. Anyway, a possibly interesting idea to spend a couple sentences on, if you are so inclined.

Hi Chelsea,

Thanks for your comments. My page is still a bit skeletal at the moment ... more to come. Yes, that's a good suggestion. I spoke to the SFU Archivist about copyright, and he explained what you outline above, that archivists have a legal obligation to inform patrons, but that the onus is on the users to abide by copyright law. As per our discussion over email, I have decided to stick with Canadian law only, as there have been some interesting changes (including the one you mention) to the law that were advocated for by archivists and that affect archival institutions.