I was planning on posting about some more of the collections at the Library of Congress. When I was looking through the LOC website deciding what I wanted to write about, one of the first things I came across was their paragraph on who has the rights to their digital images. In most cases, it is not the Library of Congress, and it is the responsibility of the person wanting to use the image (you and me) to assess whether the item is available for public use or is under some sort of copyright or other rights.
This reminded me of several recent conversations on Facebook about copyright for genealogists and how important it is to understand copyright. I am by no means an expert, but I wanted to bring this to your attention. In social history and genealogy, we love documents and photos for blogs, written family histories and other uses. Here are a couple of blogs and a webinar that address copyright for genealogists.
Judy G. Russell is a professional genealogist with a law degree and occasionally writes about copyright on her blog.
The author of this blog is not a genealogist as far as I can tell, but shares her experience about being sued for using a copyrighted picture on her blog. Note that some comments have been made on Facebook stating that not all of the resources listed in this blog are necessarily free of copyright–you should always check!
Thomas MacEntee will be giving a free, open to the public webinar on Thursday, July 18 at 9 pm EDT on copyright, sponsored by the Utah Genealogical Association. I don’t see this listed on the UGA website, but you can register for it here.
Google genealogy and copyright for additional resources.
bridgingthepast.com 