How can cultural heritage institutions use new technologies to improve access to holdings for remote users when so much material is protected by copyright and the repository is normally not the copyright owner? Many American institutions have put material online even when they do not own the copyright, after taking thoughtful measures to minimize the risk that this may incur. Others have elected to forego any efforts to control the use of public domain reproductions from their holdings.

Copyright is in essence terribly simple, but in application it can be extremely complex. This article considers what copyright is and how it applies to the materials handled by art librarians in the UK. Copyright is further complicated by perpetual change: there have been repeated reviews of copyright in the UK in recent years, the EU has issued eight directives to harmonise copyright and international bodies have come up with four different principal treaties. The article looks forward to further change around the corner.

Visual resource professionals (VRPs) for years provided high-quality, subject specific, copyright cleared images for teaching and research in higher education in the UK by maintaining slide collections. As the rapid march of technology left the 35mm slide in its wake, VRPs found themselves unable to provide the digital alternative because their hands were bound by outdated copyright law. They began sounding the alarm over ten years ago and have been calling for a resolution ever since, but to no avail. Why have their calls not been heeded? How have VRPs responded to the resulting dilemma, and where does it leave the copyright status of the images used in everyday teaching in the UK?

Despite the overall complexity of United States copyright law, the basics that an archivist needs to understand are relatively straightforward and manageable if taken element by element. This article highlights ten core issues that archivists, both in the US and elsewhere, would be well-advised to study.

This article provides practical first steps and basic resources for tracing copyright owners in archives and special libraries, through a compilation of sources, guidance notes and useful practices. It points out online diagnostic tools and suggests how to find copyright holders through different search streams, when those holders are known, and where the institution holding the work in question is based in the UK.

This article provides an introduction to the use of the Creative Commons licence system, and sets it in a historical, economic and political context. It is written from the perspective of involvement in open educational projects in an arts university that has used the licences. A description of the fundamental features of the licences and their uses is given, together with an outline of how the Creative Commons organisation works and its strategic aims. An assessment of the usefulness of these licences is provided, together with a description of the challenges faced in dealing with low levels of legal awareness amongst academics. Practical advice and sources of further information and guidance are offered to help readers implement the licences locally.

David Sutton was one of the founders of the WATCH project (Writers Artists & Their Copyright Holders) in 1994. In this article he outlines the historical background to why the project was needed, before telling the story of how WATCH developed. WATCH is now the principal source of information about copyright holders anywhere in the world, and it has expanded its remit to include artists as well as literary and other authors.