Copyright for Archivists and Records Managers

Citation

Richmond, L.M. (2010), "Copyright for Archivists and Records Managers", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 44 No. 4, pp. 403-404. https://doi.org/10.1108/00330331011083275

This is the fourth edition of Tim Padfield's well known, easy to read and much used text book on the intellectual property entitlement known as copyright. This update and revision of previous editions is still a “must have” for record professionals.

This edition, like it predecessors, is comprehensive, covering the definition of copyright as well as issues such as protection; ownership; publication, exhibition, and performance; use; and copyright in the electronic environment. It also covers special cases of archival material, such as the records of local authorities, religious bodies, and businesses and estate, legal, medical, public, and transport records. It encompasses other intellectual property rights – moral, databases, publication, public lending, performers', artist's resale, confidentiality and designs, trademarks, and patents. The text concludes with the most referred to pages in any archive and records handbook, the charts for the duration of copyright, and some first‐rate model licences. The latter enable the licensing of copyright to an archive or an user and the assigning of copyright to an archive. The duration of copyright charts cover the UK and its other territories and for another 18 selected countries – Australia, Barbados, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Jamaica, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, Turkey, and the USA.

The book is well organised and set out in an exemplary manner which allows all readers to locate quickly the subjects in which they are interested. The index is comprehensive and the small bibliography and extensive list of authorities covering treaties and EU instruments, statutes, statutory instruments, and cases, allow for further reading by those legally minded. The check lists of copyright queries and for publishing are still the most useful guide for any record or information professional to use when dealing with the issue of copyright in published and unpublished material.

This edition of the text has been extensively revised and updated with particular respect to recent decisions of courts in the UK and the European Court of Justice and in the changes in the licensing of Crown copyright material. It also includes advice on liability and a useful discussion on the legitimacy of the electronic supply of copies by archives.

There are many specialists in copyright but Tim Padfield is a specialist in unpublished materials, where he has no competitor. As a record and archive practitioner he knows exactly what concerns records managers and archivists and the demands of those who use their services. This work is invaluable to all who deal with unpublished material and so is of equal value to archivists, librarians, museum and gallery curators, records managers, and anyone who curates current or historical records. It is of equal value to students, researchers, publishers, and other commercial users, as they grapple to understand what they require to do before attempting to reproduce a document, image, or work of art. We all owe a great debt to Tim for sharing with the rest of the information community a lifetime of changing comprehension of that ever shifting entitlement to copy.