Copyright Policy

The Visual Resources Library is committed to supporting the curriculum and research needs of the Department of Art History. Resources and materials are provided for use by the University community and are to be used in accordance with the provisions of the 1976 United States Copyright Act as amended, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, the Image Collection Guidelines of the Visual Resources Association, the Educational Fair Use Guidelines for Digital Images (developed by CONFU: Conference on Fair Use), and the University's copyright guidelines, unless licenses or agreements exist which allow for exceptions. The library makes every effort to comply with copyright laws.

All images made by, or purchased for, the Visual Resources Library become part of the collection and are available for educational use and study only by faculty and students of the university. Educational uses include projecting slides or digital images in the traditional face-to-face classroom, creating course review websites that are accessible only to enrolled class members, and as thumbnail images in the collection database. Any images posted to the Internet (including on course websites, Blackboard, or PowerPoint or Keynote presentations posted online) or the image database will be password protected.

No duplication of department collections holdings is permitted and department collection holdings may not be used for commercial purposes. Patrons agree not to reproduce or publish, use in television, videos, websites, or any Internet-based medium any part of the department's collection images without express written permission from the copyright owner.

Only one copy per format of an image from a copyrighted work will be made.

When digital images of acceptable quality are available from a commercial source for a reasonable price, every effort will be made to purchase the images and appropriate licensing.

In keeping with copyright fair use guidelines, the Visual Resources Library will not produce or reproduce images for personal use. Normally, only images needed for classroom use and research or teaching purposes at UST will be processed and added to the visual resources collection. No image will be processed unless it is also added to the visual resources collection.

In those cases where there is no indication that there are separate copyright owners for plates or figures, apart from the copyright owner of the text of a book, not more than 10% of the images per copyright owner will be produced as digital images. The visual resources library reserves the right to decline orders for scanning copyrighted material if, in its judgment, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of copyright law. The visual resources library does not transfer any reproduction rights and assumes no responsibility for patron violation of copyright.

Copyright policies also exist for images contained within the UST Art Collection and the American Museum of Asmat Art @ UST collection. You may contact the curators (UST Art curator, Asmat Art curator) for further information.

The following tools be of use in determining Fair Use:

Digital Image Rights Computator (DIRC)

Fair Use Analysis Tool (University of Minnesota)

Copyright Crash Course (University of Texas - Austin)

Download a PDF of this policy here.