On Copyright and Use of DW Images
These digitized collections are accessible for purposes of education and research. While Digital Watauga may host digital items on its website, it does not necessarily hold the copyright on them. For many of the items at Digital Watauga, the original donors still retain intellectual property rights over the items, and most of our donors enforce those rights aggressively.
All items on Digital Watauga’s website are freely available for personal, non-commercial, and educational uses ONLY. Examples of such uses include:
* An individual perusing Digital Watauga and downloading an image to their personal (non-commercial) desktop or device for personal research purposes;
* A student using an image from Digital Watauga in an essay submitted to a professor or teacher as part of completion of an assignment in a course, so long as that assignment is not otherwise distributed to others outside the context of that course;
* An individual researching their family genealogy and printing out an image to include in their personal notes that are not distributed to others;
* An individual printing out an image to hang on the wall in their private (non-business) home;
* An individual wishing to share an image to their personal (non-commercial) social media in the interest of increasing awareness or knowledge of the history and literature of Watauga County and the High Country (see below).
For social media uses, we request that you link to the image at Digital Watauga, rather than screenshotting or downloading the image and reposting it out of context to one's social media. As a matter of good scholarly practice, the Digital Watauga Project also requires that any personal, non-commercial, and educational re-publication or re-distribution of its materials, including all personal blog and social media uses, contain a full citation using the citation information provided in the metadata page for that item (at a minimum, title of the image, name of the creator if known, and the name of the collection) and referencing that the material is used by courtesy of the Digital Watauga Project.
FOR ALL OTHER USES, any person or entity wishing to publish, reproduce, or distribute items from the Digital Watauga Project will be solely responsible for determining if the item is still protected under current copyright law, and for obtaining any other permissions and paying associated fees that may be necessary for the intended use. You may request permission to reprint, republish, etc., by completing the form found at THIS LINK and emailing it to DigitalWatauga@gmail.com. Please be sure to include the Identifier for each item, which can be found in the metadata on the object page for each item.
PLEASE PLAN FOR AND ALLOW A MINIMUM OF TWO WEEKS FOR TURNAROUND ON ANY IMAGE USE REQUEST.
Examples of such uses include the following:
* Reprinting an image in a book, magazine, newspaper, commercial webpage, film, exhibit, public presentation, etc., regardless of whether the intended use is to derive profit;
* Reprinting an image to hang in one's commercial establishment, including spaces owned or operated by nonprofit entities;
* Utilizing or incorporating an image into a product that is being produced for sale or distribution to others, whether or not the proposed operation is to derive profit.
IF YOU HAVE ANY DOUBT, ASK. Digital Watauga is authorized by many of our donors to negotiate permissions and fees on their behalf. If we are not able to do so, we will put you in touch with the donor to negotiate permission directly.
We are also eager to hear from any rights owners to the materials found at Digital Watauga, so that we may obtain accurate information. Upon request, we’ll remove material from public view while we address a rights issue. Parties who have questions or who wish to contest the use of specific works may contact the Digital Watauga Project at digitalwatauga@gmail.com