Background
In light of the adopted digitisation approach|, which states that "the Library is committed to providing open access to its digital collections wherever possible"—the Digitisation Working Group has investigated licenses which would enable the widest possible use of digitised content published through the LSE Digital Library, while seeking to prevent commercial exploitation by third-party publishers.
Initial investigations of Creative Commons led to further work to identify an appropriate license that the Library could seek to adopt. The following policy is based on that work.
Strategic Context
3.1 Develop our digital library so that we are able to … provide access to digital collections which match the strength of our print collections.
4.2 Integrate content, technologies and expertise to provide a 'commons' where researchers from different disciplines can work effectively, either individually or in groups.
5.1 Provide people with information and services in ways which suit their personal preferences.
Principles
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The chosen license should permit individuals to "share, remix, reuse" content which is made available in digital formats via the LSE Digital Library.
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Attribution should be required to identify LSE Library as the source of the content alongside all uses and reproductions.
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Commercial exploitation by third-parties not authorised by LSE Library should be prevented under the terms of the license.
Policy
Where, under UK law, LSE Library holds copyright in digital surrogates, either because the Library owns copyright in the originals or because the works are out of copyright but have been digitised by the Library, the following license will be applied to enable reuse, but to protect the investment of the Library in digitisation by preventing commercial reuse or publication:
Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution—Non-Commercial—Share-Alike (CC-BY-NC-SA|)
In order to mitigate the risk of the Non-Commercial designation preventing reuse by education or charity organisations the Library hereby clarifies the intention behind its use of this license to make it clear that we are not seeking to prevent use by members of such organisations, for example by use in teaching resources.
Where LSE Library does not own copyright in the originals but is seeking or has obtained a licence to digitise and make the digital surrogates available it will seek to obtain permission to apply the above Creative Commons license to content published through the Digital Library. Where this is not possible, the Library will seek to apply less permissive Creative Commons licenses, in line with the rights we are able to obtain over the surrogates.
In all cases:
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The licence will apply only to digital surrogates of reduced quality or resolution ("access" files) for general use (such as use in a presentation or on a website)
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High quality surrogates ("archival" files) will be available on request for demonstrated research use in line with reprographics policies
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Either the license, or a statement indicating the reservation of all rights, should be clearly visible on all object access pages