You retain ownership and copyright of your digital materials. By submitting copies of your digital records, you warrant that you are the sole copyright owner and have obtained permission from all subjects to share the digital records with Benedictine University. You permit the Benedictine University Archives and Special Collections to preserve, reproduce, and distribute your work. This permission includes the right to modify and/or reformat your material to conform to archival standards, to reproduce your work in any format, to distribute copies of your work to the public, to perform or display the work publicly, to prepare derivative works thereof, and to permit others to do so as well. The Archives is under no obligation to use or publish your contribution.
As the official owner and donor of your submissions, you have control over how your submission is shared and attributed. This section will help you understand your rights as a donor and the permissions options included on our submission forms.
Archives are by and large public records. That means that most of what is contained within the archives here at Benedictine can be accessed by anyone. However, due to the potentially sensitive or personal nature of some submissions, we are offering you the option to refuse to make your submissions available digitally. That means while anyone who visits the archives could request to see the physical or original digital copy, we will not publish your submission online so that it is freely available to the public. If you allow the archives to publish your submission online, we may post it on the Community Responses page of this guide.
You can include your name with your submission, but request that your submission remain anonymous. How does this work?
Attaching your name to record allows the archivist to assign your name as the donor of record to a submission. This is important for copyright considerations and making sure that in using your submission, we are able to obtain permissions from you to use your submissions in different contexts. If you are uncomfortable attaching your name to your submission in any capacity, we understand and support your choice and your right to privacy. Please do include your relationship to the university, and be as specific as you can regarding any restrictions you would like placed on the use and sharing of your submission. See the Restrictions tab for more information regarding how you can restrict access to your submission.
We understand that we are offering the opportunity for you to submit exerperiences that are sensitive or personal, and we want do everything we can to make you comfortable submitting your experiences. Although our terms of use state that the Archives may use and share your submission at our discretion, we recognize that making all submissions freely available may discourage certain community members or types of submissions.
The archives has offered the option for you, as a donor, to restrict access to your submission for a given period of time.* This means that without your explicit permission, the Benedictine University Archives will not share your submission in any form with any individual or corporate body. You will be asked to select a duration for the restriction and you will be given the option to provide a reason for the restriction.
We ask that you as the donor do not restrict your submission arbitrarily and carefully consider the duration of the restriction. If you have any questions or concerns regarding your submission and/or the restrictions, please contact the archives by e-mailing archives@ben.edu.
*All of our topical submissions will allow you the option to restrict your submissions, but the #ForTheRecord prompts may not.
