Standardized Rights Statements

Created by Michael Kemezis (Deactivated)
Last updated: Jan 16, 2020
2 min read

As you may recall from the 2019 Member meeting, the CTDA has committed to including standardized rights statements for all digital objects in the repository. Starting February 1, 2020. CTDA Community Members will be able to choose from 5 rights statements from rightsstatements.org or the Public Domain Mark from creativecommons.org to describe the rights status of objects being added to the repository. 

Rights statements are simple, standardized statements which clearly communicate the copyright status of an object in an institution's collection. These statements are designed to be used by cultural heritage institutions to communicate the copyright and re-use status of digital objects in the repository, and allow users to sort and refine searches based on copyright status. Learn more about standardized rights statements and at rightsstaments.org and the Public Domain Mark at creativecommons.org.

In the preparation for introducing standardized rights statements to the repository, we have created educational tools that are freely available for all to review. 

The Connecticut Digital Archive Rights Statement Guide is a resource to learn more about the specific rights statements implemented by the CTDA and offers links to tools and other resources surrounding copyright and digital collections.

We have also developed an Interactive Copyright Guide to help our users begin to think about the rights status of their collections and object. The Interactive Guide is still being fine-tuned, but we invite everyone to begin to explore the interactive guide to learn more about the rights statuses of collections and objects. Feedback on the guide is very much welcomed!

We will be holding two virtual office hours in January to talk about rights statements and answer any questions you have. The office hours will take place on the following days:

January 16, 2020 from 10:00am – 11:00am (Register) 

January 23, 2020 from 1:00pm – 2:00pm (Register)

You can find more information about the virtual office hours on the CTDA Resource Center.

We are looking forward to working with you to add this latest enhancement to the CTDA!