How does copyrightMD help users of digital resources?
It is incumbent on the users of materials to assess the copyright status of an item and to understand whether use is permitted by law or if it may be necessary to acquire permission. To make this copyright assessment, users need to have certain information about the item. In the case of digitally reformatted materials in particular, this information may be inherent in the context of the archive or collection in which the physical items reside. But the digitization of works often removes that context, and connections to the original works may weaken over time. CopyrightMD provides users the information necessary, to make an assessment of copyright status. Historically, however, the recording of copyright-related information is often not part of the tradition of cataloging or metadata creation in libraries, museums, and archives and thus this information has not been readily available to users. To complicate matters further, since 1978, copyright law no longer requires a notice of copyri
