I am a preservationist, and part of my mission at the International Slide Rule Museum (virtual at this point unless some of you want to host the collection) is to search out images of slide rules used by persons. One abundant resource is college yearbooks from 1920 through 1972. I have harvested hundreds of photos of students using, or pages depicting, slide rules in math, engineering, and physics. I can't tell you how many hours were wasted going page-by-page through 500-page yearbooks searching for an elusive image. They end up in the People with Slides rule gallery.
https://sliderulemuseum.com/People.htm. There are other pages dedicated to ephemera (magazines and newspapers). We try and honor the people that used slide rules, as their accomplishments are more important than the tool itself.
Since slide rules went the way of the buggy whip in 1972, when most manufacturing ceased (i.e., caused by the invention of electronic slide rule calculators from TI and HP), 50 years have gone by, which is the extent of most copyrights unless the original author has renewed them. We are not talking about significant literary works when it comes to yearbooks. Regarding copyrights from photos, the student yearbook staff produced almost all yearbook photos and content. Always interesting as to what they found most important to capture for future memories. Public Law 102-307, enacted on June 26, 1992, amended the copyright law to make renewal automatic and renewal registration optional for works originally copyrighted between January 1, 1964, and December 31, 1977. There was an amendment pushed by the movie and music people that extended the copyright for works published between 1964-1977 to 95 years. Before 1964, everything is now public domain unless actively renewed.
As a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation, you can get away with copying and scanning materials used for educational purposes. The wholesale publishing of a reprinted book is more complicated, especially when royalties are now involved. Case in point, I have published a series of thirty 550-page volumes containing slide rule instruction manuals and textbooks, in 7 languages, from the ISRM library archives, some as old as 1872 through 1972. This is to provide hardcopy books, in paperback or hardcover, that someone can handle since the originals are becoming too fragile and are now considered in the public domain. There is no one left to ask permission, and for those few companies still around (in Europe and Japan), they have all given verbal permission to reprint their materials. Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing has made it possible to publish books on demand, making it easy for authors to publish independently. I aim to get these volumes into major universities, museums, and libraries for future reference. Not everyone likes digital books. See
ISRM Slide Rule Instructions Library on Amazon.
On a reprinted book where the royalty is only $2-$5 per sale, and your market is only a couple of hundred interested alumni, there is very little profit that anyone will get upset about. In essence, it will be a work of love because of the time spent scanning, weeding, reorienting, and post-processing the scans for each page. will not compensate you for the time spent. Wish them good luck for me. It will be a fun undertaking for the school.
Oh, and if you print-on-demand, if a past student objects to their class photo being there, you can blot out that image and upload the revised file.
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Michael Konshak
Curator
Louisville CO
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Original Message:
Sent: 08-26-2022 10:44 AM
From: Cherish Thomas
Subject: Copyright laws and yearbooks
Hello all,
I am hoping someone can provide me with some information on copyright laws concerning yearbooks. A local, school-affiliated non-profit had the idea to digitize their yearbooks and then sell printed reproduced copies as a fundraising effort for their organization. I am wondering the legality of this. I have heard that yearbooks published before March 1, 1989 are no longer protected under copyright laws, but I don't know how true this is. Furthermore, (assuming reproduction is legal) would there be any legal restrictions on how the profits from the sale are utilized?
Thanks for the help!
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Cherish Thomas Danne
Florence County Museum
Florence, South Carolina
All views and opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer
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