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Re: [ARSCLIST] looking for Deed of Gift / Deposit Agreement documents
On Fri, 15 Sep 2006, [windows-1252] Laura J. Ruede wrote:
> My institution may soon seek to form a new agreement with an outside
> entity which placed with us with a large collection of audio and video
> (music) recordings, as well as corporate files. The engendering
> organization, though a nonprofit, has money-making and public relations
> interests which often conflict with our own archival mission, and tends,
> under the current agreement, to drive what we do. We wish to be in the
> driver's seat, so to speak, as to the decisions we make regarding
> remastering of recordings, cataloging, etc.
>
> Can anyone point me to some Deed of Gift or Deposit Agreement documents
> which could serve as examples as we go about crafting our own document?
If you like I can send you a copy of the deposit agreement I negotiated
with the Houston Symphony. I would do things differently these days, but I
believe that while the library should be in the driver's seat, it is
important that the donating organization's maintain some rights other than
copyrights.
As I mentioned, my personal perspective has changed over the years. If the
organization is non-profit, but still generates income, there needs to be,
in my mind, some clear fiscal, or educational benefit for the library.
With many performing organizations now having negotiated with the unions and
now have more clearly defined ownership...I think that a library can be
placed in the position of doing the preservation/restoration work for a
performing organization while the organization could be making money from
the sale of those restored/preserved recordings. A library should have
some rights like being able to charge the donating organization a rate for
access to copies of their own materials or a percentage of any sales...I
am suggesting that the non-profit needs to be willing to pay for the access to their
own materials, or sublicense the library to make money from downloads...perhaps a
difficult perspective for a library to have, but, one I believe that is worth
considering.
While, as a researcher, I find the current restrictions frustrating, I
also believe that as long as those restrictions are in place and enforced, that
it is better for libraries to stay out of the corporate archiving
business.
Karl