Clarke County HS,

The images in your files, which you have lost donor contact for, can likely
be considered abandoned property. Check your state laws on how to proceed
with that process.

Definitely either stop restricting your own files or place a statement in
the donor forms that indicates the donor must maintain their contact with
you periodically, or the restrictions are lifted. I do not know how you
might word that but something seems necessary if you are going to continue
imposing restrictions on yourself.

Most importantly make sure you set policy for checking and recopying such
images in your files, as well as making backups. Recordable media,
especially CDs and DVDs are not permanent or "archival" in any significant
sense, and it is very dangerous to just put them in files and expect them
to be there in a few years.

Have a great Thanksgiving.

Mark Janzen
Registrar/Collections Manager
Edwin A. Ulrich Museum of Art
Martin H. Bush Outdoor Sculpture Collection
Wichita State University
(316)978-5850


                                                                           
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Our historical society has been undertaking a project of scanning photos
that are owned
by members of the community for inclusion in our research catalog (most of
these we
would have never seen if it hadn't been that they get their originals
back).
As of right now the donor/loanee(?) brings in their photos, we scan them,
make a CD of
the scans as well as attach each image to a catalog record (donation form
shown
as 'loaned for scanning'), and return the original photos to the
donor/loanee.  This
way it seems everybody benefits--we have images for our research files, and
the owner
knows if something happens to their originals and CD copy there is a
high-quality scan
in our files.
We make these photos 'Image restricted' so that permission from the owner
is needed for
any publication.
What happens if the original loanee dies/moves away, and we cannot find any
family for
permission?  Can restricted images become unrestricted after a period of
time?
We hate not to have these images, but if all anyone can do is look at them
on our
cataloging, then they do very little good and we have spent time and energy
for
nothing.
This has happened with a large group of portrait photos taken in the 1940s
that
are 'image restricted'.  Most of these 500+ photos are sitting in our files
and the
owner information is long useless.  We don't wish to have it happen again.
Any input would be welcome.  Thanks.  Clarke Co. Hist. Assoc., VA

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