A family researcher want to publish a set of diaries that my instituion
owns.  He intends on paying for the publication and then would give us 30%
of the proceeds, supposedly.  At first he had this very extensive
proposition regarding the sales and marketing of these diaries, which have
an extremely limited audience...at best. We decided that we preferred not to
be involved with him -- the whole idea seemed far fetched -- I won't launch
into the details here, but just keep in mind that the material in question
is really minor, in the scheme of things, and he was making a great deal out
it.
Anyway, today we received a rather tersely worded email from this man
claiming that the material is in the public domain (it is) and we can't use
copyright issues to deny him (we weren't, as far as I know).  We are a
private institution and it's my belief that if we don't want to give this
man access and allow him to photograph the diaries for publication, we don't
have to.  I hope this doesn't come across as sounding petty, and we could
possibly benefit in the long run (doubtful as to how much, really, given the
nature of the material)...but it just seems like we could be opening up a
can of worms with this guy.
We don't want to do anything that will result in bad PR.  It just seems like
he feels he is entitled to this access, or something like that.  We will be
passing along his recent email to our attorney, but we may just have to
relent. I'm now thinking about asking for a sum up front for the privilege.
We most likely will never publish them ourselves, however, they have been
microfilmed to provide easier access. It's just, well, the principle of the
thing!
Thanks for any input,
Candace Perry
Schwenkfelder Library & Heritage Center

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