Good afternoon.

Has your volunteer been taking photographs of photographs and documents or of your rooms and objects?

I have a difficult issue with a complicated volunteer situation.  We have an individual who volunteers here as a cataloger and researcher. This person also does personal research in our collections, but there have been times when the personal research and the volunteer work overlapped. She also volunteers for another local organization.

During her time here she has taken many digital photographs, which I and my colleague in the archives have permitted, in part believing (which now is apparently wrong) that this was part of her volunteering. For awhile now I have been seeing her use images from our collections which she then attaches the copyright symbol and her name to, which I understand in theory, but am a bit – well, frankly annoyed – because she did not discuss this with anyone here. And I don’t know whether this automatically gives her free rein to use our images. They aren’t anything all that great – some of them have actually been pretty bad, image wise.

Furthermore, she submitted an article for the journal that is associated with our organization – not our journal, but with the church with which we are affiliated – and has put her copyright info on that also, although it is a church publication. The article has to be proofread and edited, and there are several actual typos and some other problems. Her copyright info is also on the images in the article, not just ours but those of the  other organization she is working with. 

I becoming increasingly concerned about this, and now I need some professional help – in more ways than one!  She is a bit of a difficult sort – I won’t go into that – and I am very reluctant to start conversations with her as I either get too many apologies or defensiveness. Neither is fun. 

Any suggestions? Thanks!

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