Scope of the policy
This take down policy covers Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), Data Protection Rights (DP), Human Rights and other relevant rights. It applies to digitized material (such as images and catalogues) on the Coventry University website relating to archives held by the university.
The policy also covers descriptions and images relating to Coventry University archive collections displayed on other websites e.g. the Archives Hub; The National Archives’ ‘Discovery’ catalogue; Archives Portal Europe.
Guiding principles
Coventry University is committed to making its archives freely available to users, either at the university library or online. This includes material such as the Lanchester collection, one of the UK’s most important resources for the work and life of engineer, car manufacturer and inventor Frederick Lanchester.
Intellectual Property Rights (including copyright)
Before making material available online, the university attempts to contact intellectual property rights-holders for permission to make the items available. Despite this due diligence and risk assessment, we cannot guarantee to have traced and contacted every potential rights holder. It can be very difficult to identify the rights holder(s) of archive material, which can include unpublished documents or orphan works. We make all reasonable efforts to ensure that rights holders’ interests are respected.
Terms and conditions on the use of digital content on our website (via a non-commercial creative commons license) are also made clear to users at point of access.
Data Protection and other rights
We aim to identify sensitive and/or personal data in our archives that may be covered by data protection and human rights legislation. Where this is the case the items will not be displayed online, or we will redact or anonymize information. We have sampled our archive material to check if there are instances of sensitive or personal items that will require action.
If the information is likely to fall under Data Protection or other relevant legislation we operate an assumed lifespan of 100 years for releasing personal information, as is standard archival practice.
It is also standard not to make available original or digital copies of archives that are less than 20 years old (based on the 20-year rule used for UK government records). The university will comply with this practice if applicable to archive material in its care, but may make exceptions to this if it is felt that IPR, data protection or other rights will not be breached; or permission has been given by the rights holder.