The OSU Music and Dance Library has a sizable collection of recorded student musical performances encompassing individual students’ recitals and ensemble performances. The collection exists on a variety of media, some of which is deteriorating, is anticipated to deteriorate within the foreseeable future or is in an obsolete format . The Music and Dance Library is working with the Copyright Resources Center to explore options for preserving these artifacts of scholarly and creative activities at The Ohio State University and making them available for research and education.

As part of our initial information gathering, we collaborated with Alan Green and Sean Ferguson at the Music and Dance Library to craft an informal survey that would be sent their colleagues at other institutions on managing rights issues for similar collections. Based on the results of this survey, we found that other institutions are facing the same questions and conundrums and many survey participants indicated that they are also in the early or exploratory stages of developing or implementing plans for managing their collections of recorded student musical performances. While this appears to be an area of interest for many libraries, it will require further development and study within the profession before significant trends and community practices begin to emerge.  Though we are still gathering information, we have a few initial thoughts to share.

Music copyrights and licensing. Working with recorded versions of student performances may implicate one or both of the copyrights in musical recordings: the copyright in sound recording and the copyright in the underlying musical composition. A copyright owner of a musical composition has exclusive rights over the reproduction, adaptation, distribution, public display, and public performance of their work. A copyright owner of a sound recording has the exclusive rights over the reproduction, adaptation, distribution, and public performance of their work by means of a digital audio transmission. The licenses available for use of a musical composition or sound recording, and the entity responsible for granting the license, will depend on the manner in which a particular exclusive right is invoked. OSU has existing site licenses with a performance rights organization (PRO), but further evaluation is required to determine if and how these licenses might apply to the Libraries’ collections. Additional licenses may be necessary for some uses of the recorded performances, such as streaming.

Use of waivers. Institutions may clarify ownership of the sound recording through the utilization of a student performance license or waiver, but this is not something that OSU has employed in the past. Under OSU’s current Policy on Patents and Copyrights, students who are not employees of the University retain ownership in many of the copyrightable works they create. A student performance waiver may be an effective way to manage certain rights in the future, but this is not something the Libraries can implement independently; it would require additional partnerships and changes to institutional workflows. For example, introducing a performance waiver at OSU would require (at a minimum) collaboration with the School of Music and the Office of Legal Affairs.

Use of public domain works. Some musical compositions performed in the sound recordings may be in the public domain, which could reduce some of the rights questions for those particular recordings. However, ascertaining whether a particular composition is in the public domain presents its own logistical challenges. For example, it may be difficult or impossible to determine retroactively what arrangement of a piece was used if the information is not included in the metadata or description. Additionally, assessing the copyright status of individual recordings would be immensely time consuming and impracticable for large collections.

Moving forward. We are exploring options for reformatting these collections and ways that they may be made available in a useful format for research and education. One of the big questions we still need to tackle is whether (and how) we could legally make the collections available for streaming, and what access limitations or licensing agreements might need to be in place for that to happen. Statutory exceptions and licensing agreements are two options we will continue to investigate.

Managing multiple layers of rights is just one of the immediate challenges posed; staff and technology resources will also significantly impact the viability of this project. For our part, we hope to identify a feasible copyright solution to support the preservation and sharing of these unique artifacts of OSU creative scholarship.

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By Jessica Chan and Maria Scheid, Rights Management Specialists at the Copyright Resources Center, The Ohio State University Libraries