National Library of New Zealand’s Use and Reuse Policy

Sketch map of the geology of New Zealand by Dr. Hector, 1869, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, NZ Map 2600. No known copyright.

Sketch map of the geology of New Zealand by Dr. Hector, 1869, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, NZ Map 2600. No known copyright.

The National Library of New Zealand has just released its new ‘Policy for Use and Reuse of Collection Items’. The policy is a timely move towards openness and clarity on rights statements for the National Library’s collections, and is underpinned by the New Zealand Government’s Open Access and Licensing framework for government agencies.

The policy reflects the Library’s legislated responsibilities to its diverse stakeholders, including Māori, and upholds the Library’s kaitiakitanga responsibilities, which can be translated as ‘guardianship’. As the blog about the policy states:

Kaitiakitanga sits alongside western concepts of intellectual property and acknowledges that tāonga [treasures] have a mauri, or life-force, by way of the people that were involved in their creation.

Key points from the policy include:

  • Principle 4: Negotiations with rights owners and donors will promote and be informed by the Creative Commons licensing framework as a mechanism to facilitate use and reuse of in-copyright works.
  • Principle 5: Where no copyright restriction applies, NLNZ will seek to provide the items for use and reuse with a statement of ‘no known copyright restrictions’, after careful consideration of cultural and ethical issues relating to the items.
  • Principle 6: Where there are works where copyright is likely to apply, but the rights owner is unable to be identified or traced after a reasonable search, NLNZ will seek to provide a statement of ‘copyright undetermined – untraced rights owner’, after careful consideration of cultural and ethical issues relating to the items.
  • Principle 7: Collection items with ‘No known copyright restriction’ statements should be available for use and reuse at an appropriate quality resolution.

The policy also outlines the Library’s intention to make its public metadata available under a CC-BY 3.0 license. This will include the National Library’s catalogue for published material, the TAPUHI descriptive system for unpublished records, and metadata about NLNZ’s collections available on third party platforms. Some of the Library’s metadata is already available for reuse.

You can read the policy in detail here. There’s also a blog post which unpacks some of the behind the scenes processes and considerations.