We use cookies to improve your experience, some are essential for the operation of this site.
Home > Terms and Conditions

Copyright

The content (content being images, text, sound and video files, programs and scripts) of this website is copyright (c)Shetland Museum. All rights expressly reserved.

The content of this website can be accessed, printed and downloaded in an unaltered form (altered including being stretched, compressed, coloured or altered in any way so as to distort content from its original proportions or format) with copyright acknowledged, on a temporary basis for personal study which is not for a direct or indirect commercial use and any non-commercial use. Any content printed or downloaded may not be sold, licensed, transferred, copied or reproduced in whole or in part in any manner or in or on any media to any person without the prior written consent of the Shetland Museum, including but not limited to:

  • transmission by any method
  • storage in any medium, system or program
  • display in any form
  • performance
  • hire, lease, rental or loan

Requests for permission to reproduce material from this website should be addressed to:

For images and text:

Email: photo@shetlandmuseumandarchives.org.uk

The Shetland Museum has made every reasonable effort to locate, contact and acknowledge copyright owners and wishes to be informed by any copyright owners who are not properly identified and acknowledged on this website so that we may make any necessary corrections.

Other individuals and organisations wishing to make Shetland Museum content accessible through their websites are encouraged to create hypertext links to the required content on this website.

In the case of images of recent materials where a copyright still exists separate from Shetland Museum's rights, the written consent of the copyright owner as well as the Shetland Museum's will be required. Contact the Museum for further details.


Some guidance notes on issues of copyright relating to the Shetland Museum Photographic Archive

The Shetland Museum and Archives is not in a position to offer legal advice on the copyright issues relating to prints or postcards in private possession.

This statement outlines the museums basic approach to those images which are held in the Photographic Archive. The Photographic Archive owns a major archive of images of Shetland produced between 1870 and the present day.. The archive comprises of images drawn from amateur and professional photographers on negatives, prints, slides and digital media..

The copyright position in respect of the collection is complex, and, as already stated, is not an issue on which the museum is in a position to offer advice. It therefore remains the responsibility of anyone wishing to re-publish museum images to satisfy themselves that no copyright is being infringed. Any potential publisher of museum images should be aware of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 and ensure that the requirements of the Act and any later amendments to it are met.

Copyright usually lasts for 70 years from the end of the year in which the author/photographer dies; it is a heritable property and is passed to the heirs with the rest of the estate. With the museum collection, it can be difficult to establish the copyright status of individual images, since many of them were taken by anonymous photographers. Many have however been donated to the museum with transfer of copyright and some with specific condition of use.

The Museum does not charge “copyright fees”, but rather “reproduction fees” for permission to reproduce copy images which the museum has supplied. A number of photographers produced postcards where the museum now holds the original negatives. When a third party is publishing a number of postcards from a private collection, the museum may suggest that the publisher makes a donation for the work of the museum in maintaining and making accessible the Photographic archive, and also donates a copy of the book, but this is not obligatory.

It is hoped that this general statement is helpful. For further information, please contact us using the Feedback form.