Copyright issues are a continually troubling matter for museums and archives when it comes to digitizing collections or giving permission to writers or researchers for use of images.
Many museums now require donors to give all rights to an object or document to the museum when they donate the object/document. However, this was seldom (if ever) done in the past. Museums and archives have entire collections of materials that they might want to digitize and make available to the public online, but they do not have the right to do so.
Most of the public does not realize that just because a museum has clear ownership of a photograph or a letter in their collection, that does not necessarily mean they have the right to publish it online. If that photograph or letter is not in the public domain, and the creator of the photograph/letter (or their estate) never gave the rights to it to the museum, it legally cannot be published online. As an interesting coincidence with the material in this class, I actually attended a training on this topic taught by archivists at the National Park Service just a few weeks ago.
Alternatively, because I work for a Federal agency, many of the archives and photographs that I work with are in the public domain or the rights belong to the agency for which the creator works. Any document, photograph, artwork, etc., created by a Federal employee as a part of their employment cannot be personally copyrighted by the creator.
Museums need to make the issues surrounding copyright law clearer on their websites. This can easily be done on the main page of their online databases and/or the search page for their database. Each object page within the online database could have a small-print warning about the use of images at the bottom of it, or at least a link to a page to contact the museum for permission to use an image.
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