[MassHistPres] Dilemma about sharing the historical society’s intellectual property

[Sullivan, Charles M.]

It seems to me that having the Congregational Library digitize and protect the church records would be the most effective way of fulfilling the Medfield Historical Society’s mission to ‘preserve, promote and share.’ If the Library would accept them on deposit it might finesse the ownership issue, but in any case you should probably obtain the consent of the First Parish. You could also stipulate that the MHS would always be credited as the owner or donor.

Simple possession of historical records doesn’t serve much of a public purpose if they can’t be widely shared. There would be little advantage to society for Medfield to keep the records in its possession, and in fact there would likely be a greater danger of loss through fire or natural disaster.

Charles Sullivan
_________________________________
Charles Sullivan, Executive Director
Cambridge Historical Commission
831 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, Mass.  02140
617 349-4684


From: masshistpres-bounces at cs.umb.edu [mailto:masshistpres-bounces at cs.umb.edu] On Behalf Of David Temple
Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2015 9:16 PM
To: Mass HistPres <masshistpres at cs.umb.edu>
Subject: [MassHistPres] Dilemma about sharing the historical society’s intellectual property

The Medfield Historical Society has a very significant collection of detailed church records – which include many of a personal nature - from the 18th century which one serious scholar thought could have significant monetary value. They are now securely stored on site in acid-free boxes in a pretty good climate controlled environment. Some, but by no means all, have been digitized.

The Congregational Library http://www.congregationallibrary.org/ of Boston has offered to digitize all the records so they may be shared on line with researchers. The library would also store them in a secure and probably better climate-controlled environment on a sort of permanent loan basis, though we could get them back if we wanted.

As president of the historical society – whose mission is “Preserving, promoting, and sharing Medfield’s history” - I am pleased at the prospect of better preservation and distribution of these records. But the flip side is that we would also be essentially giving away some of our most valuable intellectual property, and we would cut down on donations and the number of people coming to our facility to do research.

Adding to the ambiguity – it is not entirely clear whether these records are the property of the historical society…or of First Parish Church.

Has anyone in this group been confronted with this dilemma? How did you resolve it?

In your reply, please include my original message.

David F. Temple
President, Medfield Historical Society
Co-chair, Medfield Historical Commission
300 South Street
Medfield, MA 02052
508-359-2915
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