From Collection #20304 in the Southern Folklife Collection

If you have ever kept a daily journal, written a short story, drawn a sketch, or recorded your own music, you have created works that are protected under U.S. Copyright Law. Copyright is a legal provision that protects authors from the unauthorized use, publication, or sale, of their works and ideas. Once someone has given expression to his or her ideas in a fixed form, that work is automatically protected under copyright.

As many of the materials you will use in manuscript collections are protected by copyright, it is important to understand some basic copyright concepts.

Copyright:

• begins at the moment of creation;
• is automatic and does not require registration with the US Copyright Office;
• applies to published as well as unpublished works;
• applies to broadcast media including the Internet;
• applies to print and non-print materials;
• is usually in effect for the life of the author plus seventy years; and
• has the force of United States law.

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