Using copyrighted material in your thesis
Secure written permission of the copyright owner/s if you use material that is copyright protected in your thesis. Copyrighted material may include images (tables, drawings, photographs, figures, maps, graphs, etc.), sounds files, video material, data sets, and large portions of text.
If you do not secure copyright permissions by the time your thesis is submitted, you will still be allowed to submit. However, if the necessary copyright permissions are not received, public access to and/or e-posting of your thesis may be affected.
Contacting the copyright owner
You may need to request permission to
reprint/reproduce copyrighted material from an author, publisher, or repository
(library, archive or museum), depending on who owns the rights. Write to the copyright holder/s well in
advance, describing exactly which item/s you are reproducing, and how they will
be used in your thesis. If you are
planning on providing e-access to your thesis, please state this when you
contact the copyright holder. Correspondence/forms
granting use should be submitted with your thesis.
Using images
If you are using images of material held in a
private or museum collection, you will need to contact the individual or
museum. This is true even if you took
the photograph of the object; you own the copyright to your photograph, but the
museum or artist may still control rights to the art work.
Using interviews
The interviewee in an oral history owns the copyright
to his/her interview. Therefore, if you
are conducting oral history interviews as part of your thesis, please obtain a
signed release from each interviewee allowing you to use the interview and
publish portions of it in your thesis. Sample release forms are available from the Archives.
More information
Cite copyrighted material correctly. See the Libraries' citation site for information.
See the Libraries' copyright site for more information regarding copyright and fair use.
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