Rights and Permissions Policy for the Use of Materials Digitized by the Wisconsin Historical Society

When WHS captures a digital version of an artifact and mounts this digital version on the Web, it creates a new, copyright-protected work. When students, teachers, researchers, print publishers, broadcast media, advertisers, and other third parties want to obtain and use reproductions of these digital files, they must conform to the conditions stated here.

1. Fair use for educational, non-profit, and selected other purposes.

Section 107 of the U.S. copyright law permits individuals to make one copy of a portion of a protected work for their own private use, permits reproduction for non-profit educational use (such as in classrooms or as course reserve readings), and allows certain other uses. Read the U.S. Copyright Office's Fair Use page for more details.

Any material mounted on our Web site may therefore be used as Section 107 permits. In particular, teachers and students are encouraged to print and use any images or texts they find on our site in their classes or assignments. Genealogists and other private researchers may freely print copies for their files. Screen shots may be captured for display in lectures, presentations, conferences, and other non-profit educational gatherings. These types of use do not require prior permission.

2. Commercial use for publication, resale, and other for-profit purposes.

Prior authorization. Every commercial use requires prior permission from the Wisconsin Historical Society (Permissions, Wisconsin Historical Society, 816 State St., Madison, WI 53706 or AskLibrary@wisconsinhistory.org).

Fees. Every commercial use is subject to the fee schedule below, which may be altered at the sole discretion of the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Exclusivity. No exclusive rights or licenses will be granted.

Scanning on demand. Requests to create digital copies of materials not yet digitized should be addressed to AskLibrary@wisconsinhistory.org and will be decided at the sole discretion of the Wisconsin Historical Society. Supplemental fees, in addition to those shown below, for set up, conservation, capture, conversion, and delivery of files may be charged, as determined on a case by case basis. Whenever materials are scanned on demand, copyright of the resulting electronic files remains with WHS, which may use them in the future in any way it considers appropriate.

3. Fee Schedule for commercial use.

A. Images.

Fees to reproduce photographs, paintings, posters, engravings, maps, charts, and other predominantly visual images vary from $15 to $200 or more, according to the medium in which the reproduction will be issued, the edition or audience size, customer’s geographic location, and other factors. Consult our detailed image fee schedule (PDF, 23 KB)

B. Texts.

Fees to reproduce digital versions of books, articles, scrapbooks, manuscripts, and other predominantly textual materials will follow the fee schedule linked immediately above except that:

i. Single pages of a historic newspaper will be treated as discrete images, each of which is subject to the fee schedule above

ii. Requests for other texts of less than 50 sequential pages will be subject to the fee schedule above

iii. Requests for texts of more than 50 sequential pages will be negotiated on a case-by-case basis.

4. Formats.

Although every attempt to accommodate customers' needs will be made, the Wisconsin Historical Society reserves the right to deliver digital files to customers in whatever file format and at whatever resolution it chooses.