Digital History: Ethics, Citations, and Copyright
In this blog I want to discuss the ethical issues and copyright issues associated with digital history to ensure that instructors follow ethical guidelines for their profession, and copy right laws when teaching history in an online classroom. Online history teachers can enliven their online classrooms or social media postings with rich visual imagery in the form of digital pictures, digitized documents, or maps.
Historical images and digital imagery are easily accessible on the internet and use of digital files posted to an online classroom discussion can be a powerful way to reach students, to capture their interests, and can lead to engaging discussions. Garza (2009) discussed the need for colleges to have policies and a keen understanding of the laws and policies that govern use of online materials and sources. While the author may have been referring to course syllabi or student data or other resources, the notion of awareness relating to legal issues and copyrights are important for history faculty.
The following statement on honesty and integrity if from the Organization of American Historians:” Honesty and integrity should undergird the work of all historians. Historians seek truth about the past in an effort to better understand historical developments and how they relate to the present and future (OAH, 2002)”.
While this statement does not deal directly with ethics, online teaching and copyright issues, it speaks to the heart of the matter about the important role history instructors have in modeling honesty and integrity in their research and teaching practice. Teaching history online may involve an instructor posting historical documents and digital images to engage students in online discussions.
Historians may not often face copyright issues when posting digital documents since many documents are in the past and may be in the public domain. However, there are modern history documents and digital images that will be protected by new copyright laws (Coen & Rosenzweig, 2015). It would be wise for historians to know the cut off dates of public domain for published and unpublished works. However, it would be even better if historians just got in the practice of adding citations for every image or document as good practice to model ethical standards of the historian.
References
Coen, D.J. & Rosenzweig, R. (2015). Digital History: A guide to sharing, preserving, and presenting the past on the web. Retrieved from
http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/copyright/3.php
Garza, M. R. ( 2009). Ethics in an online environment. New Directions for Community Colleges, (148), 63–70.
Organization of American Historians (2002). OAH statement on honesty and integrity. Retrieved from http://www.oah.org/about/reports/reports-statements/professional-integrity-and-the-oah/
Hello Teri – You shared a lot of good information about a topic I had little knowledge on. I was especially surprised with learning that “historians may not often face copyright issues when posting digital documents since many documents are in the past and may be in the public domain”. This is really interesting and something I am so happy you shared with us! Thank you. Kathy
Teri,
You bring up a great point! Individuals pour a lot into the development and care of documents. It is only right that they are given the proper respect (and dues) when others access their work or property. One of my college instructors was highly published and often reiterated the importance of this. I appreciate that you addressed a topic that is so relevant to our discipline!