Copyright Beyond the Classroom: a real-life experience of publishing art school dissertations (full of third-party images and at the last minute!)

The University of Dundee School of Art and Design hold a Degree Show exhibiting the work of 350 undergraduate students. This high profile, public event attracts upwards of 16,000 visitors. This year, for the first time, our Open Research team (1, and then 2 of us) was tasked with publishing Fine Art dissertations laden with third-party copyrighted material in time for the exhibition. The project was initiated by the academic supervisors in February, our Publishing Librarian started in April, and the exhibition opened in May!

We will talk about the copyright conundrums thrown up by this challenge and lessons learned from this rollercoaster experience.
- How do you deal with 500 copyrighted images? Redact or publish - what would you do?
- Is it too late to get permission? (Almost certainly yes).
- What are the different copyright rules for dissertations and publications?
- Who gives undergraduates copyright advice for publishing?
- Timing is everything, we have a year till the next one!

This gave us the opportunity to reflect on our Library’s relationship with copyright, with a view to scaling up the project for next year’s exhibition and broadening our copyright training.

We hope to spark some conversation around copyright, undergraduate advocacy, and the risks we are prepared to take as librarians when it comes to publishing students’ work.