Digital guide: working with open licences/Annex: draft terms and conditions for your website

When your digital outputs are ready for publication, you can use or adapt the text below for your terms of use. Terms of use tell your web visitors how they can engage with the information or the materials you have made available, whether on your website or another platform.

General terms of use

Reusing materials on our website

Much of the content on this website is protected by intellectual property rights. Some materials produced with the support of The National Lottery Heritage Fund are released under Creative Commons open licences and tools. These materials are free for you to download and reuse under the terms below.

How to identify open access materials

Our open access projects and materials include [insert a list and link to the outputs].

With materials marked with the CC BY 4.0 licence, you are free to:

• Share – copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format.
• Adapt – remix, transform and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.

Under the following terms:

• Attribution – users must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the licence, and indicate if changes were made in a reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests we endorse the user or use

These materials are protected by copyright and have been openly licensed for any reuse purpose, as long as these terms are followed. Learn more about the CC BY 4.0 licence on the Creative Commons website.

Where possible, these materials are accompanied by the following button or icon:

Left: CC BY 4.0 button. Right: CC BY icon.

With materials marked with the CC0 1.0 tool, you can:

• freely build upon, enhance, distribute and reuse the material
• for any purposes
• without restriction under copyright or database law

These materials are in the public domain. Learn more about the CC0 1.0 tool on the Creative Commons website.

Where possible, these materials are accompanied by the following button or icon:

Public Domain Usage Guidelines

This text was drafted by Creative Commons and Europeana and can be included on your website to support users in their reuse of public domain materials.

Public domain materials can be used by anyone, for any purpose, without restriction. We ask that you use the following guidelines when making use of public domain materials.

Give credit where credit is due

When you use a public domain work please credit the author or creator. Please also credit the institution (such as the archive, museum or library) that provided the work, as the more you credit the institution the greater the encouragement to put more public domain works online.

Protect the reputation of creators and providers

When you use or modify a public domain work you should not attribute the changes to the creator or the provider of the work. The name or logo of the creator or provider should not be used to endorse the modified work or any use of it without their consent.

Show respect for the original work

Please do not use the work in any way that is unlawful and misleading. When you modify and redistribute a public domain work, any changes made to the original should be clearly indicated. You should label the work to show you have changed it, so that other users know who made the changes.

Show respect for the creator

If the creator, or provider on behalf of the creator, has asked that a public domain work should not be changed or that it should be used in certain contexts only, then please respect their wishes.

Share knowledge

If you use a public domain work to generate new work or if you have additional information about it (such as where it came from, its author, content or other possible rights holders), please share your knowledge. That may include tagging, annotating or commenting on a public domain work that is published online and sending back this information to the institution that holds the original object.

Be culturally aware

If the work includes culturally sensitive elements you should not change or use these in ways that might be derogatory to other cultures or communities.

Support efforts to enrich the public domain

Users of public domain works are asked to support the efforts of cultural and scientific heritage organisations to care for, preserve, digitise and make public domain works available. This support should include monetary contributions or work in kind, particularly when the work is being used for commercial or other for-profit purposes and the provider is a public or non-profit institution.

Preserve public domain marks and notices

Users of a public domain work should not remove any public domain mark or notice that has been applied, or provide misleading information about its copyright status.

This usage guide is based on goodwill. It is not a legal contract. We ask that you respect it.

Telling users about your openly licensed materials

Organise information on your website

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has two web pages for reuse policies. One is for Image and Data Resources, which discusses the open access policy, includes screenshots and links to thematic sets of images for users to dive into. Another is for Frequently Asked Questions: Image and Data Resources, which goes into more detail for the more risk averse or cautious user.

The Smithsonian Institution takes a similar approach with an Open Access FAQ that clearly explains how users can reuse, transform and share digital assets without asking permission. It encourages users to ‘Create. Imagine. Discover’.

Give clear guidance on access and reuse

The York Museums Trust’s Image Policy & Requests clearly sets out what users can expect when encountering open access images published in the online collection. It includes screenshots and instructions on how to download, along with guidance on how the images can be used.

See what others are doing

The ‘Rights Policy or Terms of Use’ column in the Open GLAM Survey contains other examples of website terms in use by cultural organisations around the world.