Community & Collection Policies
Our repositories are a partnership between our repository Communities, the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM) Library, and UHM administration. Repository content consists of Collections produced by institutions or agencies in Hawaii and beyond, which are managed, preserved, and distributed by UHM Library through the repository. Some of the collections will be subject to institutional guidelines defined by UHM administration. As in all partnerships, it is important that all stakeholders understand and agree to the policies, guidelines, and procedures required to build a repository. The following policy statements have been developed over a period of time with input from various parties.
What is a repository Community?
A repository Community is an administrative unit that produces research or has guardianship over research, documents, or special collections; has a defined leader; has long-term stability; and can assume responsibility for setting Community policies. Each community must be able to assign a coordinator who can work with repository staff.
What are a Community’s Responsibilities?
A Community agrees to:
- Arrange for submission and description of content
- Notify the repository staff of organizational changes affecting submissions
- Reply to annual reconfirmation of community information
- Understand and observe UHM policies relevant to the repository, and educate Community submitters regarding these policies
- Clear copyright for items submitted when the copyright owner is other than the author(s) or UHM
- Decide upon a submission workflow for each Collection
What are a Community’s Rights?
A Community retains the right to:
- Decide policy regarding content to be submitted (within repository guidelines)
- Decide who may submit content within the Community
- Limit access to content at the item level to UHM
- Receive a copy of submitted content upon request
- Remove items and Collections (see the Withdrawal Policy)
- Approve the addition or elimination of Sub-communities
- Customize interfaces to Community content
What are UHM Library’s Responsibilities?
The repository agrees to:
- Retain and maintain content that is submitted
- Distribute content according to Community decisions (to UHM minimally, unless prior approval is granted by the Policy Committee)
- Preserve content using accepted preservation techniques
- Provide access to repository research
- Notify Communities of significant changes to content, e.g., format migration
- If UHM Library ceases to support the repository, return Collections to existing Communities and transfer to UHM Archives all Collections of Communities that have ceased to exist
What are UHM Library’s Rights?
The repository retains the right to:
- Redistribute or amend metadata for items in the repository
- Refuse or de-accession items or Collections under certain circumstances (see the Withdrawal Policy)
- Renegotiate terms of original agreement with Communities
- Perform appraisal for long-term archiving when Communities cease to exist or within thirty years of the creation of a Collection
- Move Collections to reflect current understanding between the repository and Communities
- Migrate items if format is in danger of obsolescence
- Set quotas (size of files, number of items) to determine what constitutes free service and after which point to charge a fee
- Charge fee for activities requiring extensive centralized support (e.g., large amount of de-accesssioning)
What are UHM’s Responsibilities?
UHM agrees to:
- Set policy at the Institute level regarding issues that affect the repository, such as copyright rules, thesis requirements, etc.
- Support functions mandated by existing policies
Withdrawal Policy
UHM Library foresees times when it may be necessary to remove items from the repository. Under some circumstances items will be removed from view, but to avoid loss of the historical record, all such transactions will be traced in the form of a note in the provenance field of the Dublin Core record. The content of the note will be one of the following:
- “Removed from view at request of the author”
- “Removed from view at UHM’s discretion”
- “Removed from view at UHM Library’s discretion”
- “Removed from view by legal order”
Because any repository item that has existed at some time may have been cited, we will always supply a “tombstone” when someone requests a removed item. These items will also be made unavailable for metadata harvesting.
