If I type up whole article found on Newspapers.com that's from 1920 can I put it in our Genealogy Society Newsletter?

Question

If I type up the whole article found on Newspapers.com that's from 1920 can I put it in our Genealogy Society Newsletter?  I plan on putting the newspaper name, location, date and page. Do I also need to put in the Newspapers.com link?

Comments

thank you

Answer 1

I am not a copyright lawyer, but it's my belief if the article is from 1920 it would be out of copyright, so you could certainly do this.

You wouldn't need to put the newspapers.com link, but doing so would probably be appreciated by newspapers.com!

Comments

I would not add the link. With the link, you are acknowledging that newspapers.com was the source where you found the article. Without it, you could have found the article anywhere.

Newspapers.com does not own the article.

You should attribute the article instead to the original publication.

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Thank you.  I am filling in for an editor so needed to find out.

This is a really nice forum!

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You absolutely should list Newspapers.com as the source of where you found the article.  A source is where you found the article as well as the article itself.  Most commonly we say the name of the newspaper and where accessed, "The Denver Bee, 15 January 1919, 'Obituary of So and so,' accessed on 8 September 2020 at newspapers.com/url"

Another reason for listing a source is so that others can find it.  By listing it, other relatives or researchers can find it for themselves, either through their own account at Newspapers or by posting a pullup request on G2G.  If you don't list where you found it, the other person may spend hours looking around not able to find it if they don't have a newspapers.com subscription.

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Well, I don't quite agree. "The Denver Bee" is the original source of the article, so that's where it should be found. Search for the original, find it, and cite it.

If people have a newspaper.com subscription, they can use it to locate the article thru the site. Those who don't have this paid subscription can't use the information, so they'll have to search for the original source.

Answer 2

There are two hurdles, both of which you probably clear:

1 - Copyright law - For works published before 1978, the maximum duration of copyright protection is 98 years, so your copying and publishing the article would not violate copyright law. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_States#Works_created_before_1978

2 - Contract law - When you sign up for Newspapers.com, you are agreeing to comply with Ancestry's Terms and Conditions. For content in the public domain (which a 100 year old newspaper article is, since the copyright expired), the Terms and Conditions say: "You are free to use a small portion of individual photos and documents that are Public Domain Content, but you must obtain our written permission to use more than a small portion of these collections." Small portion is an unclear term, but I would say a single article from a single issue of a newspaper is a small portion. In any event, it is not the type of mass copying that Ancestry is really trying to prohibit.

Comments

Thank you.

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#2 would 'only' apply to using Newspaper.com's image; a transcript of a public source document wouldn't be subject to any kind of protection.

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Sounds right, SJ.

Answer 3

Since you're talking about transcribing text of a public domain document and not using any image, there are no issues to consider with either copyright or terms & conditions.  I would provide the URL just so others can find the original article if interested.

Comments

Thank you.