About Bowdoin Digital Collections

Policy Statement

This document establishes policies for the use of Bowdoin Digital Collections (BDC), including submission of materials, access, and compliance with copyright standards. The Bowdoin College Library develops guidelines and policies relating to BDC and oversees the submission, organization, and maintenance of works. The policies outlined in this document are intended to ensure that items submitted to BDC comply with copyright and that the digital content stored therein remains both viable and accessible.

Overview

BDC is an institutional repository and digital archives platform administered by the Bowdoin College Library. It provides a place to collect, manage, and provide access to the digitally published scholarship of Bowdoin faculty and students as well as archives, manuscripts, audio-video recordings, photographs, and other materials held by Bowdoin College Library’s Special Collections & Archives.

Contributors

In addition to materials from Special Collections & Archives selected by that department for inclusion, Bowdoin College faculty, staff, and students are eligible to contribute materials. In general, BDC includes work published by contributors only during their time at Bowdoin.

Content Types

Supported Content

Any publication, presentation, or production in electronic format is eligible for inclusion in BDC. Content consists of:

• Articles, creative works, or other projects authored by Bowdoin faculty, staff, and students
• Articles, creative works, or other projects sponsored by Bowdoin faculty and staff
• Publications by and about Bowdoin College
• Data sets
• Oral histories
• Digital or digitized materials from Special Collections & Archives

Content Not Supported

BDC is not intended for raw data storage, works-in-progress, electronic records management, or personal use. Deposited materials must not be ephemeral, as they are intended to be permanent contributions to BDC.

BDC may not be used to store or transmit files that contain Social Security numbers, Protected Health Information, Personally Identifiable Information, or information governed by federal export-control laws.

Intellectual Property, Copyright, and Permissions

BDC complies with the Bowdoin College policy on Intellectual Property Policy published annually in the Faculty Handbook.

Unless otherwise noted, materials posted in BDC are the property of their respective authors.

Authors who have not given a third party exclusive rights to distribute their work may submit it to BDC.

Authors or their copyright assignees retain all intellectual property rights to their material and must be willing and able to grant Bowdoin College the non-exclusive right to preserve and distribute submitted work through BDC.

Removing or Updating Work

See the Bowdoin Library Digital Collections Takedown Policy for information about removing works from BDC.

Access Limitations and Embargo

Unless otherwise indicated by authors, works on Bowdoin Digital Collections are made globally accessible.

For more information on Access and Embargo for Honors Projects, see Honors Guidelines and Tips .

Persistent Access and Migration

The Library will provide persistent access to the content uploaded to BDC, but cannot guarantee the persistent functionality of a specific web platform through which the content is posted, maintained, and accessed. The Library expects to preserve the content by migrating it to new web platforms when and if necessary.