Legal Poems

The [NAME REDACTED] Public Library has a materials selection policy in place. When recently updating the policy, trustees had questions about the "responsibility" section which states:

What an insightful question.

Here is my answer: no, "delegate" is not quite the right word in this context.  A more suitable phrase could be:

"Per library policy, the Director, or an employee designated by the Director, has authority and responsibility for the selection of library resources."

Here is why:

Our Board of Trustees is searching for a new director. Our Library has transitioned from a very small building to a modern, significantly larger building. As a public library, the school district we serve has a population of more than 18,000. Our former director did not have a contract.

Regular readers of "Ask the Lawyer" know one of the cardinal rules is: "Do not reinvent the wheel."  So, before working on this reply, we[1] checked the "NY Library Trustees Handbook (2018),"[2] which has a whole section on hiring library directors.

I understand that, as employers of a union shop, the library is required to allow the union a reasonable amount of time to conduct union business.[1] However, how much time is reasonable? Can employees meet with their shop stewards on the clock at the library for 5+ hours a week, taking both away from their duties? Is there a ballpark?

The care required when addressing union-related issues in so critical, we're going to start with a small cautionary poem:

I am a Trustee on the Board of our library. I also serve as the Secretary to the Board. As such, I do the note-taking and draft the meeting minutes for every board meeting. Do I need to retain my handwritten notes, once I have transcribed them into document format? If so, how long must they be kept and where?

This question comes to "Ask the Lawyer" from a public library.

As quasi-governmental entities, public libraries must follow a precise array of law, regulations, and rules for record-keeping.  We'll delve into that for those factors to answer this question.

I am of the understanding that NYS departments documentation falls under public domain. Can you provide any insight into this? Thank you!

I can most certainly provide some insight on this topic. But first, some terminology...

For readers who don't know, the "public domain" is the "place" distinct works of authorship (poems, paintings, books, etc.) go to when they are no longer protected by copyright. When a work is "in" the "public domain" it means it can be used without fear of copyright infringement.

The library (school district public library without a union or a bargaining agreement and less than 50 employees) offers paid sick leave for most employees. However, based on what we have learn we have paid people, without it coming off of their earned sick time, if they are told to quarantine because they have been exposed to the virus.

I can offer a simple answer, and a complicated answer. 

Here is the simple answer: 

Should what we think of as the personnel policy be called Employee Handbook or Personnel Policy?

Ooh, an ontological question!

I am not sure about the basis of the past legal input mentioned in the question, differentiating a "policy" from a "handbook," but I (mostly) agree with it.

Is it permissible to create an anthology of 20-30 poems, all by British poets, to be distributed to an entire grade level of students to be used for annotation and instruction? [It’s been suggested] that "since they're all available on the internet" they should be able to printed, collected, bound, and sold to students. A few things that I am unclear on are:

I wandered lonely as a cloud…wondering “is there a way to create our own custom array of poems by Wordsworth, Keats, and Burns?”

When it comes to digitizing large theater and music program collections, it is well-established that a library can digitize anything before 1923, and that if there are no copyright notices on them, can digitize anything before 1978.  But if there are multiple "copyrightable" elements in the works (advertisements, photos, actor biographies, illustrations, etc.) is it okay to digitize them?

This is a complex issue (although not nearly as complex as assessing a library wing full of dramatic and musical works).  To unpack this, I will take advantage of a form suggested by the topic: the opera libretto.

[Cue overture…]

ALTO:  Can works with no copyright notice before 1978 be safely digitized?

First question…

It's a musical double act at “Ask the Lawyer” today!

Libraries are hitting their stride as community centers and curators of cultural experience, so it is no surprise that live musical performances are being offered as part of their programming and outreach.

These two members’ questions arrived within one week of each other.