Contributing organizations will remain legally responsible for their items/materials, including consideration of copyright, privacy, ethics, and/or contractual limitations on use. Items/materials should not contain anything defamatory, libelous, or otherwise violating the rights of third parties.
Contributing organizations may not own the copyrights for items in their collections, but may make items available if they believe this use is permitted by law. Contributing organizations are wholly responsible for deciding when they are legally able to make materials available, and documenting those decisions. MDL will work to provide training and systems to support applicants and contributors in making and documenting these decisions.
Participation in the Minnesota Digital Library will be considered to grant a non-exclusive license to MDL to make those materials available to the public, and to exercise any rights needed for MDL's mission.
All new projects are required to use the standardized rights statements to describe the rights status of their materials, though each organization will remain responsible for making their own determinations about what materials they can share.