7 December 2005

I think this is a topic that came up in the early days of the site, but that was a long time ago and I thought it worth raising again.

Obviously, to help us understand the diary we want to draw on other sources, particularly the Latham & Matthes edition. However, please be aware that we shouldn’t simply quote large chunks of these in annotations. One or two quotes from a source would be no problem. But sources such as L&M’s Companion volume are being quoted fairly frequently, and at some length. Over the life of the diary this adds up to replicating an awful lot of someone else’s work and copyright material.

I realise it’s tempting, and certainly helps our understanding, but please bear in mind that such material should be quoted extremely sparingly. Please paraphrase or pick out a few salient facts rather than quoting at length. I can’t give you exact guidelines, because I’m not a copyright lawyer, so please stop, think, and use your own judgement.

I’m sorry that this will require some effort and restraint, but I’d prefer to avoid any problems over copyright materials, rather than have to deal with them retrospectively. Many thanks.