Digital Projects Toolkit

Ethics of Digital Projects

When designing your digital project, consider these ethical principles in your choices and design.

Privacy

• Do you have personal information on your site? If you have information that could be traced back to specific individuals, make sure they have consented to have their information used in your digital project. Additionally, if you plan to archive your digital project and have it continually accessible after the project is finished, ensure that individuals who have contributed to your project are aware of that as well. If you have personal information from yourself on your site, think about what it will mean to have that information accessible years into the future if you make it public on the web.

Accessibility 

• Is your content accessible to those who may be viewing it? Strongly consider ensuring that your digital project meets best practices for web accessibility standards, so that all who want to will be able to access the information it contains.

Citation/Credit Acknowledgement 

• Will you be using other people's ideas, words, or images in creating your digital project? If so, it's important to properly credit them. While digital projects do not always need a full citation like a scholarly journal article would, consider hyperlinking to content you drew from, or mentioning the sources you used on an Acknowledgements page. 

Copyright

When creating digital questions, you must consider both what you put in your digital project (e.g. the content) and what happens when you're finished creating it and are preparing to publish it online.

If you're using materials created by other people in your online scholarship (e.g. including paragraphs of a novel, using someone else's photographs or drawings), you need to consider whether you need permission from the copyright owner of those materials to include them in your own work. The following questions will guide you on whether you have permission to use the content.

Consult this spreadsheet for free music and other resources that you may use for your project.

Are You the Author, Copyright Holder or Creator?

Has a License Already Been Granted?

• Has copyright holder already granted a license for you to include their work. Sometimes authors have already provided permission through grants such as Creative Commons licenses. The license, itself, will identify the terms of what uses can be made without needing to get the author's permission first. 

• If a copyright holder has not already applied a Creative Commons license, he or she may be willing (often for a fee) to grant publication permission under specific terms and conditions.

Is the Work in the Public Domain?

• Public domain works are open for use with no permission needed. Just because material is online, however, does not mean it's in the "public domain." Public domain instead refers to works for which copyright protections have expired, or works that were ineligible for protection.

Does Your Use of the Content Fall Under Fair Use? (Note: Fair Use is a Defense for Copyright Infringement)

• The Four Fair Use Factors

1.  The purpose and character of the use, including whether the intended use is commercial vs. for nonprofit educational purposes. Tip: Uses in nonprofit educational institutions are more likely to be fair use than works used for commercial purposes. This may work in your favor for publishing the project, but not necessarily a subsequent commercially-licensed database based on your project. 
2. The nature of the copyrighted work. Tip: Republishing factual work is more likely to be fair use than incorporating a creative, artistic work such as a musical composition.
3. The amount and significance of the portion used in relation to the entire work. Tip: Using smaller portions of a work is more likely to be fair use than larger portions, or portions that represent the "heart" of the underlying work
4. Potential impact on the market for the original. Tip: Uses which have no or little market impact on the copyright holder's ability to sell or license the original work are more likely to be fair. If the copyright holder offers licenses for uses similar to yours, use of the work without that license could harm the market for the license--weighing against fair use.

The library maintains two research guides related to Copyright:

• Copyright
• Copyright Guide

File Naming Conventions & Best Practices

Decide on a file naming convention at the beginning of your project, for consistency and ease of retrieval. 

• Keep file names short, but meaningful.

• Make use of consistent, relevant elements.

• Avoid special characters and spaces.

• Document and share the file naming convention.

Electronic Records Organization & Best Practices

See the Wisconsin Historical Society Best Practices for Organizing Electronic Records for tips. While geared towards bigger projects, even smaller projects would benefit from the practices outlined in here, such as:

• Centrally locating records in shared drives

• Using a hierarchical folder structure 

• Notes to document folder contents