Copyright issues have always been a challenge as it relates to digitization. According to Rosati, institutions which digitize their records and disseminate said information to their users must consider copyright-related issues before doing so (4). Bandi, Angadi and Shivarama all stated that copyright issues raise serious concerns and as such records managers must consider these issues before embarking on digitization (6). While digitization benefits an organization or records units in providing unlimited access to information, records managers must be vigilant when choosing materials to be digitized. According to Igbeka and Olga, digitization of paper-based materials is the re-production of someone else’s intellectual product. …show more content…
In view of this, if the records do not belong to an organization, the information professionals should seek permission before reproducing the documents. On the other hand, if the organization reproduce their own work this is not considered as a breach since they have intellectual rights to do so. Digitization as it relates to copyright issues can be hampered if records are not intellectually owned. Records managers can run into law suits if they are not aware of the origin of the records before they are digitized. According to Kastellec, it is the responsibility of records managers to ascertain the origin of each record within their custody (30). Kastellec further stresses the importance of ascertaining the source of the information and recommends that information professionals ask the following questions: Who are the creators? Was the material published or unpublished? and, Does the creator owns the intellectual rights to the material. These are very precarious questions that one should ask in an effort to be on the safe side because these questions will avoid any legal actions in the