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Copyright

The content (content being images, text, sound and video files, programs and scripts) of this website is copyright © The British Library Board. All rights expressly reserved. You agree to abide by all copyright notices and restrictions attached to the content and not to remove or alter any such notice or restriction.

Acceptable use policy

The content of this website can be accessed, printed and downloaded in an unaltered form (altered including being stretched, compressed, coloured or altered in any way so as to distort content from its original proportions or format) with copyright acknowledged, on a temporary basis for personal study that is not for a direct or indirect commercial use and any non-commercial use. Any content printed or downloaded may not be sold, resold, licensed, transferred, copied or reproduced in whole or in part in any manner or in or on any media to any person without the prior written consent of the British Library, including but not limited to:

  • transmission by any method
  • storage in any medium, system or program
  • display in any form
  • performance
  • hire, lease, rental or loan, or any other form of exploitation

Other than expressly permitted by the terms and conditions specific to individual services, you may not without the prior written consent of the British Library:

  • systematically extract and/or re-utilise parts of the contents of the website, including but not limited to the utilisation of any data mining, robots, or similar data gathering and extraction tools to extract (whether once or many times) for re-utilisation of any substantial parts of this website
  • create and/or publish your own database that features substantial parts of this website, including but not limited to, our prices and product/service listings.

You agree not to:

  • impersonate another person or use a false name or a name you are unauthorised to use or create a false identity or e-mail address or try to mislead others as to the identity or origin of any communications;
  • make available or upload files that contain software or other material, data or information not owned or licensed to you or collect information about others (eg names/addresses) without their prior consent;
  • damage, interfere with or disrupt access to the website or any of the services delivered through such website or do anything which may interrupt or impair their functionality;
  • publish, post, distribute, disseminate or otherwise transmit defamatory, offensive, infringing, obscene, indecent or other unlawful or objectionable material or information;
  • threaten, harass, stalk, abuse, disrupt, cause inconvenience or distress or otherwise violate the rights (including rights of privacy and publicity) of others;
  • use the content or the website for any illegal or improper purpose,
  • make available, upload or distribute by any means any material or files that contain any viruses, bugs, corrupt data, "trojan horses", "worms" or any other harmful software.

The British Library retains the right to prevent you from accessing the website or any of the services provided through the website, without prejudice to any of our accrued rights, where we in our reasonable discretion consider that you are contravening our Acceptable Use Policy or any other term or condition of these Terms of Use.

Requests for permission to reproduce material from this website should be addressed to us as follows:

Images:

Email: permissions@bl.uk

Text and all other types of material:

Email: webeditor@bl.uk

The British Library has made every reasonable effort to locate, contact and acknowledge copyright owners and wishes to be informed by any copyright owners who are not properly identified and acknowledged on this website so that we may make any necessary corrections.

Other individuals and organisations wishing to make British Library content accessible through their websites are encouraged to create hypertext links to the required content on this website.

Images on Explore the British Library 

Images of books or other publications included on the Explore the British Library are displayed via an external link to Syndetic Solutions, a catalogue enrichment service provided by Bowker. All rights in such images are reserved by the original copyright owners. 

If you are a rights owner of a cover image and have any query regarding permissions, please contact darren.roberts@bowker.co.uk stating the following:
Your contact details. 

  • The title of the publication as indicated on the Explore the British Library
  • The website address (URL) of the cover image 
  • A statement of why you believe the material to be on the service without consent
  • A statement that, under penalty of perjury, you are the rights owner or are authorised to act for the rights owner

In the event of a dispute, the image will be removed from the Syndetic Solutions service whilst it is investigated. The process for removing content from the service is as follows:

  • Syndetics will contact you within two working days of your claim
  • Syndetics will seek your permission to retain the cover image on the Syndetics service
  • In the event that agreement cannot be reached, the cover image will be removed from the Syndetics service within five working days
  • You will be asked to sign a form stating that you are the rights owner or their representative and why the cover image should be removed. 

Note that images of maps, which appear on some records, are provided by the British Library not Syndetics.

 
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