10. Use

The main purpose of a natural history sound archive is to make wildlife recordings available for study and use. As well as offering listening facilities on the premises, the service of supplying copies of the tape recordings to bona fide person~ for non-commercial use should be offered. A form of application and agreement protecting copyright needs to be drawn up for all users to complete. Figure 2 shows the form used by BLOWS. All contributors should sign an agreement stipulating the terms under which their recordings are held by the archive and may be copied for users. A typical arrangement is that material can be supplied for non-commercial use, but all applications for commercial purposes (e.g. films and broadcasting) have to be referred to the recordist or copyright holder. A specimen of the contributor's agreement form used by BLOWS is shown in figure 3.

Given the wide range of potential uses that a wildlife sound archive is open to, which are described in section 1, the need to control users and to safeguard the interests of depositors is self-evident.


Figure 2


Figure 3