The Archer Yearbook staff is proud to announce that they recently applied for a copyright through the US Copyright Office for all of the yearbooks that have been produced by The Archer staff since 2013. The process required an online application and the staff had to send in two copies of each yearbook to the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. They will receive an official document from the Library of Congress in a few months. The copyright license will be held by The Archer Editors and will pass down each year to the new editors. This process will protect student work from being copied, sold, or distributed without the consent of the student editors. In the future, the editors will be responsible for applying for the copyright license each year.
“Yearbook advisers around the country are concerned with the alarming trend of public libraries and other organizations freely copying student work without the consent of the students who produced it. Digital copies of these yearbooks are making it to companies who are trying to sell the yearbooks for profit. Many of these organizations have good intentions, but they would not freely copy a book produced by anyone else, but for some reason think that student work is free reign. This copyright will give The Archer Yearbook staff protection from these situations,” said adviser Amy Sorrell, who recently earned her Master Journalism Educator certification from the Journalism Education Association.
The Archer yearbook has earned All-Ohio from the Ohio Scholastic Press Association for the last three years. The staff also recently received a Gold Medalist critique from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association in New York City and a First Place Critique from the National Scholastic Press Association.
