Doctoral candidates at the University of Chicago are required to grant ProQuest Information and Learning non-exclusive rights to reproduce and distribute their dissertations. Authors hold the copyright for their own dissertations and retain the right to publish elsewhere as well. Authors may register their copyright or not, on their own or through ProQuest, as they choose. Those who wish to use material from University of Chicago dissertations, beyond fair use, must contact the author for permission.

As you prepare your doctoral dissertation for submission to the University of Chicago, you must consider copyright issues and fair use, and you must request permission to use material when appropriate. Your advisor and others in your school or department should provide assistance with these issues, but you may also find some of the following web sites helpful.

Copyright Law & Graduate Research: New Media, New Rights, and Your New Dissertation, by Kenneth D. Crews

This booklet, published by ProQuest Information and Learning (PQIL), will guide you in meeting their requirements. If PQIL/UMI believes that you have included previously copyrighted material without written permission, they will not provide access to your dissertation. Publishing your dissertation through ProQuest/UMI is one of the requirements for receiving a doctoral degree from the University of Chicago.

Copyright Management Center

This focused presentation of copyright issues in higher education serves Indiana University and IU-PUI. Kenneth D. Crews is Director of the Copyright Management Center.

Cornell University's Copyright Information Center

Both the Cornell-specific and the general information on this site may address many of your copyright-related questions.

Duke Law's Center for the Study of the Public Domain

Material in the public domain is not protected by intellectual property rights. This web site promotes research and discussion of public domain issues and public policy. Includes links to events, projects, articles, and publications, among them Tales from the Public Domain: BOUND BY LAW?, a comic book that is both informative and fun to read.

Information Pages from The University of Chicago Press

General contact information includes details on requesting permission to use material from University of Chicago Press publications. Copyright and permissions information includes Copyright Guidelines and University of Chicago Guidelines for Fair Use of Our Publications.

Permissions, A Survival Guide: Blunt Talk about Art as Intellectual Property

Susan Bielstein's book examines copyright law and the use of images. This book is available in the Library. You can find other books on copyright by searching the library catalog. Note that books with "Authorship -- Handbooks" in a subject heading may be just as useful for working on your dissertation as books with "Copyright" in a subject heading. For example, The Chicago Manual of Style includes relevant information.

Requesting Permission to Reproduce or Publish Material from the Special Collections Research Center

Researchers must submit written requests for permission to reproduce or publish material from rare books, manuscripts or archival material owned by the University of Chicago Library. Quotations from text that fall within the fair use guidelines of the United States Copyright law do not require written permission from the Library.

United States Copyright Office

The U.S. Copyright Office provides access to forms and publications and information on copyright law and on the history of the Copyright Office. Three searchable databases containing records of registration and ownership documents since 1978 are also available.

The University of Chicago Library

Links to a number of other web sites are provided by the D'Angelo Law Library (Intellectual Property: Copyright, Patents, and Trademarks), the John Crerar Library (Copyright and Intellectual Property), and--perhaps the most useful for your dissertation--the Special Collections Research Center (Copyright Information Sites).

The University of Texas

UT's Copyright Crash Course is worth exploring although it may not be easy to locate all the information relevant to your situation.