How To Credit A Collection

Way back in 2007, Beaufort County Library contributed its first collection, Phosphate, Farms and Family: The Donner Collection to the Lowcountry Digital Library (LCDL). It has since been joined by selections from the Lucille Hasell Culp Collection; images from the Hurricane of 1893; a booklet of survival stories from the Hurricane of 1893; a postcard collection; two collections of stereoscopic photographic images from the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, and a Confederate surgeon's medical record book. 

See all of our contributions to the LCDL thus far, and I hope to get three more up before I retire.   

Librarians, libraries, and other cultural heritage organizations are aware that how information is created, used, and shared in the 21st century is just different than it was in the past. Like most small special collections and archives organizations, the Beaufort District Collection does not make nor sell reproductions of photographs in our collections. We do not have the capability to go into the business of reproducing items from our collections to be purchased by the public.

Because of that limitation (and a few others), we provide access to select items from our holdings through our partnership with the Lowcountry Digital Library. Anyone anywhere with an internet connection is encouraged to look at what we have posted. However, if you show or share images from our holdings on the LCDL, please make it known where you found the digital image and that the original  is from a particular collection online put there by the Beaufort County Library’s special collections unit, the Beaufort District Collection.

For example: 

Here is the credit line we prefer be used for the Lucille Hasell Culp Collection online: “Image courtesy of Beaufort County Library, The Lucille Hasell Culp Collection via the Lowcountry Digital Library.” (where the collection name links back to the image within the collection on the LCDL website.) 

Here is the credit line we prefer be used for the “Phosphate, Farms and Family: The Donner Collection” online: “Image courtesy of Beaufort County Library, Phosphate, Farms and Family: The Donner Collection via the Lowcountry Digital Library.” (where the collection name links back to the image within the collection on the LCDL website.) 

When an image used is credited in this fashion, it increases public awareness of the Beaufort County Library, the Beaufort District Collection, and the Lowcountry Digital Library and perhaps more importantly, the contribution that archival and historical collections throughout this nation make to community life.