Board rejects proposal to digitize yearbooks over privacy concerns
A proposal for digitizing old yearbooks was denied by the Whitefish School Board last week, after the board expressed concerns regarding privacy.
Whitefish High School librarian Chani Craig presented a plan to archive and digitize the high school’s old yearbooks at little or no cost to Whitefish Schools through a proposed deal with the Oklahoma Correctional Institute.
“This is a great opportunity that we have to provide alumni, community members, other individuals that are interested in local history access to these yearbooks online,” Craig told the board on April 10. “This is a good way to preserve, archive and sort of move us into the 21st Century.”
Trustee Heather Vrentas sparked conversations amongst the board about privacy concerns by asking who would own the digital information after the books are digitized.
Craig said the district still owns everything, but OCI retains rights to the archives. In the contract sent to the district, OCI maintains that they will not use the images obtained “in any manner not consistent with their original intended purpose as yearbook material, or in a way that may be deemed as disrespectful to persons within,” but that it is OCI’s “intent to use those images as a course of business.”
Craig said it appears that OCI may sell or are planning to sell the digital files to organizations like classmates.com and others that are a service to connect folks from graduating classes.
“Depending on your point of view this can be in the public domain,” Craig said. “These are records that are easily available.”
While they could understand an intended use such as a service like classmates.com, several board members worried about publishing photos and information now without the consent of the people inside the yearbook, regardless of whatever privacy they gave up by being in the yearbook when they were in school.
Craig said she thinks OCI could argue the yearbooks are in the public domain anyway, and that she would entertain most requests anyway by people who want to come in and skim through the old yearbooks.
Trustee Marguerite Kaminski initially moved to table discussion of the issue until other school districts who have contracted with OCI could be contacted. OCI has worked with 12 Montana schools and libraries.
Trustee Shannon Hanson seconded Kaminski’s motion, but said it would be tough to get his vote regardless of new information.
“I seconded the motion because I support getting more information, but I don’t see a condition under which I would support an actual passage of this. I have real concerns of privacy and the commercial use of the product. I would need some pretty serious clarification,” he said.
Ultimately the motion to table failed 2-4, with Kaminski and Nick Polumbus voting in favor.
A separate motion to approve the original contract failed unanimously. The board asked school staff to return with more information addressing its concerns.
Trustee Anna Deese said she doesn’t have concerns about the OCI selling the initial digital copies, but does worry what happens later.
“I love the opportunity,” Deese said. “And I don’t mind the vendors that they’re talking about, I imagine them selling it to ancestry.com, like that, but then the concern about what happens from there.”
Under the proposal, the high school would allow yearbooks up to 10 years old to be digitized and archived, with yearbooks from 1950 through 1990 saved free of charge and the rest of the books archived at a cost of $10 to $20 each. The library would pay those costs from its book budget.
The project originally was created after the Oklahoma state agency realized the damage that resulted to high school archives when tornadoes hit places in Oklahoma.
Craig said she had completed several similar projects at schools in the east before coming to Whitefish.