Standard Terms of Use of our Website

Please read the whole of these standard terms of use of our Website carefully, because you are only permitted to make use of the content of this Website if you agree to them and, by using any content of this Website, you are deemed to agree to them.

These standard terms of use are uniformly applicable throughout our Website; and in the event of any ambiguity with other terms and conditions found on our Website these standard terms of use shall always govern.

1. Definitions

In these Terms of Use:

1. “Marks” means the trademarks or service marks, logos or brands for the time being and from time to time properly used or adopted by and belonging to us or a third party. The term “trademarks” shall where the context admits be deemed to include all logos and service marks.

2. “Materials” means, to the extent it is protected copyright work, and is not expressly marked as “Third Party Property”, all or any part of any text, image, audio, video or any other type of media in any format contained and comprised in the Website. “Materials” do not include “Marks”.

3. “Third Party Property” means all or any part of any Marks, text, image, audio, video or any other type of media in any format contained and comprised in the Website and expressly marked as the copyright property of a third party.”

4. “We” “our” “us” means The Trustees of the British Museum or as the context requires the British Museum Company Limited, the British Museum Friends or the British Museum Great Court Limited;

5. “Website” means our website at www.teachinghistory100.org and any sub-domains;

2. Marks

Nothing contained in the Website shall be construed as granting any licence or right to use our Marks or those comprised in any Third Party Property displayed on our Website without our prior written permission or that of any third party owner. Your misuse of the Marks on our Website is strictly prohibited.

3. Disclaimer

1. We have taken every effort and care in preparing Materials, however we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy thereof, and Materials shall at all times constitute work in progress which we may change without notice. We shall not be liable for any loss or damage arising from your use of or reliance on Materials.

2. Links within our Website may lead to other websites. They are provided for convenience only. We do not sponsor, nor necessarily endorse or otherwise approve of any information or statements appearing in those websites (or websites referred to or linked to those websites).

3. Every reasonable effort has been made to seek appropriate permission from people identifiable in photographs used throughout the site.

4. Privacy

1. We are committed to protecting the privacy and the confidentiality of the personal information of visitors to our Website. We undertake to ensure that all personal information in our possession is processed in accordance with the principles of the Data Protection Act 1998. Our Data Protection Policies may be inspected in the governance section.

2. We collect personal information (such as your name, contact details, credit card information) that you supply to us. Your information is collected when you request information from us, contact us, make a booking with us, purchase items from us, including Membership and e-tickets, or make a donation to us. We will update your information whenever we get the opportunity to keep it current, accurate and complete.

3. Any information you provide when registering with us, buying Membership, e-tickets and other products will be used for British Museum, British Museum Friends and British Museum Company purposes only. From time to time we may send you information from other organisations which we think may be of interest to you. We may also disclose your information to companies who act as “data processors” on our behalf, some of whom may be outside the UK/EEA.

4. You may indicate your preference for receiving direct marketing by telephone or email from us or any partner organisations with whom we may work. You will be given the opportunity on every communication we send you to indicate that you no longer wish to receive our direct marketing material. You may, in addition, indicate your preference regarding receiving third party direct marketing material. Once properly notified by you, we will take steps to stop using your information in this way.

5. The credit card information you give for any online transaction is used solely for the purpose of processing that transaction. Since it is technologically possible for unauthorised third parties to intercept any email or any message posted on an insecure web page, we strongly advise you against sending us any credit card information via email or an insecure web page. Secure web pages begin “https”. Moreover it is contrary to the data security rules of the payment card industry for us to accept credit card payments by email and we would decline to accept payment by this means.

6. You have the right to ask in writing for a copy of the information we hold about you (for which we may charge a fee) and to correct any inaccuracies in your information.

5. Use of ‘cookies’

Cookies and the British Museum website

6. Consequential loss

Except to the extent required by applicable law, in no circumstances will we be liable to you in law for any special, incidental, consequential, punitive or exemplary damages arising from your use of Materials or these Terms of Use, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.

7. Applicable law

You agree that the terms and conditions of your use of our Website shall be governed by, and construed in accordance with, English law and you agree that the courts of England shall have exclusive jurisdiction in relation to any dispute or matter arising in connection with these terms and conditions and conditions and your use of this Website.

Copyright and permissions

The British Museum wishes to encourage the dissemination and use of information about our collection and expertise that we publish on our website. For this purpose, we increasingly intend to release content on our website under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

• What does the Creative Commons license apply to?

The Creative Commons license does not apply to everything on our website. Content that is published under the Creative Commons license will be marked with the following logo:

• Why is everything on the website not published under a Creative Commons license?

All the content on our website is protected by internationally recognised laws of copyright and intellectual property. The British Museum can decide under what terms to release the content for which we own the copyright.

However, not all the content on our website is owned exclusively by the British Museum. Some of it may have third-party intellectual property or image rights that the Museum does not own. While we have made all reasonable efforts to obtain permission from the owners of such content to post it on our website, we cannot allow any additional uses ourselves.

Additionally, there may be content we cannot share under a Creative Commons license due to cultural sensitivities, or if doing so would be against any existing Museum policies (such as our human remains policy).

• How can I use the content published under a Creative Commons license?

The British Museum publishes some of the content on our website under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

This license allows you to:

BY (Attribution): Copy, distribute, display and perform our copyrighted work – and derivative works based upon it – but only if you give us credit in the way we request:

© Trustees of the British Museum.

NC (NonCommercial): Copy, distribute, display, and perform our work – and derivative works based upon it – but for non-commercial purposes only.

SA (ShareAlike): Distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs our work.

Creative Commons defines commercial use as “reproducing a work in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or monetary compensation”.

For the avoidance of doubt, the British Museum considers the following to be commercial activities (this list is not exhaustive):

- anything that is in itself charged for, including textbooks and academic books or journals;
- an individual’s website or blog that is used as a platform to promote or conduct commercial activities (for example, to sell products created by or - services provided by such an individual);
- a commercial organization’s website or blog, including trading arms of charities;
- freely distributed leaflets or merchandise that promote goods or services;
- corporate stationery or any business communications such as annual reviews;
- free-entry events, presentations or lectures promoting a product or a service;
- displays in public places offering or promoting a product or service, such as use in a shop, restaurant, hotel, public bar or property showroom.

The British Museum considers the following to be non-commercial activities (this list is not exhaustive):

- use in free-entry, educational lectures (or in activities promoting free-entry lectures);
- promotion of any non-commercial activity, such as a poster advertising a bursary;
- one-off classroom use;
- reproduction within a thesis document submitted by a student at an educational establishment (an electronic version of the thesis may be stored - online by the educational establishment as long as it is made available at no cost to the end user);
- use in websites as long as they are informational, academic or research-oriented and not linked to any commercial activity;display within a free—entry public space (including museums and galleries), as long as the use is not promoting a product or a service.

• How can I use the content that is not published under a Creative Commons license?

Any content found on our website that is not marked as being published under a Creative Commons license may be used where there is a legal exception to copyright. You may read more about these here.

If you want to use materials found on our website in any different way or for any different purpose, you can request permission to do so by emailing permissions@britishmuseum.org or, in the case of photographs, sales@bmimages.com.

Please note: the British Museum cannot guarantee that your use of any content found on our website will not infringe any third-party copyright or other intellectual property rights. It is your responsibility to judge whether any of the content may need additional clearances for your intended use and to obtain them.

Frequently asked questions

• I am a doctoral candidate. Can I use British Museum content in my thesis?

Yes, you may use British Museum content at no charge in your thesis (including images from Collections Online and content from our website) as long as:

- we have made the content available under a Creative Commons license;

- you attribute us with the appropriate credit line;

- if published, the thesis is made available for free and, if placed in electronic deposit, the electronic copy is also available for free;

- you or your academic institution further distributes our content by applying the same conditions under which we gave it to you.

• What if my thesis is chosen for publication?

If your thesis is published, whether as an article or a book and whether in print or electronic format, you need to contact us to request permission. You may do so by emailing permissions@britishmuseum.org or, in the case of photographs, sales@bmimages.com.

• Can I use British Museum content on social media sites?

You may use British Museum content that has been made available under Creative Commons on social media sites, so long as the page does not advertise or is not connected to commercial activity or commercial services of any kind.

Please note: we distribute our content under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, which does not allow use of our content for commercial purposes.

Some social media sites distribute content under a Creative Commons Attribution/ShareAlike License, which does allow the content posted on their site to be further used commercially. In other cases, by uploading content to the social media site, the user is granting the host of the site permission to further use the content commercially.

In those cases, posting British Museum content to those sites would not be allowed.

• Can I use British Museum content in my article if it is published in an Open Access journal?

It depends. One of the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license is that the content be further shared under the same conditions we shared it with you.

If the journal where you would like to publish our content is published under a license that is less restrictive than ours (for example, CC BY-SA, which allows commercial uses) or more restrictive than ours (for example, CC BY-NC-ND, which doesn’t allow the creation of derivative works) you may not use our content without asking us for permission first.

If, on the other hand, the journal is published under a license that would not limit or expand the rights we grant you (that is, a CC BY-NC-SA license) you may use the content we have published under a Creative Commons license without needing further permission.

If you are unsure under which license the journal is being published, you should ask your editor for clarification.

• What if the journal is published by a charity?

Again, it depends. Some charitable uses could be made within the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. However, Creative Commons differentiates between uses, rather than between users, for its definitions of commercial and non-commercial uses. This means, for example, that:

- If a charity or not-for-profit society sells products in order to carry out or support itself, the activity is commercial because the sales (as opposed to free distribution) of the products are ‘primarily intended or directed toward a commercial advantage’, even if the commercial advantage is in the public interest of supporting the charity.

- On the other hand, if a commercial entity, such as a private university, holds a series of free-entry educational lectures, the activity may be non-commercial (provided it is not a form of marketing) even though the institution may normally charge commercial rates for all other courses and events.