Rights, use, and takedown
How the Library decides what it can publish, what it knows and does not know about the rights in this collection, and how to ask for a change.
What this page is
This collection publishes oral history: recordings, transcripts and printed volumes in which people described their own lives, their families, their work and the places they lived. Some of the people who spoke are still living. Some died decades ago. Some of what they said is precise and generous. Some of it is wrong, and some of it is ugly.
We publish it because it matters, and because a person's account of their own life belongs in the world. But publishing other people's words carries obligations, and this page sets out what ours are: how we decide what we can publish, how to tell us we have got something wrong, what we will do about it, and how fast.
We would rather be told than not told. Nobody who writes to us about this material is treated as an adversary.
How we decide what we can publish
Everything we put online rests on at least one of five bases, and we record which one for every group of material, so you can see our reasoning rather than take our word for it.
- The work is in the public domain. Copyright has expired, or the work never carried copyright to begin with. Nothing in this collection currently rests on this basis.
- We own the rights. The Library holds copyright, or holds permission broad enough to cover what we have done. This covers the indexes and apparatus we built ourselves, and nothing else.
- We have the creator's participation, and are documenting his permission. Bob Zybach, who made this collection, reviewed this edition with the Library in August 2026 and publishes the same material himself. His written permission for this working edition is being recorded now, and the formal instrument follows; if it is not given, this edition comes down.
- Our use is a fair use. For material still in copyright where we could not obtain permission, we publish under a considered fair-use rationale for education, scholarship and research. This is a judgment, not a certainty, and we treat it as one.
- We know of no restriction. After a documented search we found no evidence that anyone holds rights our use would infringe. "No known restrictions" means exactly that: no known ones. It is not a claim that none exist.
Custody is not ownership. Holding a copy of something does not make you its owner. Some of what we describe is held by archives that have the physical originals but not the copyright, and we do not describe those institutions as having granted rights they do not have.
We do not put a single rights label on the whole collection. This material was made at different times, under different agreements, by different people, for different institutions. Some of it was covered by a signed release; some by a different signed release with different terms; some, as far as anyone can now tell, by nothing at all. One label across all of it would be a convenient falsehood. Each group carries its own statement, below and on the item pages themselves.
What we know about rights in this collection
Plainly, and including what we do not know. The short codes are from RightsStatements.org, the standard vocabulary libraries and archives use so that a statement means the same thing everywhere: In Copyright means the work is protected and we are telling you who to ask; Copyright Undetermined means we have looked and cannot say who owns it.
The fifteen printed monographs 1990–2009
Copyright Undetermined (UND)
Nobody's ownership of these printed volumes is documented, so the Library says so rather than guessing.
The volumes carry no copyright notice of any kind. That absence does not put them in the public domain — the rule that made a missing notice fatal reaches only works published before 1 March 1989, and every volume here is later. What the missing notice tells us is that ownership was never settled at the time. The title pages recite that the project was authorized and directed by the Director of the OSU Research Forests and funded by the OSU College of Forestry, but a funding recital is not an assignment.
These volumes are not in the public domain and no page of this Library may say they are.
Who to ask:
- The creator, who publishes the volumes himself — Bob Zybach, series editor; the fifteen monographs are downloadable as PDFs on his own site.
- Oregon State University Research Forests and College of Forestry — Authorized, directed and funded the project. Whether the University asserts ownership has not been answered.
- OSU Special Collections and Archives Research Center, OH 006 — Holds the originals. Custody is not copyright.
Soap Creek interviews recorded 1978–1980 1978–1980
In Copyright (InC)
These interviews were recorded by Royal G. Jackson, Jennifer Lee and Karen Thomas, and the consents ran to the Horner Museum and to Jackson and Lee personally — not to this Library and not to Oregon State.
The 1979 release grants permission to the Horner Museum and to Royal Jackson and Jennifer Lee by name. The 1989 Horner Museum gift and release relinquishes literary rights and legal title to the Horner Museum. The Horner Museum closed in 1995 and its collections went to the Benton County Historical Society in Philomath. Which narrator signed which form is not established: the signed originals are at Oregon State and have not been digitized. We have asked for them.
Who to ask:
- Royal G. Jackson, Jennifer Lee and Karen Thomas — The interviewers of record for this range, and — for Jackson and Lee — named grantees on the 1979 form. The Library has not been able to reach them and is trying.
- Benton County Historical Society, Philomath, Oregon — Successor to the Horner Museum, the institution the 1979 and 1989 forms name.
- OSU Special Collections and Archives Research Center, OH 006 — Holds the tapes and the signed forms.
Still open: Whether any transcript or report from this 1978–1980 work was distributed to the public before 1 March 1989, and with or without notice. Until that is answered the Library publishes no No-Copyright value for this material.
Soap Creek interviews recorded 1989–1991 1989–1991
In Copyright (InC)
The narrators gave their literary rights to Oregon State University's Research Forests, so Oregon State is the door to knock on — not the interviewer and not this Library.
The 1990 OSU Research Forests gift and release is the governing form for this range: "I understand that I am giving away any literary rights or legal titles which I may possess to this gift." It kept two things back for the narrator — personal use, and a checkbox recording whether the narrator was willing to have copies of the transcript distributed to the general public. Where a narrator recorded a choice about public distribution, that choice governs. Which narrator signed which form is not yet established.
Who to ask:
- Oregon State University Research Forests — Grantee under the 1990 and 1995 forms.
- OSU Special Collections and Archives Research Center, OH 006 — Holds the tapes and the signed forms.
The 1998-form interview series c. 1998
In Copyright, with a royalty disclosure (InC)
A different form, limited to educational and research use, and carrying a payment obligation to a county museum that nobody can sign away.
The 1998 form gives permission to reproduce the memoirs for educational and research purposes, and attaches a condition: if content or reproductions are sold, an accurate accounting of total sales is to be made annually and ten per cent of all gross income paid to the Benton County Historical Museum in Philomath, Oregon. The Library discloses that obligation because it survives whatever anyone else signs afterwards, and because anyone contemplating commercial use of this material needs to know about it.
Money owed to somebody else. Ten per cent of gross income from any sale of this material, and an annual accounting, are owed to the Benton County Historical Museum in Philomath, Oregon. The permission itself is limited to educational and research purposes.
Who to ask:
- The creator, and the Benton County Historic Resources Commission — The named recipients of the 1998 reproduction permission.
- Benton County Historical Society / Benton County Historical Museum, Philomath, Oregon — The royalty payee, and — as successor to the Horner Museum — a probable rights holder in the earlier material as well.
Still open: Which narrators signed the 1998 form. That depends on an inspection of OH 006 that has not yet happened.
Monographs whose printed lead is not the creator 1990–2009
In Copyright (InC)
These five volumes include work by multiple contributors. Their printed lead-author credits do not establish all interview participation or applicable permissions.
Monographs #02, #04, #13 and #15 credit Royal G. Jackson first; #11 credits Judy Carlson first. These volumes contain contributions and interviews from different periods. Bob Zybach conducted Rowley’s 1991 and 1995 sessions and interviewed Bessie Murphy with Phil Hays in 1990. Contributor roles and applicable permissions require review by contribution; printed lead-author order does not establish interview participation or rights ownership.
Who to ask:
- Royal G. Jackson, Jennifer Lee and Karen Thomas — Leads of #02 (Jackson and Lee), #04 (Jackson and Thomas), #13 (Jackson and Lee) and #15 (Jackson and others).
- Judy Carlson — Lead of #11, and one of the eight research assistants named in the Oregon State finding aid for OH 006.
- Benton County Historical Society, Philomath, Oregon — Successor to the Horner Museum, the grantee named on the 1979 and 1989 forms.
- OSU Special Collections and Archives Research Center, OH 006
Still open: What each of the eight named research assistants actually did — conducted interviews, transcribed, abstracted, drafted text, or none of these. Until that is answered each is a possible rights holder. Also unconfirmed: which consent instrument, if any, governs the 1975 sessions behind #11.
The 1999 thesis 1999
In Copyright (InC)
The clearest title in the collection: the thesis carries the creator's own copyright notice, and he publishes it himself.
The thesis prints "Copyright by Bob Zybach / March 5, 1999 / All Rights Reserved." Narrator material quoted inside it still carries the consents that govern the interviews it came from.
Who to ask:
- Robert (Bob) Zybach — Author and rights holder; publishes the thesis by chapter on his own site.
Still open: Whether an Oregon State deposit agreement grants the University any rights in the thesis.
The 1989 Auto Tour 1989
Copyright Undetermined (UND)
A 1989 booklet published by the Research Forests; the Library has not established who owns it.
The creator publishes the Auto Tour on his own site. The Library's rights review has not reached a settled position on this booklet, and says so rather than borrowing the answer from the monographs.
Who to ask:
- The creator, who publishes the booklet himself
- Oregon State University Research Forests — Named as publisher on the booklet.
Still open: The Auto Tour is not covered by any population in the Library's rights schedule. Its ownership, and whether the 1 March 1989 notice rule reaches it, are both open.
Elliott State Forest transcripts 2017–2019
In Copyright (InC)
This is the least settled part of the collection: no signed release has been found for any of these interviews, and several of the narrators are living.
The creator has published these transcripts openly on his own site since 2019, with no rights language attached, and copies are at Oregon State under OH 047. A blank release form exists in the project's files, which suggests the intention was there, but a blank form is not evidence that any were signed. The Library publishes under a considered fair-use rationale with a documented search recorded for each narrator, and treats a narrator's or family's objection as dispositive.
Where we have searched for a particular person and cannot find them, that one item is marked In Copyright — Rights-holder(s) Unlocatable or Unidentifiable (InC-RUU). Applied to an individual item only where the diligence log shows that a specific search for a specific person was made and did not find them. Never applied across the series.
Who to ask:
- The narrators, and the families of narrators who have died — Whatever a narrator never conveyed, a narrator still holds. Jerry Phillips died in 2022.
- The creator, who publishes the transcripts himself
- OSU Special Collections and Archives Research Center, OH 047 — Holds copies, donated by the creator in 2019.
Still open: What the Oregon Department of State Lands and OSU College of Forestry funding agreements said about ownership. That one document decides the question for the whole Elliott series.
Elliott State Forest recordings 2017–2019
In Copyright (InC)
Same posture as the transcripts: no signed release found, living narrators, and the recordings already published by the creator on his own site.
Where we have searched for a particular person and cannot find them, that one item is marked In Copyright — Rights-holder(s) Unlocatable or Unidentifiable (InC-RUU). Per narrator, on evidence in the diligence log.
Who to ask:
- The narrators, and the families of narrators who have died
- The creator, who publishes the recordings himself
- OSU Special Collections and Archives Research Center, OH 047
Elliott State Forest photographs and video 2017–2024
Copyright Undetermined (UND)
Who owns the photographs and the field-trip video has not been established; the Library links to the creator's copies rather than republishing them.
No photograph of human remains or of a funerary or sacred object is published.
Who to ask:
The Alberta Street reports 1992; 2015
Copyright Undetermined for the 1992 report; In Copyright for the 2015 report (UND)
The 1992 report has named student authors the Library has not reached; the 2015 report is in copyright.
Who to ask:
- The named authors of the 1992 report — Six students are named on the report. None has been contacted.
- The creator, and Oregon Websites and Watershed Project, Inc. — For the 2015 report.
Still open: The 1992 report also has an unaccounted rights holder, Urban Forestry, Inc. The Library describes these reports and links to the creator's copies; it does not republish them.
Series the Library describes but does not publish various
Copyright Undetermined (UND)
For these the Library publishes its own description and a link to the creator's copy, and nothing else.
The reforestation business records are held at Oregon State as MSS Zybach and are not published here. The remaining inventory series are listed so a reader knows they exist and where to find them.
Who to ask:
- The creator — Publishes these materials, where they are published at all, on his own sites.
- OSU Special Collections and Archives Research Center, MSS Zybach
Still open: The Library's rights schedule does not cover the Osbornes or wildfire inventories. They are described from the creator's own public pages and nothing is republished from them.
The creator's Letitia Carson writing 1989–2016
In Copyright (InC)
His own articles, columns and research reports. He wrote them and he publishes them himself; the Library's copy is a display copy.
Four of these carry a text layer and are reproduced page by page: the 2014 ORWW research report written with Janet Meranda, two long articles in The Umpqua Trapper, and his entry in the online encyclopedia at BlackPast.org. Where an article appeared inside somebody else's periodical, only the pages of his own article are reproduced; the cover, masthead, notices and advertisements belong to the society that printed them and stay on his scan. The remainder of his writing is scanned without a text layer, and is catalogued and linked rather than reproduced. The Letitia Carson series contains four further populations besides this one — the public records, the Merandas' transcriptions, his photographs, and the third-party works in his reference library — each with its own statement below.
Who to ask:
- The creator, who publishes these himself — Bob Zybach; the Letitia Carson library at orww.org.
- Douglas County Historical Society — Printed two of the articles in its quarterly, The Umpqua Trapper, and holds its own rights in the rest of those issues.
- BlackPast.org — Publishes the encyclopedia entry he contributed, and holds its own rights in the site.
Still open: Permission for the Library's display copies is being recorded with the creator. Nothing here has been cleared with the Douglas County Historical Society or with BlackPast.org, and the Library has reproduced only the pages the creator wrote.
The Letitia Carson public records 1824–1922
Public Domain in the United States
Court, probate, homestead, land and citizenship records made by government officers in the nineteenth century. Nobody owns them.
Two hundred and fifty files in the creator's documentation folders: Ashe County citizenship papers, a Platte County deed, the Benton County probate of David Carson's estate, the two suits Letitia Carson brought against Greenberry Smith, and her homestead file. The Library describes each one, shows the creator's thumbnail where he made one, and links his full-size scan rather than making a second copy. The same statement covers the works in his reference library that were published before 1929 or made by a government — Palmer, Chittenden, Paxton, Lockley, Cummins, the Oregon Spectator indexes made by the W.P.A. in 1941, the Bureau of Land Management's homesteading history, and the General Land Office and USGS map sheets.
No claim is made over these records by the Library or by anyone else, and no page of this Library may say otherwise.
Who to ask:
- Oregon State Archives — Holds the Benton County probate and district court files.
- National Archives — Holds the homestead application, proof, certificate and patent.
- Platte County, Missouri — Holds the Missouri probate.
- The creator, who scanned and publishes them — Bob Zybach and Janet Meranda.
The Meranda transcriptions made ca. 2013–2022
Copyright Undetermined (UND)
The records transcribed are public domain; who, if anyone, holds rights in the transcription has not been settled.
Jan and John Meranda transcribed almost the whole of the probate and lawsuit files, heading each transcription with the filename of the scan it was made from. A faithful transcription of a manuscript may carry little or no copyright of its own; the Library has not asked the Merandas, and says so rather than assuming. The creator publishes the transcriptions on his own site and the Library reproduces them page by page, credited to them.
Who to ask:
- Jan and John Meranda — Made the transcriptions.
- The creator, who publishes them — Bob Zybach.
Still open: The Merandas have not been asked. If they would rather the Library not reproduce the transcriptions, they come down.
The creator's Letitia Carson photographs ca. 1990–2024
In Copyright (InC)
His own photographs of the ground — Soap Creek, the burying ground, the homestead, Cow Creek, Umatilla County.
Registered folder by folder, with his filenames as captions. The Library displays two as plates and links the rest. Folders whose subject is a living person or family are recorded and counted but not listed file by file, and none is displayed. Where his filename names a living person, the Library repeats his filename and says nothing further.
No photograph of a living person is displayed by this Library from this series.
Who to ask:
- The creator, who publishes them himself — Bob Zybach.
Third-party works in the creator's Letitia Carson library 1933–2023
In Copyright (InC)
Other people's books, theses, articles and letters, which the creator keeps beside his own work. The Library names them and links his copy.
Identified by reference only: author, title where the Library could read one, date, and a link. Nothing is copied and nothing is quoted. Among them are two Portland State theses on Letitia Carson (Vallance 2021, Brink 2023), recent magazine and encyclopedia articles (Banks, Moyer, Stocks 2023), county historical files, promotional material for Jane Kirkpatrick's 2014 novel, and a folder of correspondence which the Library records only as existing. The commissioned portrait of Letitia Carson painted by Jeremy Okai Davis, and Alison Saar's woodcut on the creator's own front page, belong to the artists and are named and linked, never shown.
The Library does not reproduce any of these works, and does not quote from them.
Who to ask:
- The creator, who hosts these on his own site — Bob Zybach; the Letitia Carson library at orww.org.
The 1828 Umpqua Memorial Project — the creator's own work 1987–2023
In Copyright (InC)
The creator wrote these, publishes them himself, and holds the rights in them.
The guidebooks, the photographic reports, the journal article, the 1987 draft, the presentations, the sign drafts, the correspondence and the project's own photographs and maps are Bob Zybach's work, made for Oregon Websites and Watershed Project, Inc., NW Maps Co. and the Jedediah Smith Society. He has published all of them openly on his own site since 2023. The Library's copy is a display copy of what he already publishes, and it links to his files rather than replacing them. His permission is being recorded.
No page of this Library publishes a coordinate, a survey description, a road intersection, a site map or a photograph captioned as the place of the 1828 attack, of the Kelawatset village, or of the trappers' graves — not even where the creator has published it himself.
Who to ask:
- The creator, who publishes this material himself — Bob Zybach, ORWW 1828 Umpqua Memorial Project.
- Oregon Websites and Watershed Project, Inc. — Carries the copyright notice on the project pages, with NW Maps Co.
The 1828 record — journals, letters and government publications 1826–1928
No copyright — published before 1929, or a work of the United States government
Old enough, or official enough, that anyone may copy, print and quote them.
The Smith and Rogers journals, Smith's 1827 letter to William Clark, McLoughlin's 1828 report, McLeod's journals, the partners' 1830 letter to the Secretary of War, Dale's 1918 edition, the 1907 Washington Historical Quarterly article, the Smithsonian paper of 1938 and the National Park Service history of Fort Vancouver. The Library states this in plain words rather than by a vocabulary code, because the vocabulary's no-copyright statements assert a jurisdiction determination the Library is not making for anyone else.
Who to ask:
The 1828 Umpqua Memorial Project — work by other hands 1944–2023
In Copyright (InC)
Somebody else's work. The Library names it, says where the creator hosts it, and stops.
Twenty-five works on the project's reference shelf, the canine-search report and field map, the sign artwork, the sign fabricator's quotation, the Oregon Travel Information Council's committee papers, the newspaper reports, the museum finding aid and the tour script, and the photographs made by participants in the 2023 Rendezvous. None of these is reproduced here and none is quoted beyond a sentence. Each is identified by title, author, date and the address at which the creator hosts it, so a reader can go to it.
The canine-search report and its field map are not reproduced at any length. Their subject is where human remains lie.
Who to ask:
- The named authors, artists and photographers — Identified individually on the pages where each work appears. None has been contacted.
- The creator, who hosts the copies
The layer the Library built 2026–
The Library's own work. Licence terms to be announced.
The indexes, place and people pages, the timeline, the finding aid and the page anchoring are the Library's work, not the creator's, and the Library says so.
An open licence is under consideration for this layer and has not been granted. When the Library decides, it will say so here and date the decision. Whatever it decides covers only the layer the Library made: it does not, and cannot, cover the underlying sources, because the Library cannot give away rights that are not its own. Parts of this layer are built from material that carries a use limitation — the 1998-form series is limited to educational and research purposes and carries a royalty — and any licence must keep those parts separable.
Built with AI assistance under human direction. No source text was generated, rewritten, summarised or enhanced.
We keep a dated log of the rights work behind these statements — each step taken, each source consulted, each question asked and the answer we got, including the answers that were "no" and the ones that were "we don't know". Ask and we will send it. A rights statement that shows only its conclusions is asking you to trust us, and we would rather show the working.
If you are a narrator, or a narrator's family
If you are one of the people whose interview appears here, or you are next of kin of someone who is, and you want something restricted or removed, we will do it. You do not have to give a reason and you do not have to have a legal claim.
This is not a copyright question and we will not turn it into one. Whatever the paperwork says, whatever a release form signed thirty years ago allows us to do, a person who spoke into a microphone about their own life — or that person's family — gets to change their mind about what happens to it. There is a real professional disagreement about this. Some in our field would say a defensible legal position is enough. We do not think it is.
What that means in practice:
- Write to us and say what you want — removal, restriction, a note added, a name taken out, a passage cut. Whatever it is.
- We act on it. We do not investigate first, we do not ask you to prove anything, and we do not send you to a lawyer.
- If you want something taken out of our search results and indexes straight away while we sort out the rest, say so and we do that first.
- If you want an item gone entirely, it goes. We keep a preservation copy that nobody can see, unless you ask us not to, and we tell you which.
- We confirm in writing what we did.
- You can change your mind again later, in either direction.
If you are not sure whether you count as next of kin for this purpose, write to us anyway. We would rather have that conversation than not.
Sensitive information
Some material here is sensitive for reasons that have nothing to do with copyright, and we handle it separately.
Places that should not be easy to find
These volumes contain passages in which narrators describe where American Indian burial, grave and artifact sites are. Turning that prose into a searchable, mappable point is not the same act as printing it on page 100 of a monograph in 1993. It is our act, performed now, and it would make those places easy to find rather than merely findable.
So those pages are held, and so are the index entries, place pages and timeline entries that would lead a reader to them. They stay held until we have consulted the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, whose country this collection covers. That consultation is being opened now, and nothing locational will be published before it concludes. Silence is not agreement, and we will not read it as agreement. If a tribal government or tribal historic preservation office asks us to withhold, generalise or restrict anything else here, we do it on request and discuss it afterwards.
Two things this does not mean. It does not mean we are withholding Kalapuya history — that history stays, and it is one of the reasons this collection is worth reading. And it does not mean we have deleted anything: a held page is still in the sequence, still citable, and says it is held.
Personal information about living people
Pages carrying home addresses, telephone numbers, tax lots and the names of children are held, with the reason shown. Historical addresses that are part of the story — where a family farmed, which house burned — are treated as content rather than contact details, but tell us if we have got that balance wrong for you.
Other sensitive content
The collection contains derogatory language, unproven allegations about named people, and references to children who are now adults. We do not quietly delete this material — altering the historical record is its own kind of dishonesty — but we note it, and there are several things short of deletion we can do. The list is further down this page. The content note says what is in this collection and where.
Machine assistance, stated plainly
The apparatus around this collection was built with AI assistance under human direction: the page anchoring that lets you link to one printed page, the indexes, the place and people pages, and the timeline. That is the Library's layer, and it is labelled as the Library's layer wherever it appears.
The transcripts are the creator's printed text, unaltered. They were typed, checked against the tape, and approved by the narrators before the volumes were printed. We extracted that text; we did not generate it, rewrite it, summarise it, correct it or enhance it. No generated text is presented as source material. No image has been sharpened, upscaled or interpolated. No audio has been synthesised and no narrator's voice has been re-rendered.
The Library notifies Oregon State University's Special Collections and Archives Research Center, which holds the original recordings, of this use and of the machine assistance behind it, under the Center's notification-of-use practice.
Machine alignment makes mistakes. If you find one, tell us — corrections are welcome and are not takedown requests. The errata page logs what we have fixed, and the colophon says exactly what was done and what was deliberately not done.
Asking us to change or remove something
Write to us. There is no form and no fee.
Please include, as far as you can:
- Your name, and how to reach you. We need to be able to reply.
- Which page or pages — a link is ideal; the volume and printed page number is just as good.
- Your relationship to the material, if you are willing to say: narrator, family member, rights holder, someone named or described, a tribal government or office, an institution, or none of these. This is not required, but it changes how fast we act, and in some cases it decides the matter.
- What the problem is — copyright, privacy, cultural sensitivity, a factual error, harmful or offensive content, or something else.
- What you would like us to do. The list in the next section may help, but you do not have to choose from it.
A request missing some of this still gets a response. We will not bounce anything back on a technicality. If we need more, we will ask.
What happens when we receive a request
- Within 2 business days — we acknowledge your request and tell you who is handling it.
- Immediately, on request — we take the material out of our search results, our indexes and our maps while we look into it. You only have to ask. Doing that is not a finding that you are right; it is what we do while we work out whether you are.
- Immediately — if a tribal government or tribal historic preservation office asks for material to be withheld pending discussion, we withhold first and discuss afterwards.
- Within 10 business days — we give you a decision in writing, with our reasons. If we cannot meet that, we tell you before the ten days are up, explain why, and give you a date.
- Afterwards — if you think we got it wrong, say so and a different person reviews it.
Before we permanently remove anything, the person who gave us the material gets to be heard. We tell him what has been asked and why. That is not a veto — the decision is ours — but somebody who trusted us with a collection deserves to know before part of it disappears, and he often knows something we do not.
Two exceptions, and they matter. A request from a narrator or their next of kin is acted on at once and is not delayed for anyone's comment. And taking something out of the indexes happens straight away when you ask; the conversation happens while it is out, not before.
We keep a record of every request, what was asked, what we did, and why.
What we can do — the range of responses
We do not have only two settings. Removal is one option among many, and it is often not the one that fixes the problem. We start with the least drastic response that genuinely addresses what has been raised, and go further where that is what you want.
- Edit the description. Correct a name, a date, a place, a heading. The commonest fix and often the whole fix.
- Add a note. The material stays as it is, with context attached — including context you write, if you want to write it.
- Anonymize. Replace a person's name with a description of their role, so the account survives without the identification.
- Redact. Remove a specific passage, name or detail from the published page while keeping the rest available.
- De-index. The page stays at its own address but comes out of our search results, indexes and maps, so it is no longer put in front of people who were not looking for it.
- Hold. The page is withdrawn from view but stays in the sequence, citable, saying that it is held.
- Restrict. The material is available only on request, or only to a defined group — researchers, family members, a tribal office — on stated terms.
- Remove. It comes down. We keep a preservation copy nobody can see unless we are asked not to, and we tell you which.
We explain which of these we chose and why. If you asked for removal and we think de-indexing solves the problem, we will say so and ask what you think — and if you still want removal, that carries a great deal of weight with us.
What we will not do
- We will not charge you. There is no fee for a request, an appeal, or a copy of our record of what we did.
- We will not treat a request as an accusation. Most of what we get told is a correction, and corrections make the collection better.
- We will not remove something and pretend it was never there. A withdrawn page leaves a stub saying that something was removed, on what date, and in general terms why — without identifying anyone who asked.
- We will not hide behind the paperwork. "The release form allows it" is an answer to a legal question. It is not an answer to a narrator or a family, and we will not use it as one.
- We will not claim rights we do not have. We do not put an open licence on material we do not own, and we do not tell you our sources are freely reusable when we do not know that they are.
Contact
America's School Trust Library
an Oregon public benefit nonprofit corporation, Oregon Registry No.
259005891
Email library@schooltrusts.net, with "The Zybach Collection" somewhere in the subject line so it reaches the right person.
Every request gets a person, an acknowledgment within two business days, and a written answer with reasons. Nobody who writes to us about this material is treated as an adversary. Requests are handled by the Library's president; an appeal is reviewed by a Library director who took no part in the first decision.
This page was last revised on 4 September 2026. When it changes, the change is logged on the errata page, so you can see what it said before.
Finding aid · Provenance · Content note · Colophon · Errata
