Policies

Accessibility Statement

Digital Maryland is committed to providing equitable access to its digital collections for all users, including people with disabilities. We strive to ensure that our website and online collections are usable with assistive technologies and align with recognized accessibility standards, including WCAG 2.1 Level AA, with limited exceptions for certain archival content as permitted by law. Our ongoing accessibility efforts include using image descriptions, ensuring screen reader compatibility, and adding transcripts for audiovisual materials when feasible. We welcome feedback about accessibility barriers and will make reasonable efforts to provide materials in alternative formats when possible. If you need assistance, please contact Digital Maryland at digitalmaryland@prattlibrary.org and include the page or item URL, a description of the issue, and your preferred format or accommodation.

Harmful Content Warning for Digital Maryland

Digital Maryland contains historical materials that may reflect biased, offensive, or harmful viewpoints and language due to past cultural attitudes. Some content may depict violence or graphic events preserved for historical significance. We aim to provide respectful descriptions using contemporary understanding. However, some records may contain outdated, racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic, xenophobic or otherwise offensive terms inherited from past creators and cataloging practices. We welcome feedback to improve descriptions and reduce harm at digitalmaryland@prattlibrary.org. Thank you for your understanding as we work to make Digital Maryland an inclusive space honoring all individuals and communities.

Digital Maryland Land Acknowledgement

Digital Maryland would like to acknowledge that we live and work on the traditional ancestral and unceded lands of the Piscataway Conoy and the Susquehannock tribes. Indigenous people have lived here since the 10th millennium BCE, and their relationship with this land involved traveling, trading, and hunting in the region we now call Baltimore. We also acknowledge the enslaved and exploited people of Africa and their descendants whose stolen labor allowed Maryland, and the United States, to grow as it is today. Digital Maryland acknowledges that archives and special collections often exclude minority and oppressed voices. In order to change this, we strive to use our resources to actively find and include materials from those previously excluded from the traditional archival record to fully represent the history and experiences of Maryland. We are committed to working towards social justice with the descendants of these populations, and to use our resources to work to mitigate past and present injustices. If you have suggestions for potential projects, or notice community voices lacking presence on Digital Maryland, please contact us at digitalmaryland@prattlibrary.org.

Digital Maryland Fair Use Intention & Risk Management Statement

Digital Maryland provides online access to materials from libraries, archives, museums, and cultural heritage organizations across Maryland. Some items on this site may still be protected by copyright. Our goal is to provide broad public access while acting as responsible stewards of the materials we share. We make content available in the good-faith belief that it supports education, research, teaching, scholarship, and public understanding of Maryland’s history and culture, in accordance with the fair use principles outlined in Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act. Whenever possible, we include rights statements, source information, and attribution to help users understand how materials may be used. We work closely with contributing partners to review rights, ownership, and permissions before materials are added, and when rights information is unclear, we apply a good-faith fair use analysis guided by professional best practices, including guidance from the Society of American Archivists, the ARL Code of Best Practices in Fair Use, and DPLA rights statements. Users are responsible for determining whether their own reuse of materials qualifies as fair use or requires permission from the rights holder, as Digital Maryland cannot grant or deny permission for materials contributed by partner institutions. If you are a rights holder and believe material has been made available in error or without proper authorization, please contact us at digitalmaryland@prattlibrary.org so we can review the request and remove or limit access if needed.