Copyright ownership and transfers varies among the the individual artists who contributed works to this collection. Artists have either transferred copyright that they held to the University of Iowa; retained full ownership of copyright they hold in the donated materials, but have granted the university a nonexclusive right to use and to authorize all non-commercial uses of these materials for research, scholarly, or other educational purposes pursuant to a Creative Commons Attribution, Noncommercial license; or have retained full ownership of copyright they hold in the donated materials.

Copyright status for collection materials may be unknown. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.) beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owner.  Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owners. Responsibility and potential liability based on copyright infringement for any use rests exclusively and solely with the user. Users must properly acknowledge University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections & Archives as the source of the material. For further information, visit the Special Collections and Archives website.