Weeding and Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Takedown Requests

Weeding refers to the practice of removing unneeded, unnecessary, unrelated, or duplicated materials from the archives. In conjunction with the Library Director or other college departments, the Archivist will determine if any archived materials should be weeded.

In addition to the weeding process, the Rowan-Cabarrus Community College Archives welcomes requests related to the removal of any of its physical or digital holdings. Relevant stakeholders will review these requests, including Library Services, other College departments, and College counsel, if necessary, who may ask for further information to better understand the issue under discussion and its possible consequences.

Reasons a request might be approved are as follows:

• The item was deposited in error and has only been available for a few days
• The item contains information that is sensitive, restricted, or otherwise should not be public
• The item violates copyright or other laws or Rowan-Cabarrus Community College policies
• The item has been proven to be fraudulent or plagiarized
• Continued online access poses a legitimate and proximate threat to the safety or wellbeing of an individual

Requests might be denied if they fall into one of the following categories

• Author/depositor is embarrassed by something they wrote/deposited earlier
• Someone is offended/embarrassed or potentially offended/embarrassed by the item
• The item is outdated or superseded by a new version
• In cases where authors have a new version that supersedes the previously posted one, they can post the new item separately and request that a note be added to the old one to refer readers to the new one, with an explanation
• The author intends to publish elsewhere, so they wish the earlier version to no longer be available

The appropriate library staff will review any requests for items to be withdrawn, and someone will reply to the requestor within one week. In some cases, items may be temporarily withdrawn from public view while investigating the problem. The item will be returned to public view if the reasons for the withdrawal request are not deemed to meet the above standards.

Request Materials to be Taken down