My name is Dr. Alicia Monroe. I am a museum curator who spent four years cataloguing a private collection — and when the university donated my work to a donor’s foundation, they forgot I kept every photograph.

The university donated four years of my curatorial work to a donor’s family foundation without telling me – and I found out when a colleague congratulated me on the catalogue that had my work in it and someone else’s name on the cover.

My name is Margot Voss. I am a university archivist. I catalogued the Wellstone Collection over four years – 8,000 items, every descriptive entry written by me, every finding aid structured by me, all of it logged in ArchivesSpace under my staff ID with timestamps. The catalogue is my original creative work. My employment contract does not say otherwise.

I was processing a newly acquired collection when the message arrived – fourteen boxes of personal papers from a local civic figure whose estate had been donated to the university, a mid-20th century collection with an irregular series structure and a significant volume of materials that hadn’t been sorted since the donor’s death.

I had a graduate student intern working through the secondary boxes while I established the top-level arrangement structure: fonds, series, file.

She was struggling with a question that archivist students consistently struggle with – where to describe at the file level versus the item level, and how to handle a folder that contained both photographs and correspondence addressing the same subject without clear chronological separation.

I walked her through the DACS standard and then said what I always say when the standard runs out: the answer is in the collection’s context, not in the standard. The standard is a framework. You use it to start. You use your judgment to finish.

She wrote it down. I logged the session in ArchivesSpace when we finished: date, time, work performed, my staff ID. The system records everything under my ID because I am the person who administers the system and I am the person doing the work. Those have always been the same person.

I have administered the university’s ArchivesSpace installation for six years. Every action taken within the system is logged with the staff ID of the person who performed it and a timestamp – not just added records, but every edit, every status change, every note appended to an existing entry.

I designed the logging protocols when we migrated to the platform. I know precisely what the system records and how to pull the audit report that shows all activity under a specific staff ID for any given time period. This is routine infrastructure knowledge for an archivist who manages the system. It is also, as it turned out, the infrastructure of the only argument that mattered.

The Wellstone Collection arrived four years ago in 22 boxes – personal papers, photographs, and correspondence of a prominent regional civic leader whose family had donated the collection as part of a major gift to the university.

Cliff Dunbar’s development office negotiated the acquisition. I was assigned to the project because of my expertise in 20th century American personal papers collections: the arrangement conventions, the privacy considerations for correspondence involving living third parties, the finding aid structure that makes this kind of collection accessible to researchers who arrive without knowing what they are looking for.

I proposed the four-year processing timeline based on the scope of the collection and the complexity of the series structure. Les Kirby approved it as a departmental priority and called it a flagship project for the library’s special collections reputation. That phrase was his. The work was mine.

In year two, Cliff Dunbar’s office began expressing interest in the catalogue as a donor recognition piece. They asked about the publication timeline and whether a print run would be feasible alongside the digital finding aid.

I told them I was drafting the catalogue introduction essay – a significant piece of original scholarly writing, approximately 4,000 words, that would situate the collection in its historical and regional context and explain the archival decisions made during processing.

This is the kind of essay that requires not just the historical research but the archival knowledge to explain why certain decisions were made, why certain items were described at the item level rather than the file level, what the collection reveals about its subject that a list of box contents would not. It is original intellectual work.

They said they would follow up about production options. I assumed the university press would be involved. I was not included in any subsequent conversations about the publication structure.

In year three, the development office and the Wellstone Family Foundation met to negotiate the recognition component of the gift agreement. I found this out later – from a colleague who had seen the committee meeting minutes in the course of a different project.

The foundation wanted naming rights on the catalogue. The development office agreed. Neither meeting included me. Neither meeting included anyone who considered asking whether the person who had spent three years writing the catalogue had a view about whose name would appear on its cover.

The decision was made the way decisions are made when the people making them do not recognize that an intellectual work has a different kind of ownership than a building named after a donor.

In year four, I completed the processing and submitted the final catalogue to Les Kirby for departmental review. He approved it and forwarded it to the development office for publication coordination.

I thanked him, returned to processing a new collection, and assumed the publication process would involve me at some point. Six months later, my colleague sent the congratulations message.

I found the publication. The cover: The Wellstone Collection: A Catalogue. Published by the Wellstone Family Foundation. I opened the acknowledgments. The university’s archival staff. Four years. 8,000 items. 4,200 words of original scholarly writing.

A finding aid structure I had designed from scratch for a collection that didn’t fit any standard template. The catalogue introduction that explained the collection’s significance to anyone who would use it for the next hundred years. All of this: the university’s archival staff.

I sent emails to Cliff Dunbar and Les Kirby asking when the decision was made and why I had not been informed. Cliff responded within the hour. Cordial, comprehensive, institutional. A major gift negotiation. Standard donor recognition practice.

The university retains the research data; the foundation received the publication rights as part of the recognition arrangement. The word standard appeared twice. The word authorship did not appear at all.

I sat at my desk with the catalogue open on one screen and ArchivesSpace open in the adjacent tab. I pulled the database report for the Wellstone Collection: 8,000 entries, all created under my staff ID, timestamped from the first day of the project in year one to the final processing session in year four. Every entry.

My ID. My timestamps. I read Cliff’s email again – standard practice – and I closed both windows. I placed my hands flat on the desk. I looked at the surface of the desk for a moment. Then I opened my employment contract and read every IP-related clause.

There was no work-for-hire clause for scholarly or curatorial publications. I read it twice. Then I pulled the university’s IP policy. It stated: scholarly works created by faculty and staff are the intellectual property of the creator.

Commercial transfer of such works requires the creator’s written consent. I had not been asked. I had not consented. The development office had transferred copyright in an original intellectual work – to a foundation, for commercial publication – without speaking to the person who created it.

I called Deborah Marsh that evening. I sent her the employment contract, the IP policy, the ArchivesSpace database report, and the published catalogue by encrypted transfer. I did not respond to Cliff’s email. I waited.

Deborah called the following morning. Her assessment: the catalogue constitutes original intellectual work – the descriptive writing, the organizational structure, the finding aid language, the catalogue introduction essay.

The employment contract contains no work-for-hire clause for scholarly or curatorial publications. The IP policy requires written consent for commercial transfer of such work. No consent was obtained. She filed a copyright infringement claim on the catalogue as an original creative work and a formal grievance through the university’s IP policy simultaneously.

The IP committee hearing was three weeks after the filing. A formal committee meeting room: the development director, the department chair, the foundation’s representative, the committee’s IP counsel, Deborah, and me.

Cliff Dunbar presented the donation agreement and the recognition arrangement with the confidence of someone who has conducted versions of this negotiation many times and never had one result in a copyright claim. He used the phrase institutional work product. He used the phrase standard practice. He did not use the word authorship.

Deborah asked the committee’s IP counsel to identify the clause in my employment contract that established a work-for-hire relationship for scholarly or curatorial publications, or that transferred my IP rights to the institution.

The IP counsel reviewed the contract. She was quiet for a long time. She asked if there was a general IP assignment clause she might have missed. Deborah said there was not. The IP policy also requires written consent for commercial transfer of scholarly work – was that consent obtained?

Cliff began a sentence about general institutional practice and did not finish it. He looked at the contract in the IP counsel’s hands. He looked at Deborah. He said he believed it would have been covered under –

The IP counsel said: there is no clause that covers it. She looked at Cliff. Was the creator’s written consent obtained before the commercial transfer of this work?

Cliff did not answer. The room was quiet.

I said: I catalogued 8,000 items over four years. Every entry is in the system under my staff ID, timestamped. The descriptive writing – the catalogue introduction, the finding aid language, the item descriptions – is original intellectual work. My employment contract does not assign it to the university. The IP policy requires my consent. No one asked me. I did not consent.

The IP counsel asked for a recess.

Cliff Dunbar left the room during the recess. When the committee reconvened, his chair was occupied by the university’s general counsel. Cliff was not present. Les Kirby remained but did not speak again. He looked at the table throughout the remainder of the hearing.

The copyright claim was sustained. The foundation’s claim over the catalogue was challenged and invalidated. The revised edition has my name as author. The library database and the consortium holdings have been corrected. The development office implemented a consent protocol for future donations involving staff-created scholarly work.

Two hundred copies of the foundation’s edition exist in the world. In libraries. In collectors’ hands. In the foundation’s own inventory. Those copies have not been recalled. The revised edition has my name. The databases are corrected.

But somewhere on a library shelf, there is a copy of my four years of work with a foundation’s name on the cover and the words the university’s archival staff in the acknowledgments. I know this. I have decided to be done knowing it. Deciding and being done are different timelines. I am somewhere in the gap.

I am at my workstation with the new collection’s processing folder open. I navigate to the Wellstone Collection in ArchivesSpace and go to the first entry I created four years ago – a handwritten letter by the collection’s subject, the first item I processed, the entry that built the architecture the whole finding aid grew from.

My staff ID. The date from four years ago. My description of the letter in my own words: the script, the date, the addressee, the paper condition, the subject matter. My words, still there, exactly as I wrote them.

I close that entry. I open the new collection’s processing folder. I create the first entry: my staff ID, today’s date, the first item description I just wrote. The system records it. It has always recorded it. The same staff ID, the same handwriting in the system, starting a new project.

I move to the second box.

Cliff called it standard practice for major donor recognition. He forgot – or he never checked – that the IP policy requires consent and that my contract has no work-for-hire clause. Four years. 8,000 entries. My staff ID on every one. ArchivesSpace records what it records. It has always recorded it. No one thought to look until I showed them where to look.