Terms · Ozikoro

The state of these terms

Binding terms have not been supplied.

Ozi Ikoro Limited publishes this archive and has not yet supplied binding terms of use. The design’s own institution page says exactly that, and it stays true, so it stays. What follows is not a substitute: it is what applies today, and every one of these statements is a property of the platform that can be checked against it. When binding terms are supplied they replace this section rather than sitting beside it.

What this archive is

Ozikoro is published by Ozi Ikoro Limited — an archive of Igbo and wider African histories, photographs, documents and recordings. It is one institution with three public tools: ozikoro.com holds the archive, ozituma.com is the African-languages dictionary, and the Academy holds the language courses. Its own page is About.

The archive holds 1,051 published records and 5,046 media items. Reading it is free, and no part of it requires an account. An account is needed only to contribute, to keep a collection, or to work in the editorial back office.

Reuse: each record carries its own terms

There is no blanket licence over this archive, and this page cannot grant one. Each record displays its own access and reuse terms with the record, and those are the terms that apply to it. Where a record states a licence it is shown on the record; where the archive holds none, the record says so rather than implying a permission.

Of 5,046 media items, 61 carry a recorded licence — a licence read from the record itself, reproduced in the record’s own words. The remaining 4,985 carry none, and reuse of those is not granted by this archive.
A licence recorded here was read by a machine from what the record states, and it is not a rights determination by a person. The archive’s rights register records who checked an item and when, and it records none as checked. Treat a recorded licence as the record’s own claim about itself, which is what it is.
Every one of those 61 rests on a licence the record itself stated — 52 as public domain, 7 as CC BY-SA and 2 as CC0. None rests on written permission, on a contract, or on an institutional agreement, because the archive has recorded none of those three.
Nothing on this site grants a right to reuse a photograph of a person, or a recording of a voice, whoever holds the copyright in it. The rights register carries a field for whether a living person is depicted and another for their consent, and every entry in it has both left unset — so the archive does not claim that nobody is depicted, and a licence read from a file cannot settle the question anyway.

Citing a record

Every published record has a permanent address that will not change, and is citable as one publisher: Ozi Ikoro Limited. The citation guide gives the format for an article, a photograph, a recording and a publication, and the worked example there is generated from a real record rather than written by hand.

A record’s address is permanent even where its content is corrected. Corrections are logged rather than hidden, so a citation to a record remains a citation to the same record.

Contributing material

Material is offered through Contribute. Three things are true of everything contributed, and they are the archive’s editorial method rather than a term of service:

You choose the access and reuse terms, and they are shown with the record. The archive does not take a licence you did not give.
An editor reviews it before it publishes. Nothing a contributor submits appears on the site unreviewed; material lands in the editorial queue and a person decides.
Nothing is invented to fill a gap. Where a record is incomplete, the page says what is missing. A record with no source looks incomplete on purpose, because it is.

Imported corpus material is attributed to its source and stays unpublished unless its licence permits publication. The archive’s sources and their terms are recorded in docs/DATA-SOURCES.md in the project repository.

Corrections and takedown

Anyone may propose a correction, whether or not they have an account, and a correction is reviewed and logged rather than applied silently. Where a correction changes a record, the record says that it was changed.

If you are in a photograph or a recording on this site and you want it removed, write to [email protected]. The rights register holds a takedown field and a withdrawal state for exactly this. You do not have to give a reason and you do not have to be the copyright holder: the archive’s position is that a person’s own objection to their own image or voice outweighs a licence read by a machine.

What the archive does with your use of the site

Reading this site involves no tracking, no advertising and no analytics, and the only cookies it sets are the two it needs to work. What is stored about an account, what leaves the platform and to whom, and what has not yet been decided about retention and lawful basis are all set out in Privacy. This page does not repeat it, so the two cannot disagree.

What has not been supplied

The following belong to binding terms, and none of them exists yet. They are named rather than drafted, because drafting them here would produce a plausible contract that binds nobody:

The terms themselves — what a reader or contributor agrees to, and what the publisher warrants.
A governing law and jurisdiction.
Limitation of liability, and any warranty about the accuracy of a record.
Any change process — how these terms would be varied and how a change would be announced.

Writing to us

Corrections, takedown requests and material offered to the archive: [email protected]. Anything else: [email protected].

The institution’s own page is About, and what the platform holds about people is in Privacy.