Many of you will be familiar with the current procedure in which authors assign copyright (for both print and electronic publication) to the Pasold Research Fund. This does not limit an author’s ability to reuse material, but ensures that Maney, on our behalf, can protect the copyright internationally. The papers we published previously, in our back issues, were not administered in this way, nor was permission sought to obtain electronic rights. Such a form of publishing was not anticipated. It would exceed the resources available to the Pasold Research Fund to identify all the authors who have previously contributed to Textile History and obtain their (or their Estate executor where an author is deceased) permission to republish their work electronically. In any case, we are very doubtful that the addresses that we had at the time of publication are still current.

We are therefore writing this notice to ask for any authors who object to the proposed policy to let us know as soon as possible. We think it will be a pity, but if the permission, which we will be taking as given, is withdrawn, we will reluctantly omit their work from the scanned back archive. This will inevitably distort the record to a certain extent, but we will respect the decision.