The San Diego City Clerk Digital Archives provides a corpus of materials for public use, research, and viewing as a contribution to education and scholarship. Our Digital Archive consists of various collections of materials (documents, photographs, images, audio files, etc.). Although these materials are made publicly accessible, materials in the collections are not all in the public domain.

Some materials in these collections may be protected by the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.) and/or by the copyright or neighboring-rights laws of other nations. Transmission or reproduction of protected items beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. See the United States Copyright Law section below for more about fair use.

The nature of our collections, which include many materials in the public domain, means that copyright or other information about restrictions may be difficult to determine. Whenever possible, our Digital Archive site provides information about the actual item metadata. All items within the digital archive are City records.

The City in general owns rights to most materials in the digital collections. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our digital collections.

We wish to acknowledge the City of San Diego employees who have contributed materials used in these collections. Credits are provided in the metadata of each document wherever possible.