Terms of use

About these terms

Clio Online Museum (“Clio”, “we”, “us”) is a project run by Robert Evans in New South Wales, Australia. These terms cover your use of cliomuseum.org, including the contributor workspace.

By using Clio, you agree to these terms. If you don’t agree, please don’t use Clio. When you publish a contribution, you also accept the deposit agreement shown at publication, currently version 1.1.0. Its full text is at the end of this page.

The privacy notice explains how Clio handles information about you.

Using Clio

You can browse and read Clio without an account. Published records can be reused under the licence shown with them.

Please don’t try to get around Clio’s security, use someone else’s identity, upload malware, or disrupt the service for others.

Who can contribute

To contribute, you create a contributor identity in the contributor workspace. That means verifying a Google or Microsoft account and protecting your identity on your device.

Clio isn’t designed for children under 16. If you’re under 16, contribute only with a parent, guardian or teacher supervising you.

Your identity

Your identity’s private key stays on your device. Anything signed with it is treated as coming from you, so keep your passkey, passphrase, recovery kit and recovery phrase private, and never share them with anyone, including Clio support.

Save your recovery phrase and recovery kit. If you lose every usable device and that recovery material, Clio can’t restore your identity. A new identity doesn’t restore access to contributions made with the old one.

The licence you grant

Drafts stay private. A contribution becomes public only when you choose to publish it in the contributor workspace. When you do, you grant this licence, in the words of the deposit agreement (version 1.1.0):

I grant permission for the metadata, descriptions and original media that I am authorised to contribute to be published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

I understand that CC BY 4.0 permits sharing and adaptation, including commercial reuse, provided the required attribution, licence notice and change information are supplied. Clio will keep contributor and version attribution with the record so that reusers can give credit.

I will not upload a third party's media or expressive work unless I have authority to license it under CC BY 4.0. A citation, link or factual reference to an external source does not change that source's licence. Material imported from a partner or external collection must retain its upstream rights evidence and must not be relabelled as CC BY 4.0 without an adequate grant.

In short:

• Your published contribution and the original media you’re authorised to contribute are licensed under CC BY 4.0 (opens in a new tab).
• Anyone may share and adapt it, including commercially, if they give credit, link the licence and say what they changed.
• Clio keeps your credit and version details with the record so people can credit you.
• Each published version records which agreement it was published under. A later agreement doesn’t relabel earlier versions.
• Copies that others make under CC BY 4.0 can’t be recalled.

Third-party material

Only upload someone else’s photo, film, drawing or other creative work if you have the authority to license it under CC BY 4.0.

Citing, linking or referring to an outside source doesn’t change that source’s licence. Material from a partner or outside collection keeps its original rights information, and Clio never relabels it as CC BY 4.0 without a proper grant.

Your promises

When you contribute, you promise that:

• you have the right to share the evidence and information, or permission from whoever holds those rights;
• the material wasn’t taken unlawfully, and you respect consent, cultural authority, collection rules and permits that apply to it;
• you won’t publish a precise location that could put a threatened species, vulnerable site, person or community at risk. Give a generalised location instead, and say in your description that you have;
• you won’t include personal information about other people, such as names, faces or contact details, unless it’s needed for the contribution and sharing it respects their consent;
• you describe what you observed, how and when, as accurately as you can, keep observation separate from interpretation, and say when something is uncertain, estimated or supplied by someone else; and
• you won’t claim that Clio, a curator or another organisation has verified something unless the record shows it.

The full wording is in the deposit agreement.

Moderation and takedown

After publication, Clio may flag, annotate, limit discovery of, hide, quarantine or ask for changes to a contribution. Useful but incomplete or questionable material may stay available with a clear status where it’s safe and lawful.

A serious rights, consent, cultural, privacy, safety, security or legal concern may lead Clio to restrict access to a record or remove it from public discovery while it’s looked at. A removed record can keep its address with a short public notice.

To report a problem with a record, email [email protected] with the record’s link and what’s wrong.

To fix your own contribution, publish a revised version from your workspace. Corrections create new versions; they don’t erase the fact that an earlier version existed.

Clio may suspend or end your access to the contributor workspace if you break these terms, or to protect people, material or the service.

What Clio doesn’t promise

• DOIs: Clio doesn’t currently assign DOIs. DOI review is optional and separate from publication.
• Publication: publishing isn’t a finding that an identification is correct, a scientific verification or an endorsement. Publication, review and DOI status are shown separately.
• Preservation: Clio doesn’t currently deposit records in an outside archive and can’t promise permanent preservation. Keep your own copies of anything important.
• Availability: Clio may be unavailable at times, and features may change or stop.
• Signatures: a signed record helps show who submitted a version and what Clio accepted. It doesn’t prove that its content is correct.

Changes to Clio and these terms

Clio is being shaped in the open, so features will change. When these terms change, we’ll update this page with a new version and date. If you keep using Clio after a change, the new terms apply from then on.

The deposit agreement has its own version number. Each publication records the version you accepted.

Liability

To the extent the law allows, Clio is provided as is, and we’re not liable for loss or damage arising from your use of Clio, or from not being able to use it.

Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts or changes any right or remedy you have under the Australian Consumer Law, or any other law, that can’t lawfully be excluded.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of New South Wales, Australia, and you agree to the jurisdiction of its courts.

Contact

Questions about these terms: [email protected].

Deposit agreement, version 1.1.0 (full text)

This is the agreement you accept each time you publish a contribution. It’s written in the first person, from you as the contributor.

Version 1.0 · 22 October 2026 · Questions: [email protected]