About FHS - Terms and Policies

The Falmouth Historical Society ("us", "we", or "our") operates the websites thefhs.org, falmouthmehistory.org, falmouthhistoricalsociety.org, and thefalmouthhistoricalsociety.org (our "websites," "sites" or "Services").  We also publish content on two third-party websites: thefhs.pastperfectonline.com (hosted by PastPerfect) and mainememory.net (hosted by the Maine Historical Society).

This page informs you of our policies regarding your access and use of our websites (our "Terms of Use") and the collection, use, and disclosure of personal data when you use our Services and the choices you have associated with that data (our "Privacy Policy").  Our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy are collectively referred to as this "Agreement."

Our websites share a single login/password system and databases of user information.  Below are the guidelines for use on all Falmouth Historical Society websites.

Falmouth Heritage Bookstore Return Policy

Returns permitted within 60 days of purchase when accompanied by original receipt.  Items must be new and unused.   Shipping & handling charges are not refundable.

Terms of Use

Acceptance

These Terms of Use constitute a legal agreement between you and the Falmouth Historical Society.  Please read this agreement in its entirety.  By using this website, you agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of this agreement.  If you do not agree, please discontinue using the site immediately.

Intellectual Property and Use of Content

This site is the intellectual property of the Falmouth Historical Society.  The content on this site, including but not limited to, text, graphics, photographs, images, moving images, sound, illustrations, digital files, content, objects, and design are the property of the Falmouth Historical Society and is protected by copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws.

No part of the Falmouth Historical Society websites, their design or any of the content may be used for personal or financial gain without the permission of the Falmouth Historical Society.   The material on our websites may not be distributed, duplicated or sold without permission. Websites are a form of publication.  You must obtain permission before you can use any image or other material on your own website.

Images presented on the Falmouth Historical Society websites are for viewing, evaluation, classroom education, and personal use only.  Personal use is defined as in-home or research use only.

The Falmouth Historical Society websites makes every effort to give proper attribution to the source of each image.  If you believe that any material is improperly catalogued or credited, please contact us so that we may make a correction or remove the image from the website.  Please contact us with details at info@thefhs.org.

It is your obligation to determine and follow all copyright or use restrictions of the material presented within.  We encourage you to investigate fair use policies, contact us for more information, or review the United States Copyright Office's website at for more information on the use of copyrighted works.

You must credit the Falmouth Historical Society in connection with any use of any image or other materials.

Availability and Access

The Falmouth Historical Society will not be liable if for any reason all or any part of our websites is unavailable at any time or for any period.  From time to time, we may restrict access to some parts of our Services, or the entire Service, to users, including registered users.  You are responsible for both making all arrangements necessary for you to have access to the Service and ensuring that all persons who access the Service through your internet connection are aware of and comply with this Agreement.

To access the Service or some of the resources it offers, you may be asked to provide certain registration details or other information.  It is a condition of your use of the Service that all the information you provide on the Service is correct, current, and complete.  You agree that all information you provide to register with this Service or otherwise, including, but not limited to, the use of any interactive features on the Service, is governed by our Privacy Policy (detailed below) and you consent to all actions we take with respect to your information consistent with our Privacy Policy.

Members of the Falmouth Historical Society are provided with a password to access the Members Only portions of our websites.  You must treat such information as confidential, and you must not disclose it to any other person or entity.  You also acknowledge that your account is personal to you and agree not to provide any other person with access to our Services or portions of it using your email and password.  You agree to notify us immediately of any unauthorized access to or use of your email and password, or any other breach of security involving our websites.  You also agree to ensure that you exit from your account at the end of each session.  You should use particular caution when accessing your account from a public or shared computer so that others are not able to view or record your password or other personal information.

We have the right to disable any email and password, or other identifier, at any time if, in our opinion, you have violated any provision of the terms of this Agreement.

You may use the Services only for lawful purposes and in accordance with the terms of this Agreement.  You agree not to use our websites in any way that violates any applicable federal, state, local, or international law or regulation, for the purpose of exploiting, harming, or attempting to exploit or harm minors or any other users in any way by exposing them to inappropriate content, asking for personally identifiable information, or otherwise, or to engage in any other conduct that restricts or inhibits anyone's use or enjoyment of the Service, or which, as determined by us, may harm or expose the Falmouth Historical Society or users of the websites to liability.

Disclaimer of Warranties

You understand that we cannot and do not guarantee or warrant that files available for download from the internet or on our websites will be free of viruses or other destructive code.  You are responsible for implementing sufficient procedures and checkpoints to satisfy your particular requirements for anti-virus protection and accuracy of data input and output, and for maintaining a means external to our site for any reconstruction of any lost data.  To the fullest extent provided by law, we will not be liable for any loss or damage caused by a distributed denial-of-service attack, viruses, or other technologically harmful matter that may infect your computer equipment, computer programs, data, or other proprietary material due to your use of our websites or any services or items or images obtained through our websites or to your downloading of any material posted on it, or on any website linked to it.

Your use of our websites, their content, and any services, images or items obtained through our websites is at your own risk.  Our websites, content, and any Services or items obtained through our websites are provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis, without any warranties of any kind, either express or implied.  Neither the Falmouth Historical Society nor any person associated with the Falmouth Historical Society makes any warranty or representation with respect to the completeness, security, reliability, quality, accuracy, or availability of our websites.  Without limiting the foregoing, neither the Falmouth Historical Society nor anyone associated with the Falmouth Historical Society represents or warrants that the website, its content, or any services or items obtained through the website will be accurate, reliable, error-free, or uninterrupted, that defects will be corrected, that our sites or the servers that makes the sites available are free of viruses or other harmful components, or that our websites or any services or items obtained through our websites will otherwise meet your needs or expectations.

To the fullest extent provided by law, the Falmouth Historical Society hereby disclaims all warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, statutory, or otherwise, including but not limited to any warranties of merchantability, non-infringement, and fitness for any particular purpose.

The foregoing does not affect any warranties that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law.

Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent provided by law, in no event will the Falmouth Historical Society or their licensors, service providers, employees, agents, volunteers, officers, or directors be liable for damages of any kind under any legal theory, arising out of or in connection with your use, or inability to use, our websites, any websites connected to our websites, any content on our websites or such other websites, including any direct, indirect, special, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages, including but not limited to, personal injury, pain and suffering, emotional distress, loss of revenue, loss of profits, loss of business or anticipated savings, loss of use, loss of goodwill, loss of data, and whether caused by tort (including negligence), breach of contract, or otherwise, even if foreseeable.

Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless the Falmouth Historical Society, its affiliates, licensors, and service providers, and its and their respective officers, directors, employees, contractors, agents, volunteers, licensors, suppliers, successors, and assigns from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, judgments, awards, losses, costs, expenses, or fees (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or relating to your violation of the terms of this Agreement or your use of our websites or Services, including, but not limited to, your use of any content on our websites, other than as expressly authorized in the terms of this Agreement, or your use of any information obtained from out sites.

Waiver and Severability

No waiver by the Falmouth Historical Society of any term or condition of this Agreement shall be deemed a further or continuing waiver of such term or condition or a waiver of any other term or condition, and any failure of the Falmouth Historical Society to assert a right or provision under this Agreement shall not constitute a waiver of such right or provision.

If any provision of this Agreement is held by a court or other tribunal of competent jurisdiction to be invalid, illegal, or unenforceable for any reason, such provision shall be eliminated or limited to the minimum extent such that the remaining provisions of this Agreement will continue in full force and effect.

Entire Agreement

This Agreement constitutes the sole and entire agreement between you and the Falmouth Historical Society regarding your use of our website and our Services and supersedes all prior and contemporaneous understandings, agreements, representations, and warranties, both written and oral, regarding our website or our Services.

Governing Law and Jurisdiction

All matters relating to our websites and this Agreement and any dispute or claim arising therefrom or related thereto shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the internal laws of the State of Maine without giving effect to any choice or conflict of law provision or rule.  Unauthorized use or misuse of the material presented on our sites may be pursued in the state and federal courts in the State of Maine, under United States copyright law.  You agree to submit to the jurisdiction of such courts in the State of Maine.

Validity

If any part of this Agreement is found void and unenforceable, it will not affect the validity of the balance of the Agreement, which shall remain valid and enforceable according to its terms.

Privacy Policy

This section informs you of our policies regarding the collection, use, and disclosure of personal data when you use our Services and the choices you have associated with that data.

We collect and use your data to provide and improve our Services.  By using our Services, you agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.  Unless otherwise defined in this Privacy Policy, terms used in this Privacy Policy have the same meanings as in the rest of this Agreement.

Information Collection and Use

We collect several different types of information for various purposes to provide and improve our Services.  The data that we collect includes the following:

Personal Data.  While using our Services, we may ask you to provide us with certain personally identifiable information that can be used as contact information or to identify you ("Personal Data").  Personally identifiable information may include, but is not limited to:

• Email address
• First name and last name
• Phone number
• Address, City, State, Province, ZIP/Postal code
• Spouse or family relationships (for membership)
• School or organization name (for affiliation information)
• Topical interests
• Usage Data (defined below)

Usage Data.  We may also collect information about how you access and use our Services ("Usage Data").  This Usage Data may include information such as your computer's Internet Protocol address (e.g., IP address), browser type, browser version, the pages of our Services that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages, unique device identifiers and other diagnostic data.

We use cookies and similar tracking technologies to track the activity on our Services and hold certain information.

Cookies are files with small amounts of data, which may include an anonymous unique identifier.  Cookies are sent to your browser from a website and stored on your device.  Tracking technologies also used are beacons, tags, and scripts to collect and track information and to improve and analyze our Services.

You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent.  However, if you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of our Services.

Examples of cookies we use include:

• Session Cookies.  We use Session Cookies to operate our Services.
• Preference Cookies.  We use Preference Cookies to remember your preferences and various settings.
• Security Cookies.  We use Security Cookies for security and access control purposes.

Purposes and Legitimate Interests for Processing your Personal Data or Usage Data

The Falmouth Historical Society may process and use the Personal Data, and Usage Data that it collects for various purposes, including:

• To provide and maintain our Services
• To notify you about changes to our Services
• To allow you to participate in interactive features of our Services
• To process your Falmouth Historical Society membership or donations
• To register you for events
• To provide assistance or otherwise communicate with you
• To provide analysis or valuable information so that we can improve our Services
• To monitor the usage of our Services
• To detect, prevent and address technical issues
• To refine our Services to better tailor them to your needs

The Falmouth Historical Society has a legitimate interest in processing your Personal Data or Usage Date to understand the needs, concerns, and interests of its website users, which allows the Falmouth Historical Society to operate optimally as an organization.  At other times, the Falmouth Historical Society has a legitimate interest in maintaining the Personal Data and Usage Data of those who communicate voluntarily with us through our sites.  

Transfer of Data

Your information, including Personal Data and Usage Data, may be transferred to — and maintained on — computers located outside of your state, province, country or other governmental jurisdiction where the data protection laws may differ from those from your jurisdiction.

We provide our websites for use by persons located in the United States.  We make no claims that our websites or any of their content is accessible or appropriate outside of the United States.  If you are located outside the United States and choose to provide information to us, please note that we will transfer and maintain your information, including Personal Data and Usage Data, within the United States.  Your submission of such information represents your agreement to that transfer.

The Falmouth Historical Society will take all reasonably necessary steps to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy.  No transfer of your Personal Data or Usage Data will take place to a third-party or country outside of the United States unless there are adequate controls in place.

Disclosure of Data

The Falmouth Historical Society may disclose your Personal Data or Usage Data to third-parties in good faith when such action is necessary to:

• Comply with a legal obligation
• Protect and defend the rights or property of the Falmouth Historical Society
• Prevent or investigate possible wrongdoing in connection with our Services
• Protect the personal safety of users of our Services or the public
• Protect against legal liability
• Comply with your request to authorize such disclosure or a person demonstrating legal authority to act on your behalf requests or authorizes such disclosure
• Provide the information to our agents, vendors, or service providers who perform functions on our behalf, which allow us to provide and maintain our Services

Security of Data

The security of your data is important to us, but please remember that no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage is 100% secure.  While we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your Personal Data and Usage Data, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.  Any transmission of Personal Data, Usage Data or other information is at your own risk.

Service Providers

We may use third-party companies and individuals to facilitate our Services, to provide our Services on our behalf, to perform related services or to assist us in analyzing how our Services are used.

These third parties have access to your Personal Data and Usage Date only to perform these tasks on our behalf and are obligated not to disclose or use it for any other purpose.

We may use third-party service providers as additions to our Services or to monitor and analyze the use of our Services.  

Our third-party service providers include, but are not limited to:

• Wild Apricot is the web hosting service provider for our websites.
• PastPerfect is the content hosting service provider for our Museum Catalog.
• Maine Memory Network is a content hosting service provider for Maine’s statewide digital museum.
• Google Analytics is a web analytics service that tracks and reports website traffic.

Google uses the data collected to track and monitor the use of our Services.  This data is shared with other Google services.  Google may use the collected data to contextualize and personalize the ads of its own advertising network.

You can opt-out of having your activity on our Services available to Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.  The add-on prevents the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js, analytics.js, and dc.js) from sharing information with Google Analytics about visits activity.

For more information on the privacy practices of Google, please visit the Google Privacy & Terms web page.

Right to Access and Update Your Information

You have a right to correct and update the record of your Personal Data maintained by the Falmouth Historical Society if it is inaccurate.  You may request that the Falmouth Historical Society erase your data or cease processing it, subject to certain exceptions.  We may not accommodate a request to update or change information if we believe the change would violate any law or legal requirement or cause the information to be incorrect.

If you would like to confirm whether the Falmouth Historical Society is processing your Personal Data or if you would like to obtain a record of or access the Personal Data that the Falmouth Historical Society may have about you, please contact us at info@thefhs.org.

Links to Other Sites

Our websites may contain links to other websites that are not operated by us.  If you click on a third-party link, you will be directed to that third-party's site.  

We may redirect visitors to third-party websites for access to historical books, documents, images, and maps related to the history of Falmouth.  We have no control over and assume no responsibility for the content, privacy policies or practices of any third-party sites or services.

When you use a link online to visit a third-party website, you will be subject to that website's privacy and security practices, which may differ from ours.  You should familiarize yourself with the privacy policy, terms of use and security practices of any linked third-party website before providing any information on that website.

Children's Privacy

Registration is not necessary to use the Falmouth Historical Society websites.  Members Only portions of the websites do, however, require that members provide a name, email address, and password.  Only persons thirteen years and older may register as members.

If you are a parent or guardian and you are aware that your child has provided us with Personal Data, please contact us.  If we become aware that we have collected Personal Data from children without verification of parental consent, we will take steps to remove that information from our servers.  Please contact us at info@thefhs.org, or (207) 781-4727, or you can write to us at 190 US Route One PMB 367, Falmouth, ME 04105.

Changes to our Terms of Use or Privacy Policy

We may update our Terms of Use or Privacy Policy from time to time.  We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Terms of Use or Privacy Policy on this page.

We will announce changes through a prominent notice on our Services prior to the change becoming effective and will update the date at the bottom of this page.

You are advised to review these Terms of Use and Privacy Policy periodically for any changes. Changes to our Terms of Use or Privacy Policy are effective when they are posted on this page.

Contact Us

All other notices, feedback, comments, requests for technical support, and other communications relating to our website or Services should be directed to:

The Falmouth Historical Society
190 US Route One PMB 367
Falmouth, ME 04105
info@thefhs.org
www.thefhs.org
(207) 781-4727

Last Updated 7 December 2023