Electronic Reserve/Print reserve: one or the other

August 2, 2006 @ 6:53amScott says:
As we review our reserves copyright policy, I've heard in casual discussions with reserve staff are other libraries the restriction: if a copyrighted journal article is scanned and placed on electronic reserves, the same article ought not be to copied and placed on traditional print reserves. That is, the instructor
must choose one or the other: print or electronic, not both. I can find nothing on web sources
that addresses this? Anyone know if there's substance to this "guideline"? Thanks.
August 2, 2006 @ 1:18pmCStewart says:
Scott, I suspect this policy may have been implemented in order to keep staff sane and eliminate redundant processing. If there is both a print and an electronic copy, that's two copies, and depending on the policy of the institution, it might tip the job over into a "permissions required" category. However, because most reserves copyright policies in some way interpret fair use, and because there are no hard and fast rules in fair use, there is no firm legal basis for such an approach. Keeping the number of copies to a minimum is probably a good idea, but there is no "one is ok but two is not" rule. And remember, guidelines are only guidelines.

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