E-reserves and mulitple semesters
- April 2, 2008 @ 11:59amkatco says:I am relatively new to coordinating my library's e-reserve program. I am familiar with the concept of fair use and understand the somewhat blurry guidelines about how much of a work (e.g. one article from a journal; one chapter from a book) can be posted. However, the subsequent/multiple semesters question is a conundrum. At our library - and I have to guess that this is true for many academic institutions - the faculty like to have their articles posted and then leave them up there, simply "reactivating" them year after year with some additions. I am aware that copyright guidelines stipulate that permission must be sought from publishers for each use after the first semester, even if it meets fair use guidelines. I can't figure out how to do this practically. I can't imagine that one could send a publisher a permission query that seeks permission ad infinitum. Has anyone ever attempted that? Do faculty/libraries actually ask for permission to use the same article (actually thousands of articles) over and over again semester after semester? Or is this where the course packet comes into play? Is the idea that if the reading is so central to the course material that if it's to be used every time that it should be incorporated into a custom-published course reader and then sold to students? Thank you for any feedback on this topic!
- April 2, 2008 @ 12:26pmAFry says:
I am aware that copyright guidelines stipulate that permission must be sought from publishers for each use after the first semester, even if it meets fair use guidelines.
This is one reason why I don't use any of the standard guidelines. The law says absolutely nothing about multiple semesters. Kenneth Crews wrote a great article on guidelines. If you search this forum, you should be able to find the exact citation and some good quotes in one of my posts. If you want to find the article and can't, let me know.Do faculty/libraries actually ask for permission to use the same article (actually thousands of articles) over and over again semester after semester?
I never did this when I was in charge of reserve services. My personal opinion is that you either need permission for the first semester (never happened to me, but I can imagine situations in which I would pay for permission) or you don't need permission at all. However, I think that most libraries accept the guidelines and pay the CCC for permission. I consider this giving in to the protection racket. If you search this forum, you should find a discussion of the circular logic of paying for permission in which I give a citation to a good article (by Ann Bartow I think). Let me know if you want it and can't find it.Or is this where the course packet comes into play? Is the idea that if the reading is so central to the course material that if it's to be used every time that it should be incorporated into a custom-published course reader and then sold to students?
I don't accept this argument, but I think that many people do. - April 3, 2008 @ 12:57pmJanetCroft says:Our policy is simply not to keep records of what was on reserve when we take it down at the end of the semester. Then we can truthfully say that we have no way to tell if something was up during a previous semester (sort of along the same lines as disassociating a patron's name form a book once it's returned). We do say we don't want the same things up the very next semester, but if you want to use the same list of articles next fall that you used this fall, well, we don't have a record of it. But I like AFry's reasoning on this one, and if we go to a commercial rather than home-grown system, we may need something more official than "don't ask, don't tell."
- April 4, 2008 @ 1:06pmckristof@kent.edu says:With the support of our University Counsel, we take the standard, conservative approach to electronic reserves, requesting permissions after the first semester of use for copyrighted works, based on 17 U.S.C. SS 107(3). We think repeated use simply flunks the spontaneity and cumulative effects tests. For those seminal articles that are used repeatedly, we have met with some success in obtaining perpetual rights for electronic reserves.
Some articles do get removed from electronic reserves because the permission fees are outrageous. The Libraries will pay $300 for copyright fees per course section per semester. Anything beyond that, we pass along to the faculty member's department. We have never had a department think an article is so vital that the department covered the (outrageous) fee. They are simply substituted with other works. - April 8, 2008 @ 2:52pmCOvalle says:With the support of our University Counsel, we use the standard, nonconservative approach to electronic reserves. ^_^ Our counsel does believe that semester-after-semester usage decreases the fair use argument, but it is difficult to say that a use is not fair after one use. We do have guidelines for faculty to attempt to determine whether or not their use is fair, and we use certain rules of thumb that determine whether or not the University will support the faculty's use of the material.
Keep in mind that an evaluation may be different for profit and nonprofit universities as well.
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