solution manual and publisher against putting on reserve
- September 16, 2004 @ 4:43pmstoberg says:This question may have played out already either here or in some other forum, but I would like some advice about a situation we are facing locally in a small academic library, a situation that I think is frankly ridiculous, but...
A faculty member in our physics department was recently contacted by a publisher and told that he could no longer put their monograph on course reserve in the library. This question is so recent, sent to me via email by our circ. manager, that I haven't been able to determine yet the title of the work or the publisher. The solution manual is not owned by the library but by the faculty member. Here is the quote from the email I received from our circ. manager:
"He had a publisher call him and say he could no longer place the solution manual on reserve as long as students had the availability to photocopy the pages. Evidently solutions from the manuals are finding their way to ebay and other websites thus compromising the textbook and manual. He asked about a room where the book must stay within the room or any other solution to this problem. I know other libraries have separate reserve rooms but can’t see us doing that here...Do any of you have a workable solution? Have you heard of this happening in other locations and know what their solution was? Just wondering, just wondering…"
I'd particularly welcome specific advice and references to other, similar cases to help bolster a case for retaining the right for us to have this item on reserve. (Btw, our reserve materials, as you might expect, are for in-library use only and can only be checked out for three hours at a time.)
Thanks,
Steve - September 17, 2004 @ 4:07pmBAustin says:Hi Steve,
If I'm reading this right and it's a print copy of the manual/text that has been purchased by the professor, the publisher doesn't have a leg to stand on. First sale allows the prof to place the material on reserve if he/she wishes. The prof isn't responsible for what students do in terms of copying, any more than libraries are responsible for what our patrons do with our copy machines. I've never heard of this coming up in all my years of being involved with reserves--professors have always put their personal copies of books, manuals, even course packs on paper reserves, and yes of course students often photocopy from them. By this logic, we couldn't put any of our library books on reserve, either! Just goes to show you have totally out of whack copyright is getting; content folks want to control absolutely every downstream use of everything. Don't let them!
Brice - September 22, 2004 @ 3:01pmstoberg says:Thanks for this reply. It confirms what I felt.
Steve
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