Scenario:
An instructor finds an article in a professional journal that will be helpful to her in future research projects. She would like to make a copy of the journal article for her personal files.

Response:
Making a personal copy of a copyrighted work for research and reference is a fair use.

Scenario:
An instructor would like to place several articles and book chapters on reserve at the Library for students to access electronically. Access will be limited to only those students enrolled in the class.

Response:
Traditionally libraries have provided short term, limited access to materials selected by instructors. Electronic reserve systems exploit new technologies that enhance reserve service and deliver 24/7 remote access to authorized, registered students. Applying the fair use provision of copyright law is critical in library electronic reserve services.

Instructors submitting materials to be posted on the Library's eReserve system are responsible for evaluating, on a case-by-case basis, whether the use of each copyrighted work requires permission or qualifies as fair use. When permissions are needed, instructors or their departments can contact the Copyright Permissions Center for assistance.

Scenario

An instructor copies the papers submitted by the students in her class and brings them to the Libraries to place on reserve. Does the instructor need permission from each student to copy their paper and share it with others?

Response

The students' papers are copyrighted and each of the students will own the copyright to their papers. The instructor will need permission from each student to copy the papers. She should get the permissions before bringing the papers to the Libraries.

If an instructor gets permission to copy a student authored work for use in Libraries reserves, she would need new permission to use the work again during any subsequent academic term.

Please note: Certain uses of student work may require compliance with the Regents Policy on Student Records and the Family Educational Rights Privacy Act (FERPA).

Scenario:
A research group at the University wishes to create a database of full-text research articles. The articles would be drawn from the University library's electronic journal collection, and hard copy print collection whenever e-versions of relevant articles are not available. Since this is for research purposes, is there any problem in doing this?

Response:
Copyrighted journal articles available through licensed electronic resources are subject to the terms of the license agreement between the library and the journal publishers. To understand some of the limitations and restrictions that may be contained in license agreements University users should familiarize themselves with general terms of license agreements. Often these agreements will not allow downloading of content and reposting it to another server. So, creating persistent links to articles, or to the library's licensed source and storing those links in the database would be the way for a study group to proceed.

Scanning hard copy of journal articles for inclusion in the database would be a matter involving either getting permission or four-factor fair use analysis for the use of each article. And, any use of the articles by members of the group should be limited to non-commercial, educational, or personal research purposes. Furthermore access to the database must be restricted to members of the study group only. Such a database should not be made generally available to the Internet user community.

Scenario:
A professor is preparing for a year-long sabbatical abroad and needs to take with her a book from the library that is critical to her research. The book was published in 1919 by an American university press. The faculty member is reluctant to borrow and take the library copy for an entire year, in case someone else might need it. Can she make a cover-to-cover copy of the book to use for her research?

Response:
Copyright law protects works for limited times. In the United States copyright of published works endures for the life of the author plus 70 years. After the expiration of this term a work falls into the public domain. In this case the publication is now in the public domain and may be copied without infinging on a copyright. It is safe to say that works published in the U.S. before 1923 are now in the public domain.

Scenario:
An instructor wants her students to read an article from a professional journal. She accesses the full text of the article as a PDF through the University Libraries. She saves the article to her computer and then uploads it to her course's WebCT Vista site for students to download

Response:
Since the instructor obtained the article from a Libraries licensed electronic resource she needs to understand general limitations and restrictions on use that may be contained in the license agreement between the publisher and the Libraries. The terms of such license agreements control how the materials may be used. It is essential that all instructors using library resources understand their Rights and Responsibilities for the Use of Library-licensed Electronic Resources. Frequently license agreements do not allow copying of PDF files and reposting them to a class web site or WebCT Vista site. However, in numerous instances the instructor can make articles available to students from a course web page through a direct link. To learn how to link directly from your web page to an article available as an electronic resource from the Libraries, see the Linking Methods tutorial.

Scenario:
An instructor has found an article in a professional journal that is particularly useful for a class she teaches every semester. She would like to include the article as reading this semester, and then again next time she teaches the course. Is this a fair use?

Response:
The repeated use of a copyrighted work, from term-to-term, requires particular scrutiny in a fair use evaluation. Such a use explicitly relates to "market effect", the fourth factor in the evaluation. This factor requires one to consider the impact of using a copyrighted work on any market for the original article, including the permissions market. Repeated use, as well as class size, may impact this consideration. Smaller class sizes may mitigate the impact on permissions markets to some extent, and using the article only once, not in future semesters, may further limit the overall market effect of a decision to forego permissions. While not an automatic disqualification, repeated use of a copyrighted work weighs against fair use. For any repeated use to be judged as a fair use, it must be outweighed, in the balance, by the remaining three factors of the evaluation (purpose, nature, and amount).

Scenario:
In the attempt to save students money a professor scans several chapters from an expensive textbook for her course and uploads a PDF file of the chapters to her WebCT/Vista site for students to read. This is the only material the students need from this particular textbook to complete class assignments. Is this a fair use?

Response:
This is not a fair use. A four factor analysis of these circumstances would reasonably conclude that the market is directly affected by this activity. Students who would otherwise be expected to purchase the book no longer need to and the publisher is thus deprived of sales. An alternative approach for the teacher would be to place an appropriately acquired copy of the textbook on reserve in the Libraries or to ask students to purchase the text from the bookstore.