Royalty costs for E-Reserve items?

[John Pearce]

> From: Carolyn_Gonzalez at medcom1.smtplink.amedd.army.mil
>      I'm in the process of organizing a completely digital library for the 
>      US Army's Center for Healthcare Education & Studies.  [snip]
>      
>      As far as copyright goes, the library has a membership with the 
>      Copyright Clearance Center.  This costs us $105 a year, plus $1.80 per 
>      request for clearance, in addition to any royalty fee the copyright 
>      holder wants to add.  I haven't requested copyright clearance for the 
>      stacks of journal articles these instructors are waiting to send me, 
>      (We're just now getting ready to order the SIRSI product.) but once I 
>      do, I'll be able to let you know what kind of royalties people want to 
>      tack on for electronic access to their materials.  When I request 
>      copyright clearance, I'll be specifying that I'll be making electronic 
>      copies.

I would be *very* interested in finding out what the cost difference
is for electronic vs.. print royalties.  The U. of Washington Health
Sciences Library is working on a pilot project putting a few articles
on Reserve.  Personally, I would like to see us do much more, but the
copyright questions need to be resolved first.  If the electronic
royalty costs are substantially lower than multi-copy print, we might
consider avoiding the Fair Use issue entirely by just getting the
rights. 

I was glad to see Brian Neilsen's view that Fair Use includes serving
documents to a specific class electronically.  This is where I hope
copyright law winds up.  Have there been any court cases testing it
yet?

John Pearce

P.S.  If you're interested in E-Reserves specifically, check out the
list in the cc: line.