To disclaimer or not to disclaimer?

Green, Denise Green.Denise at uis.edu
Tue Jun 29 10:58:23 EDT 1999


Recently some of my co-workers and I have been debating a "disclaimer" issue
about our library home page. Should we add some disclaimer about copyright
to links to other databases? 

 The idea is that stating something like  "You are now leaving XYZ Library's
homepages. The library is not responsible for you observing the copyright
restriction of Whozit's databases"  will prevent Whozit's from holding the
library responsible for John or Jane Doe's unethical actions. So if John or
Jane Doe uses our link to Ovid or FirstSearch to somehow start downloading
and selling their data, the disclaimer would protect our library from legal
responsibility. 

After some research and discussion, I think this is overkill and not
required by current copyright law or library ethics. We don't put warnings
in books or journals stating that the library isn't responsible for how you
use this info. Our library has the standard signs about copyright and fair
use beside copiers and public printers. We monitor copyright restrictions on
electronic reserves, regular reserves, film & video use, ILL,  etc. like
most academic libraries already. So why bother with such a disclaimer on the
home page?

So what is your practice or opinion? Is such a disclaimer really needed?

Thanks,
Denise Green
Brookens Library
UIS


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