Electronic reserves via web

[Bill Pardue]

> We're also concerned about copyright issues. Does this fall under fair use
> if we limit access to students, staff and faculty of our college? Do we
> need to limit access? What if we have a paper copy on reserve as well? What
> about our users who still only have text access (for documents stored as
> graphics)?
> 
At Illinois Institute of Technology, we've consciously avoided the 
copyright issue for our electronic reserves system.  First of all, 
there are some tricky issues specific to IIT regarding how to keep 
unauthorized patrons away from copyrighted materials.  Eventually, 
most of these can be worked through.  The tougher issue is that 
digitization of copyrighted material (even plain old scans, which 
often result in some loss of image quality), seems to be considered 
as something fundamentally different from photocopying (making a 
single, physical copy to hold behind the desk).  This holds true no
matter how you restrict access to the scanned material.  It seems that the 
recent White House white paper on copyright would have new copyright 
laws place serious restrictions on fair use in the digital realm.  My 
own suggestion is that if you plan to put copyrighted e-reserves up, 
be especially careful about getting permissions that are quite clear 
that you intend to digitize the material, rather than simply place it 
on reserves.  This, of course, means asking faculty to plan well in 
advance what they want to have on e-reserves (good luck! ;-)).

You may want to contact Northwestern Univ. about their e-reserve 
system, since they seem to be placing copyrighted materials up 
(access is, however, restricted).  Check them out at:

http://www.library.nwu.edu

You can have a look at IIT's e-reserves project by looking at:

http://www.iit.edu/~library/erp/erphome.html.

Good luck!

--Bill Pardue
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    Bill Pardue--Electronic Resources Librarian
    Galvin Library, Illinois Institute of Tech.
                Chicago, IL  60616
312-567-3615/312-567-5318 (fax) pardue at charlie.acc.iit.edu
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