Electronic reserves

[Brian Nielsen]

At 06:03 PM 4/14/97 -0700, you wrote:
>This year, I wanted to add some of our college library's 
>reserve materials to our website.  We limited the material
>to documents to which the college or the individual faculty 
>members held copyright.  ... >
>Has anyone else had this problem of faculty reticence about putting
>their reserve materials on the library web pages?  I'm unclear 
>why so many people who thought this was a great idea in theory were
>reticent about actually using the service.  
>
>Also, I'm wondering what would be involved in getting copyright
>permission to put some articles that are on reserve onto our web
>pages.  Has anyone gone that route?  How much work was involved
>in getting clearance, and what were the costs involved?

In my view, what makes e-reserve attractive to many faculty is the
opportunity it offers to distribute materials that in fact may be
copyrighted by commercial publishers.  The fair use provision of the
Copyright Act, in the view of many of us who've been involved in e-reserve
design and development, offers institutions the opportunity to serve
faculty and their students with documents which are under copyright.  Given
reasonable control over how access to such documents can be limited to
members of a class (which is technically quite simple and essentially
costless), institutions can AND SHOULD work within the provisions of
Section 106 of the law to deliver materials that faculty assign their
students.  Fair Use is an important principle in our copyright system, and
it is important that we preserve that principle through exercise of it.  

Brian Nielsen

		Brian Nielsen, Ph.D.
		Manager, Learning Technologies Group
		 Academic Technologies
		Northwestern University
		2129 N. Campus Drive
		Evanston, IL  60208-2850
		(847)491-2170   fax:(847)491-3824
		email: b-nielsen at nwu.edu
		http://www.nwu.edu/people/b-nielsen