ILL Basics for Academic Libraries, Part III

All librarians probably need to now a little bit about copyright law, but the ILL Librarian in an academic setting definitely needs to know a little--or a lot--about copyright law and needs to stay aware of changes to copyright laws.

Before I get into any more discussion about copyright law, I need to remind you that (1) this is a blog post and not a scholarly or professional document (2) I am not an attorney and can not give legal advice to anybody, even in my professional capacity. Also, I would like to state that this post will only address a small part of United States copyright law and copyright is a complicated topic.

Title 17 of the U.S. Code provides protection to authors of literary and other creative and intellectual works by giving the author or copyright holder the exclusive rights:

• to reproduce the work
• to prepare derivative works
• to distribute copies of the work
• to perform the work publicly
• to display the work publicly

There are limitations to copyright, however. Section 107 and Section 108 of Title 17 are of particular concern to academic librarians.

When a copyright expires or copyright protection is not claimed, a work is in the public domain. When a work passes into the public domain depends on several factors, including when the work was created, where the work was created, and whether/when the work was published. Lolly Gasaway at the University of North Carolina offers a chart to use as an easy guideline. Another chart, by Peter B. Hirtle, is offered by Cornell. If you use the charts, please remember that they are not a substitute for legal advice. Also please note whether the chart you use has been updated recently and realize that recent laws or court decisions may have caused changes to current law.

Often you hear somebody claim that their use of a copyright work is "fair use" because they are using for educational purposes. Fair Use is codified in Section 107 of Title 17 of the United States Code, but most people who claim "Fair Use" are interpreting it quite liberally. There are four factors that must be considered in determining whether the use of a work is a fair use:

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value
of the copyrighted work.

These are known as the "four factors."

Section 108 of Title 17 addresses Limitations on exclusive rights: Reproduction by libraries and archives. It permits libraries to create copies and send and receive copies with certain restrictions. Because Section 108 is not specific about acceptable numbers of copies, the CONTU Guidelines were developed, including the Guideline of Five: During one calendar year, no more than five copies may be received from any one work whose publication date is within five years of the date of the patron's request. This guideline is used by ILL Borrowing to determine whether another copy from a particular journal title may be requested without the need to pay royalties. Remember, this is a guideline and not part of copyright law.

I'll do it my way. Thanks.

Your Independence Level: Very High

You do things your own way. Even if everyone else thinks you're wrong. You cherish your freedom, and you resent rules. No one knows what's right for you as much as you do. You can take care of yourself... and you do a mighty fine job of it.

How Independent Are You?

ILL Basics for Academic Libraries, Part II

ALA's Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) offers a code for ILL, the Interlibrary Loan Code for the United States. It was last revised in 2001. It states that, "libraries have an obligation to obtain material to meet the information needs of users when local resources do not meet those needs." (emphasis mine)

In some ways, the center of the library universe is OCLC in Dublin, Ohio.

OCLC Online Computer Library Center is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world's information and reducing the rate of rise of library costs. More than 60,000 libraries in 112 countries and territories around the world use OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend and preserve library materials. (source:http://www.oclc.org/us/en/about/default.htm)

OCLC provides WorldCat, an online union catalog of tens of millions of items in the world's libraries.

Not surprisingly, OCLC products and services also assist with resource sharing and document delivery. ILL departments use the OCLC union catalog to find libraries that own and may lend material requested by patrons. ILLiad is a popular ILL management software product offered by OCLC. You can read more about ILLiad here. OCLC's WorldCat Resource Sharing (WRS) uses a Web-based interface. I would not recommend it for high volume large academic libraries, but for lower volume ILL departments, including academic libraries with low ILL transaction numbers, it is quite suitable, and may be preferable to ILLiad for libraries without efficient and reliable tech support.

Clio is another ILL software product. You can read more about Clio here. There are others. I have used ILLiad and WRS, but have never used Clio. If you have used any ILL management products, feel free to tell about them in comments.

ILL Basics for Academic Libraries, Part I

I have been reviewing some Interlibrary Loan (ILL) information, including Pleasantville's ILL stats the last few days. It occurs to me that it might be a good idea to write a blog post about some of the ILL books and other sources I have looked at. If any Library/Information Science students read this blog, maybe some of this will be new information. In fact, it could be new information to librarians who have never worked with ILL.

I do not remember much discussion about ILL in any of my LIS courses and there was not a course or even a workshop about ILL offered at the school where I received my MLIS. I would love to develop a workshop on document delivery and resource sharing. Maybe posting all this here will help me organize my ideas and assist my process of developing such a workshop.

First, let me say that Virgina Boucher's Interlibrary Loan Practices Handbook is recognized as the major book on this subject, but the best book I ever read that explains ILL processes and practices in a clear and informative way is Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery in the Larger Academic Library by Lee Andrew Hilyer. I read the latter when I was a graduate student working in ILL and it clarified all of the processes I was learning at the time.

Hilyer provides a working definition of ILL:

Interlibrary Loan (ILL) is the sharing of materials among libraries, be they across town or across the globe. It is a service that provides access to the collections of libraries throughout the world.
Interlibrary Loan service is primarily conducted library-to-library, on behalf of the patron (a mediated service). It is evolving and changing to incorporate more and more unmediated services, where the patron requests and receives material without any intervention by the ILL department. Interlibrary Loan provides acces to materials not held in or otherwise unavailable from a library's collection. (p. 2)

Many consortia have resource sharing systems that are unmediated, or patron-initiated, that, while technically interlibrary loan services, are not considered part of the ILL department and are managed by somebody other than the ILL Librarian or ILL Manager.

ILL is comprised of Borrowing and Lending. In some libraries, one person handles both. In larger libraries, there is often a librarian or paraprofessional in charge of Borrowing and another in charge of Lending. ILL Borrowing staff handle requests from the library's patrons for materials available from other libraries. ILL Lending staff handle requests from other libraries for materials from the library's collection.

They shoot horses, don't they?

I eat meat even though many arguments against eating meat make sense. Maybe someday I will change my ways.

I offer that confession of my carnivorous ways only because I know there are some who would consider me a hypocrite for criticizing the so-called sport of horse racing. I'm not particularly a horse lover, but when I heard about Eight Belles a couple of weeks ago, I felt pain.

Horses are bred to be winners, but sometimes the consequences are painful and deadly for the horses. In the Washington Post, sports columnist Sally Jenkins explains, Modern thoroughbreds are bred for extreme speed, maybe to the point of endangerment. Thoroughbreds are muscularly more powerful than ever, but their bone skeletons seem to be getting lighter and frail.

Breeding causes some of the problems. Carol McAlice Currie offers criticism of the treatment of the horses:

They're put through needless paces from birth and pushed beyond normal endurance. They're then forced on immature legs to run for their lives. Having ridden horses for pleasure for many years, the idea repulses me.

What confuses me is why it doesn't bother more people.

This country reviles dog fighting and canned trophy hunting, but it easily turns a blind eye and deaf ear to the practice of having horses give their lives for entertainment.

Sport of kings, my backside.

It's animal abuse, period. Just because only one death was televised nationally Saturday doesn't mean more doesn't go on behind the scenes.

And what happens to the horses who don't finish well in a big race like the Kentucky Derby? HBO's RealSports recently aired an episode about Hidden Horses:

Few casual horse racing fans are aware that many former racing horses are slaughtered for profit. When a thoroughbred race horse reaches the end of its career or is simply no longer profitable on the track, it is often taken directly to auction and sold for meat. Because horse slaughter is no longer practiced in this country, these thoroughbreds are now being shipped by "killer buyers" to slaughterhouses abroad, which are frequently less regulated and less humane than former U.S. slaughterhouses.

I do not get cable channels anymore, but my Mum watched that episode. She said it was disgusting. The humane way of killing horses in these slaughterhouses is to shoot them in the head. Other horses are stabbed in the back to break their spine to paralyze them before they are slaughtered.

Run for the roses, indeed.

Flowers are better

I went to Kent State again this year for the annual May 4 commemoration. Even though I know that May 4, 1970, happened, I always find it hard to believe that such an awful thing could really happen.

The Ohio Eyes Wide Open exhibit was there this year, reminding us of the ongoing loss of more young lives. I agree with what Allison Krause said: Flowers are better than bullets.

Thank you consequence

It is almost the end of the semester. Again, I let things get to me and stress me out at times. I let work be my life to the point that I didn't have time to attend a dear friend's funeral or to shovel my mother's driveway. This isn't right. But I'm starting to learn to remember what's important. I think the price of gas may soon help me to set my priorities straight, as my salary may no longer be enough with the cost of the long commute. Thank you, four dollars per gallon gasoline.

May 4, 1970

Why is this important to know?

15

Pennsylvanian and Catholic?!?

Since I was in Salt Lake City and an afternoon excursion to the Family History Library was offered during the conference, I took advantage of the opportunity to do a little genealogy research. I learned a few things in the process and I didn't have to go back very far to find information of which I was not previously aware.

(1) My paternal grandmother was born in Pennsylvania (I thought she was born in Ohio)
(2) My paternal grandfather grew up in Northampton, Massachusetts

and the bigger shock:
(3) My great-grandmother from Canada was CATHOLIC (Born in Nova Scotia with her Racial or Tribal Origin listed in the 1901 Canadian Census as English -- Yes, I must now take back my St. Patrick remarks about Catholics) and didn't come to the U.S. until 1902 (I thought all my ancestors had been in the states prior to 1900--my god I'm practically a foreigner!).

Utah is my 38th state

I am home from a conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. This was a new state for me, so my new map is below. I spent most of my time in the conference hotel, so I did not see much of Salt Lake City, but I did get out a little and visited the Family History Library. The snow-capped mountains in the distance were an amazing view.

Also, it seems that during the 4 days I was away all the green at home popped out on the trees so I came home to another amazing view.



create your own personalized map of the USA.