Most of materials available in libraries are copyrighted. On the other hand, it requires copying and digitizing these materials to enable research, learning, and teaching.
So, what are the best practices in library fair use?
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL), together with the Center for Social Media and the Washington College of Law at American University, developed the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries (download pdf document).
The Library Fair Use Code is “a clear and easy-to-use statement of fair and reasonable approaches to fair use developed by and for librarians who support academic inquiry and higher education.”
The Code is accompanied by the infographic, to help spread the word about it. You can get it as high-resolution pdf file, as well as png image, from the official page on ARL website.
The relevance of library fair use was identified in eight most common situations:
- Supporting teaching and learning with access to library materials via digital technologies.
- Using selections from collection materials to publicize a library’s activities, or to create physical and virtual exhibitions.
- Digitizing to preserve at-risk items.
- Creating digital collections of archival and special collections materials.
- Reproducing material for use by disabled students, faculty, staff, and other appropriate users.
- Maintaining the integrity of works deposited in institutional repositories.
- Creating databases to facilitate non-consumptive research uses (including search).
- Collecting material posted on the web and making it available.
Click or tap on the image below to see it in full resolution.
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