RE: settling a dispute

[George Porter <george@library.caltech.edu>]

Caltech CODA <http://coda.caltech.edu/> has collected more than 
60 books from the Caltech community.

1)Digitizing books which are in the public domain is certainly 
fair use.

2)Books which are copyright by the institution would tend to be 
fair game.

3)Beyond that, books for which the copyright is owned, or has 
reverted to, an author affiliated with the library's institution 
are ripe opportunities for collaboration with the author. 
CC-licensed books are a special case within this segment, but 
still are subject to the agreement of the author to participate 
in the institutional repository.

4)Books whose copyright is held by a publisher may be included 
with the agreement of both the author and the publisher.

I have no experience with material falling in the first category. 
The second category has yielded a handful of items, largely 
documenting various aspects of the Institute.  The majority of 
books we've digitized have been done for authors who have 
retained or regained the copyright to their work.

Cambridge, Oxford, and Princeton university presses, as well as 
Morgan & Claypool, have distinguished themselves by acceding to 
author requests to make front list titles freely available 
through our IR.  Springer has permitted the digitization and 
IP-limited distribution of a handful of books in support of one 
of our faculty authors.

Fair use begins and ends well short of a complete book.  At 
least, that's the way we work, and it doesn't seem to impose 
enough restrictions to keep us from developing a substantial, and 
expanding, collection of books.

George S. Porter
Sherman Fairchild Library
California Institute of Technology
Telephone (626) 395-3409 Fax (626) 431-2681