Re: settling a dispute

[Mary Summerfield <msummerfield@yahoo.com>]

When I was at the University of Chicago Press, the librarians at 
Chicago asked me how Presses would feel about the library (and 
others) putting the table of contents and indexes of books on the 
OPAC records.  So those librarians knew that even that very 
limited use of the least significant part of a book might not be 
uniformly considered fair use.

Mary Summerfield

________________________________
From: Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>
To: "Liblicense-L@Lists.Yale.Edu" <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Sunday, September 27, 2009 5:14:22 PM
Subject: settling a dispute

I wonder if the listmembers could help to settle a dispute.  The
topic is what constitutes fair use of books in libraries.

It is my view that some members (I don't know what percentage) of
the academic library community believe that educational fair use
covers the digitization of a book owned by the library, that the
digital edition can be put on a Web server, and that the material
can be made available at least to members of the institution
(faculty and students).  Some librarians may also believe that
the server can be accessible to the open Web, as the book was
hosted by an educational institution.

The opposing view is that digitized copies are covered by fair
use only when they are put in a dark archive for preservation
purposes.

The question here is not what is the law (a complex question),
but what do librarians think the law is.

Can anyone offer an opinion?

Thank you.

Joe Esposito