Re: copyright issues of scanned articles

["Sally Morris" <sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk>]

At present, no digitisation can be legally carried out without the
explicit permission of the publisher and any other copyright owner (who
may or may not require a fee) and under the terms specified by them.  

However, publishers recognise that this situation is as unworkable for
libraries as it used to be for photocopying.  In the UK, there have been
useful discussions between publishers and librarians, and as a result the
Copyright Licensing Agency is planning to develop a centrally operated
licence (similar to that which we already have in place for photocopying).  
The STM group of publishers has also made a joint statement with EBLIDA on
a more liberal approach to the digitisation of older material (such as
journal articles published more than three years ago.)  In the UK, the
universities are also setting up a centralised system called HERON, so
that material digitised (with permission) either centrally, or by one
university, can be reused by others.  

So, although the current situation is not very helpful, significant
progress is being made to improve this.  I don't know (and would be
interested to hear) whether the same is true in other countries.

Sally Morris, Secretary-General
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK

Phone:  01903 871686 Fax:  01903 871286 E-mail:
alpsp@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk

-----Original Message-----
From: Koltay Klara <kkoltay@giant.lib.klte.hu>
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Date: 29 October 1998 15:41
Subject: copyright issues of scanned articles


>As librarian not much trained in copyright law , but realising the
>importance of the issue and wishing to make the most of our possibilites
>without breaking the rules and law, I would like to hear your opinion on
>the following:
>
>1. What restrictions does a library have to observe when trying to make
>use of digitisation techniques and electronic data transmission in it
>interlibrary loan transactions? What are the musts and must nots?
>
>2. In what way and with what restrictions can a library store the once
>digitized articles and book chapters in a searchable database for further
>use? Is it prohibited in itself? Can it be a resource database only to
>prevent rescanning of the same article and the damage of a fragile
>original document? Can it be an intranet database with scientific and
>educational purposes? Can it be an database used by a wider consortium of
>libraries?
>
>Thank you very much
>
>Klara Koltay
>Debrecen, Hungary
>kkoltay@giantlib.klte.hu