Scholarly Communication at Texas A&M

Many library users today obtain their desired books from the convenience of their laptops or desktops computer, at most any time of the day or night and from nearly any location outside the library’s walls. Thanks to the growing e-book movement, libraries now offer thousands of current titles to their users with the click of a mouse. Additionally, libraries with historical materials from the early 20th century and back are scanning these rare (and out-of-copyright) materials for online viewing and download.

But between the contemporary e-books licensed from digital media companies such as Overdrive and netLibrary, and those locally digitized from library special collections is a large gap of books that are currently not available digitally. This class of works, representing about 90 years of book publishing, contain titles that are out-of-print and of less commercial value. Yet they may still be of great interest to library users. For this reason, a small collaborative of libraries has begun scanning their out-of-print (but still in-copyright) holdings in order to deliver them online as a service to their users. Working with the Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library, the libraries are uploading the digitally-reproduced books to Openlibrary, a one-stop website for checking out books.

The digitized books are available to be borrowed by one patron at a time from anywhere in the world. These books are in PDF and ePub formats, as well as Daisy for the print disabled. Users may choose the format as part of the borrowing process. The digital book loans are managed through Adobe Digital Editions, a free software application which must be downloaded and installed. Each loan expires after 2 weeks, and up to 5 books may be borrowed at a time. In consideration of copyright concerns, the library holding the physical copy from which the digital copy was scanned will avoid circulating the physical copy during the period of the digital loan.

Any user is eligible to take advantage of this innovative new service. To get started, create an Open Library account (it’s free, and minimal information is required to sign up) and get set up with the Adobe Digital Editions reader. Then go online to the Lending Library to browse and check out books.

Additional information about the program is available online. The copyright considerations underlying this program are untested and may prove to be an interesting situation to watch!

In January of this year, UCLA was charged with copyright infringement for engaging in an activity taking place on many campuses today — allowing instructors to post copyrighted videos on their password-protected course Web sites as part of their online teaching. In issuing the charge against UCLA, the complainant — the Association for Information and Media Equipment — indicated that it may charge other universities employing the same practices. UCLA immediately halted the activity while determining its best course of action. This decision proved disruptive to the many students and faculty who rely on digital video to support the teaching objectives in courses across the curriculm, from film studies to chemistry and political science. The instructors responsible for teaching such courses had to either eliminate the films from their syllabuses or tell their students to get copies through their own means, whether through purchase, rental or borrowing.

But recently UCLA resumed its video streaming activities after a group of Library copyright advisors reviewed the complaint on behalf of UCLA and other research universities. These legal experts have issued a legal brief, Streaming of Films for Educational Purposes, advising that the practice of screening entire films remotely for education is not an infringement of US Copyright Law. In their review, they considered three exceptions within the Copyright Act that could permit streaming of this sort: Section 107, Fair Use; Section 110(1), Exemption of certain performances and displays in face-to-face teaching; and Section 110(2), Exemption of certain performances and displays in distance education (The TEACH Act). The brief’s authors posited that, “while all three provisions may apply, Section 107 fair use is perhaps the strongest justification.”

According to Streaming of Films for Educational Purposes:

Section 107 of the Copyright Act allows copying, performance and display of copyrighted works without the permission of rightsholders where users satisfy certain broad, flexible criteria. Courts are likely to treat as fair use many instances of streaming video to students logged in to class sites. Schools and libraries are in a particularly strong position to assert fair use because the law favors non-profit educational uses. Determining whether a particular transmission constitutes fair use will involve balancing other factors, including the nature of the work, the amount used, and the effect of the use on the market
for the work.

The brief’s authors go on to explain that recent judicial decisions have clarified the application of fair use in cases involving digital technologies, including cases where entire works have been used. The courts found these uses fair because, in part, “the defendants repurposed and recontextualized the works”. They indicate that courts are likely to regard such activities such as uploading a feature film to a course website so that students could stream it for purposes of analysis, as repurposing. They further advise that educators can strengthen their fair use claim by recontextualizing works on course websites through selection and arrangement and the addition of background readings, study questions, commentary, criticism, annotation, and student reactions.

The briefing Streaming of Films for Educational Purposes does not give carte blanche to campuses to use digital media in whatever ways they desire, including purposes of entertainment, without regard to the provisions of the Copyright Act. Indeed, the briefing has stirred up a fair bit of controversy within the library and higher education communities. But it does provide greater confidence that uses of clear and uneqivocally educational nature are protected under Copyrhgt Law as Fair Use.

Related resources:

• “Hitting Pause on Class Videos”, Inside Higher Ed, January 26, 2010. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/01/26/copyright
• Smith, Kevin, “Smoke got in my eyes” (Blog posting), Scholarly Communcations@Duke, March 5, 2010,

  http://library.duke.edu/blogs/scholcomm/2010/03/05/smoke-got-in-my-eyes

• Hoon, Peggy, “UCLA To Start Streaming Entire Movies Online Again” (Blog posting), Collectanea, March 3, 2010,

  http://chaucer.umuc.edu/blogcip/collectanea/2010/03/ucla_to_start_streaming_entire.html

Timothy K. Armstrong, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati College of Law and blogger at Info/Law, posted “An Introduction to Publication Agreements for Authors” back in May 2009.  If you are unclear why you should retain rights — or what rights publishers actually need to publish your work, this is a very useful and quick, two-page read.

The link http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/files/2009/05/authors_publishing_intro-tka1.pdf and an  excerpt: (more…)

Our University community is home to many distinguished TAMU faculty members who have, over the years, written textbooks and other important monographs for academic and scholarly audiences. With the passage of time, some of these titles have gone out of print and are no longer readily available to potential readers. Certain that demand still exists for such works, their authors have reclaimed the rights once transferred to publishers. These authors are, in effect, ‘re-publishing’ their works via open access using today’s digital and Internet technologies. In this way, TAMU authors are extending the reach and impact of their works to serve new audiences worldwide.

One example of this open access republishing trend is the work of Dr. Ray M. Bowen, Professor and President Emeritus of Texas A&M. Thanks to Dr. Bowen’s efforts to reclaim the rights to his previously published works, three books previously sold under the imprint of Plenum Press have now been freely republished in the Texas A&M Digital Repository (Dr. Bowen’s digital collection is online at http://repository.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/2500.) These titles now see wide usage from around the world.

If a TAMU author believes that demand exists for his or her out-of-print publication, s/he is encouraged to explore whether the rights to that work can revert back to the author. Historically, the standard language in book contracts required that authors transfer to the publisher the right to reproduce the work and the right to distribute copies of the work to the public. Such contracts also contained a reversion of rights clause by which the publisher’s rights terminated if/when the book went out of print.

Authors wishing to pursue a reversion of their rights need to check the original publishing contract, if available, to see if an appropriate clause was included. It may be necessary to write to the publisher’s rights and permissions department to clarify the procedure for reclaiming reverted rights.

Once rights have reverted to an author, s/he is invited to digitally republish the work via the Texas A&M Digital Repository. There is no cost to the author or the users for this service, and it provides an easy and effective way to extend the life of the work for many years to come.

Information about submitting works to the Texas A&M Digital Repository is available online or by contacting the Libraries’ Digital Services & Scholarly Communication Office at digital@library.tamu.edu.

In Washington D.C. tomorrow, an interesting cross-section of American citizenry will gather at the Newseum to celebrate a particular legal principle found in Section 107, Title 17 of the U. S. Code. Known more popularly as “the Doctrine of Fair Use”, this section of US Copyright law outlines conditions under which copyrighted works may be used, without permission of the copyright owner, for the purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.

The First Annual World’s Fair Use Day (WFUD) is sponsored by Public Knowledge, a consumer rights advocacy group well known for its coverage of copyright policy. The day-long event is designed to bring together policymakers, artists, academics, entrepreneurs, journalists and consumer advocates to listen, watch, and learn from speeches and panel discussions, presentations, videos, films, music, and multimedia mash-ups that underscore the importance of Fair Use for creative culture, scholarship, innovation and learning.

Those outside the DC area can join in the program in a number of ways:

• Check out the event web site at http://worldsfairuseday.org/Worlds_Fair_Use_Day/Worlds_Fair_Use_Day.html
• Watch the live web stream, which will run from 9 am – 4 pm EST (stay tuned to wfud.info)
• Download and read the cool “Party Pack” which contains lots of great ideas for celebrating WFUD today, tomorrow, or whenever you want to express your love of Fair Use!

Among the presenters taking part in tomorrow’s World Fair Use Day are:

Terri Bays, from the OpenCourseWare Initiative

Dan Walsh, creator of the “Garfield Minus Garfield” web comic;

Machinima artist Chris Burke discusses, who uses fair use to produce his popular Internet Talk Show in Gamespace, This Spartan Life;

Lincoln Bandlow, an attorney who invoked the doctrine of fair use in the case Jackson Browne vs. John McCain to defend the Republican’s use of the song “Running on Empty” in a campaign ad without permission (the case was ultimately settled).