Re: placing another library's material on reserve

On Mon, 10 Apr 2000, Romona Islam <rislam[_at_]mail.fairfield.edu> asked:
>
> I am head of the reserves operation at an academic library, and just
> dealt with a professor who was very upset that we would not accept
> another library's videotape to be placed on our reserve shelves for
> his class. I believe this would violate copyright law, because it
> would not be based upon a library's right of first sale, which allows
> a library to circulate materials once it has purchased those materials
> for its own collection. In the professor's case, neither our library
> nor the professor actually purchased the video, so we do not have the
> right to circulate it under any circumstance. It would not be a
> fair use.
>
> I want to know if this interpretation is correct. Could I be wrong
> about this? If so, our policy has caused unnecessary angst and
> inconvenience for this professor. Please tell me what you think.

     If this line of reasoning were correct there could be no interlibrary loan since in this practice libraries routinely loan out material owned by other libraries, and reserve is just short term loan. The lawyers on the list may correct my thinking, but first sale removes the copyright owner's control over the physical item sold. If you don't copy it, you can circulate it. There certainly may be preformance restrictions on the video, however, and these should be passed on from the original library, to the professor, to you, and finally to your patrons.

               BRB Bert R. Boyce, Professor & Dean
School of Library & Information Science
Louisiana State University
267 Coates Hall
Baton Rouge, LA 70803

     (225)388-3158
FAX: (225)388-4581
LSBOYC[_at_]lsu.edu Received on Wed Apr 12 2000 - 15:04:24 GMT