electronic reserves

Well, I poed the question and we're having a good discussion. I want to thank all who have and continue to respond to the issue - which I was amused to have characterized by Don Berman as 'the Naylor problem. Thank you Georgia Harper for a well reasoned (because I agree!) analysis. I await, with a degree of trepidation, Mary Brandt Jensen's 40 page article. I thought her March article in _Computers in Libraries_ argued for the legality of an electronic reserve collection.

We need to emphasize that the concept of the Reserve Room and reserve readings, accepted and defined in the 76 law and Guidelines and subsequent opinions and in practice, has not changed with the evolution of technology and new systems for document deleivery.

There is no intrinsic difference between the provision of a paper photocopy to a student in a reserve room in a library which, under fair use, the student can photocopy, and the provision to that student of an electronic copy from a database that is stored in a University computer and is accessible from terminals in and out of the library and from which the student can make a paper copy. The single major distinction is that technology has eased the path of the student who is no longer required to come to the library to check out and photocopy the reserve reading. Rather, the student now has the option to access the University computer from dorm, lab, home and print out a copy. This is well within the spirit of fair use as I understand it.

If we allow the legal niceties of the language of the law to determine that we need permissions to scan a document into a machine that 'displays' the document, then we are allowing technology to dictate how we behave. What electronic storage and display of documents means to our students is simply greater ease of access to information. It DOESN'T mean deprivation to the publisher. Even if we don't use the new technology we're not going to buy more copies of the original. Why should the use of new technology - not developed by publishers - enable the publishers to require users of their products to pay more for them than they are legally required to pay with the old technology.

I fear that we academic librarians are so concerned not to seem to be in the LEGAL wrong tjhat we become afraid to assert our LOGICAL rights on behalf of our clientele.

Ron Naylor
Un of Miami Received on Fri Sep 24 1993 - 19:11:44 GMT