Re: Electronic Reserves

Glen Gummess <gmckay[_at_]nmjc.cc.nm.us> wrote:
>
> Recently I attended a conference in higher education which focused on
> distance learning. As a distance learner (and educator) I have been
> concerned with "equity" issues between traditional on-campus students
> and their peers at a geographical distance, sometimes a very significant
> distance. I am curious about the two scenarios described below:
>
> SCENARIO ONE:
>
> College level courses occasionally require their students to
> read certain articles placed on reserve at the academic
> library by the course instructor. The students may check the
> article out and take it to the nearest photocopier machine
> where it may be duplicated for scholarly, research purposes.
> The copier bears a standard notice warning the user of
> copyright restrictions. Nevertheless, the student makes his
> copy, turns the article back into the librarian, and is on
> his/her way.
>
> SCENARIO TWO:
>
> Same circumstances, only this time the course is delivered
> over the world wide web. The course instructor requires
> students to read certain articles. The students, though, are
> scattered regionally across the United States. Therefore,
> they don't have the same access to the academic library where
> the student would otherwise check out the article in-person.
> Some of the students live close enough to the campus to visit
> the library but others live more than 300 miles away, making
> such trips punitively impractical. The instructor's
> problem-solving approach is to have the article placed on
> reserve at the library by having it digitized and formatted
> into a "portable document file" or .pdf-- read easily by any
> computer with a freeware called Adobe Acrobat Reader.
>
> The student at the remote location, 300 miles away, telnets
> into the library, enters a password which is available ONLY to
> the students enrolled in the specific course, and gains access
> to the virtual room containing the article. The student
> downloads the article to his home computer, which is analogous
> to the library photocopier for all intents and purposes, and
> prints out a hard copy.
>
> At the end of the semester, the library's automated system
> flags the staff with an advisory which says that it's time to
> remove the article from electronic reserve. The staff, duty
> bound by policy, does so.
>
> Is there a qualitative difference between the two scenarios? I am aware
> of specific colleges and courses that implement the procedure described
> in scenario #2.
>
> Readers, please take note, I will not disclose to anyone who calls me,
> as a result of reading this post, which college or which course is using
> this practice.

Let me add a third article-copying scenario, a real one about an ordinary class. The teacher assigns a copyright article that is hard to find. If he made 20 copies for class distribution, he would have to pay a fee to the CCC. Instead, he leaves the copy beside the copying machine. Each student picks it up and makes one copy. Is this proper or improper?

Harold Orlans
<horlans[_at_]erols.com> Received on Thu Oct 29 1998 - 14:10:28 GMT