copyrighted material. The rights of copyright holders create incentives for the publication of important work that forms the core of library collections, while at the same time constraining academic and research librarians in the exercise of their mission. Similarly, limitations on and exceptions to copyright rights enable academic and research librarians to use copyrighted materials in important ways, but impose limits and responsibilities of their own.
In addition to specific exceptions for libraries and educators, academic and research librarians use the important general exemption of fair use to accomplish their mission. Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment under some circumstances, especially when the cultural or social benefits of the use are predominant. It is a general right that applies even—and especially—in situations where the law provides no specific statutory authorization for the use in question. Consequently, the fair use doctrine is described only generally in the law, and it is not tailored to the mission of any particular community. Ultimately, determining whether any use is likely to be considered “fair” requires a thoughtful evaluation of the facts, the law, and the norms of the relevant community.
HOW THIS DOCUMENT WAS CREATED
The first step in creating this code was to conduct an in-depth survey, using long form interviews, with 65 librarians at a diverse array of academic and research institutions in the United States, from Ivy League colleges to rural satellite campuses. The results demonstrated clearly both that fair use is an essential component of copyright exemptions for librarians, and also that they lacked a clear sense of what they and their peers might agree to as appropriate employment of fair use in recurrent situations.[1] As a result, librarians frequently did not use their fair use rights when they could have, and they overestimated the level of conflict between the strictures of copyright law on the one hand and their respective libraries’ missions on the other. The cost of this uncertainty was amplified because many research and academic librarians routinely act as the de facto arbiters of copyright practice for their institutions and the constituencies they serve.
Working librarians with many different institutional roles at a wide range of institutions then gathered together in a series of small group discussions about fair use held in five cities between October 2010 and
- ↑ See Association of Research Libraries et al., Fair Use Challenges in Academic and Research Libraries (2010), http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/arl_csm_fairusereport.pdf.
