Copyright and Fair Use: Course Reserves

Print materials placed on reserve at Dacus Library must comply with federal copyright law and university copyright policy. Any items not clearly within the scope of the Fair Use provisions of 17 U.S.C., Section 107 will not be added to the reserve system without permission of the copyright holder. 

Clear-cut examples of "fair use" include:

• No more than 3 copies of any article or book chapter, used for a single semester
• 1 article from a journal or 1 chapter from a book, used for a single semester
• Course notes
• Course syllabi  

Examples of material requiring permission of copyright holder:

• Any copyrighted material used for more than one semester
• "Consumable" materials: copyrighted tests, solutions, worksheets
• More than one chapter from one book, or more than one article from a single journal issue
• Articles from multiple sources, collected into an anthology to be used as a text for the course
• Student papers, which do enjoy copyright protection, may constitute academic records, and are covered by Winthrop’s Intellectual Property policy.

Materials may also be placed on e-reserve; faculty may immediately point students to links within the many full-text databases to which the library now subscribes.  Dacus' electronic reserves are structured to limit access to students registered in the course for which the items have been placed on reserve and to instructors and staff responsible for the course or the electronic system. 

 Dacus may digitize excerpts from physical items owned by the library, provided that library staff follows the same rules that apply to print reserves. This also means Dacus has to remove the item following the end of that class and requests must be re-submitted for each subsequent term. Detailed instructions for submitting both print and electronic course reserve requests are available on the library's Course and Textbook Reserves Information for Instructors guide.