ACRL College & Research Libraries News

Association of College & Research Libraries

Letters

Copyrighted tables of contents?

To the Editor:

In their article, “Keeping faculty current” (C&RL News, September 1985, pp.392-94), authors Hassig and Lewis tell of their successful use of photocopied tables of contents to create customized current awareness packages. They do not ad dress, however, any possible copyright law implications of this practice. Section 108(g) of the revised Copyright Law states: “The rights of reproduction and distribution under this section.. .do not extend to cases where the library or archives, or its employee… (2) engages in the systematic reproduction or distribution of single or multiple copies…” (emphasis added).

The system described by the authors, whereby faculty members sign up for regular receipt of photocopied contents pages, sight unseen, appears to be systematic reproduction. Did the authors consider this?—Mark E. Funk, Head, Collection Development, University of Nebraska Medical Center Library.

The authors respond:

The copyright law has many ambiguities; establishing precisely what is legitimate is difficult at best. However, we feel that the Lehman Library service should not be a problem in the eyes of journal publishers. While it is true that we provide photocopies of the contents pages to faculty on a regular basis, we have not run across contents pages equipped with the copyright clearance note nor do we believe that distribution of these pages is likely to affect sales of the journals. It is even possible that the distribution of the contents pages to faculty may both promote journal usage, foster sales, and enhance a journal’s prestige.

Also, the differential in pricing between individual subscriptions and institutional subscriptions indicates that publishers expect multiple usage of their publications. Perhaps most importantly, we do not believe that the contents page service may be equated with document delivery where copyright would clearly have to be considered. We are not distributing the actual journal articles; we are simply advertising their existence and availability in the library.

The contents page service has been in operation for many years—at Columbia and at other institutions—and the revised system described in our article has actually decreased the amount of routine photocopying. It is of course possible that we are misinterpreting the law. If we were to receive protests from journal publishers, we would naturally remove their titles from the service.— Debra Hassig & David W. Lewis, Lehman Library, Columbia University.