Announcing the Release of the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries

Fair use gets even more useable, with the release of the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries.

This new code, which joins the suite of other fair use codes, was developed by librarians and facilitated by the Center for Social Media, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and The Washington College of Law. It was supported by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The code is a clear and easy-to-use statement of fair and reasonable approaches to fair use developed by and for librarians who support academic inquiry and higher education.

The Code  deals with such common questions in higher education as:

• When and how much copyrighted material can be digitized for student use? And should video be treated the same way as print?
• How can libraries’ special collections be made available online?
• Can libraries archive websites for the use of future students and scholars?

It identifies the relevance of fair use in eight recurrent situations for librarians:

• Supporting teaching and learning with access to library materials via digital technologies
• Using selections from collection materials to publicize a library’s activities, or to create physical and virtual exhibitions
• Digitizing to preserve at-risk items
• Creating digital collections of archival and special collections materials
• Reproducing material for use by disabled students, faculty, staff, and other appropriate users
• Maintaining the integrity of works deposited in institutional repositories
• Creating databases to facilitate non-consumptive research uses (including search)
• Collecting material posted on the web and making it available

Along with the Code, the team developed educational materials, including a video, powerpoints for briefing librarians, faculty and students on academic fair use rights, briefing papers, and academic studies--all available at this site.