DPIP Priorities: Needs, Challenges, Issues

E-Reserves (Course-related Content)

John Gallagher

December 12, 2005

E-Reserves

Note: The term E-Reserves refers to providing digital access to materials used for educational purposes; it does not refer to, or is not meant to imply, any specific system or process designed solely to manage e-reserves. Materials include articles, book chapters, film and audio clips, images, etc.

Statement of Needs

Traditional reserves do not fully meet students’ need to access course readings; a system that allows students to conveniently access course readings 24/7 from within the online course is needed.

Faculty interested in providing robust online courses that include links to readings and course materials, struggle with the various issues related with doing so. Occasionally these faculty members seek assistance from library staff. Some faculty choose not to put up anything other than perhaps a barebones syllabus in their online courses. Other faculty seek no guidance and do whatever they like with little or no consideration for copyright. Faculty need a resource that will help them solve the complications surrounding the use of copyrighted material in course management systems, and they need a service that will make the entire process of getting both copyrighted and other materials into their online courses easier and more manageable.

Pilot projects initiated at the Divinity, Medical and EPH libraries concur that this is a valuable and strategically necessary service for the library to provide. Generally these attempts found library staff overwhelmed and grappling with the many issues involved in the process. Library staff need a central resource to direct specific copyright questions to, and need guidelines and standards specific to Yale, that will make it easier for them to support faculty.

Implementing e-reserve functionality will result in increased faculty, student, and library interaction, and will enhance the use of library collections in teaching at Yale.

Issues/Challenges

Staffing

This is the biggest obstacle.

• Any library department attempting to provide e-reserve/course support is doing so in addition to other responsibilities.
• Reserves are cyclical. This poses staffing problems at specific times of the year.
• July/August and December/January are generally the busiest times for reserves; student help may be limited at these times.

Copyright Support/Expertise

· Determining fair use can be complicated and time consuming; most librarians are not informed enough about fair use to be able to provide faculty with a recommendation.

· While Yale’s Copyright Policy discusses ownership of material in detail, it mentions nothing about the use of copyrighted materials. What is Yale’s official policy about the use of copyrighted materials?

• Some YUL departments offer guidelines about fair use and copyright (e.g. Electronic Library Initiatives, Medical Library, Divinity Library), but there is no central resource for copyright and fair use concerns. Again, what is Yale’s official policy about the use of copyrighted materials?
• Many universities provide guidelines (e.g. UT, IUPUI, Cornell, and Stanford) that we refer our faculty to; some interpretations of fair use are more conservative than others. How does Yale interpret fair use?
• Do our current various copyright statements and guidelines satisfy the requirements of the TEACH Act i.e. that the institution distribute policies about fair use to its faculty, staff, and students?

Permissions/Copyright costs

Where fair use cannot be claimed, permission from the copyright holder must be obtained. This can either involve seeking permission from the copyright holder directly or by submitting a request to the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), or the appropriate agency. Currently, no single Yale resources exists to instruct faculty about how to seek permissions. There is a cost to acquiring permission through the CCC. This cost varies depending on the resource and the number of students in the class. Who pays for permission? (The library, the faculty member, the department?) Copyright holders contacted directly for permissions may choose to waive fees, or not.

Course Packs

Instead of dealing with putting materials on print reserve or in their online courses, some faculty choose to send course readings to a vendor (e.g. RIS, Kinkos, Tyco) to create a course pack. The vendor is obligated to adhere to copyright, and does so by submitting everything to the CCC. This results in students being charged to use material that the library often has purchased or subscribed to.

Access/Security/Storage/File Management

Access may be provided through various systems, but the preferred option for students would be one that provides convenient access to the full text of the readings within courseware i.e. Classes (Sakai) or Blackboard.

· Persistent URLs to e-resources the library subscribes to, or links to materials the library digitizes are inserted into the online course. Such links need to be broken at the end of the semester. Not all courses have the same start/end date.

· Where are digitized files managed and stored?

· Many guidelines interpret the “spontaneous use” clause of copyright act as permitting the first use free. If the library scans and manages digitized materials, we accept a level of responsibility regarding adherence to copyright law since we will know what materials have already been used once in a specific course.

Miscellaneous

· Faculty syllabi are not consistently organized from one course to the next. This makes it difficult for the library to proactively and systematically provide links to faculty for the materials YUL owns or subscribes to.

· Materials we subscribe to electronically do not always contain persistent or permanent URLs. Staff must create these by using the digital object identifier or some other mechanism.

· Do our licenses permit us to insert links into online courses to the electronic resources we subscribe to?

The Role of DPIP

· Be instrumental in establishing an E-Reserve service. This is a service that the library must support as technology makes it increasingly more expected. YUL is already well behind the times; with the implementation of SAKAI and the receipt of the Davis Grant, YUL has an opportunity to catch up quickly.

· Promote establishing a central resource to assist faculty with determining whether the use of particular material is permitted.

· Develop standards for the e-reserve service so that the process of providing course readings electronically will encourage faculty participation.

· Promote the negotiation of licenses for electronic resources to permit e-reserve use. What do our current licenses permit? Is linking to a resource we subscribe to from a secure and authenticated course management system permitted in licenses where it is interpreted that it is not permitted to use the e-resource in an e-reserve system?