Re: Costs and funding for electronic reserve materials

[Aline Soules <aline.soules@csueastbay.edu>]

I am very glad that someone is following up on this and I'd be 
interested in a summary of the responses, if they don't come 
directly to this list.

I think this is more complex than the list of possibilities that 
you provide because there are so many avenues.

First, we try to weed out anything from a faculty member's 
reserve list that we have in our e-databases and provide the 
faculty member with instructions about how to direct students to 
their articles (copying and pasting URLs doesn't really work for 
us due to various proxy and other reasons).

In those cases, we've already paid for the copyright permissions 
as part of our subscription.  In those cases, the university, 
often through the library budget, is paying copyright.  In cases 
of consortial arrangements, that copyright is paid by the 
consortium.  As you can see, payment is already shared or 
differently assigned, depending on the individual institution's 
situation.

With what is left, if the faculty member puts it in an e-reader, 
then the student pays.  If the faculty member asks the library to 
deal with it, then the student doesn't pay.  Faculty in our 
institution are keenly aware of our students' financial 
challenges, so often want to "save" the student from payment; 
however, ultimately, that's what's going to happen - whether 
through fees or whatever.

In some institutions, the library picks up the tab or part of the 
tab for these permissions; however, there has to be a cap unless 
the library is rich (is any library rich?  I doubt it.)  In some 
institutions, the library doesn't take the item for e-reserves 
until the faculty member can prove that permissions have been 
acquired.  The faculty member may do this from a departmental 
budget (i.e., university, ultimately), a grant budget (in cases 
of seminar courses that are part of a grant study of some sort), 
or his/her own pocket.

What's right?  Not the "pocket" scenario, certainly, but the 
others are viable options for now.  My own belief is that 
eventually, e-reserves will disappear.  The public domain items 
(yes, we do have some) will either be online anyway (government 
materials on the web, for example) or be digitized by someone 
(Google, for example).  The items that need permission will be 
part of the e-course reader/pack, just as print course packs were 
part of students' lives for so many years.  It will be the 
textbook or one of the textbooks for their classes.

It's clear that the publishing industry is not going to tolerate 
the "hole" in the process forever.  Most universities in Canada 
and the UK, for example, don't bother trying to do e-reserves 
because of their copyright laws.  I think that will follow here. 
Further, the expense of copyright permissions and labor are a 
serious challenge for many libraries and draining their time and 
budget from other key initiatives that they could pursue.

I know that "everyone's doing it" these days, but I continue to 
question the wisdom of this.

Thanks for listening to/reading my rant on this subject!

Aline

Aline Soules, Librarian & Full Professor
Cal State East Bay
510-885-4596
aline.soules@csueastbay.edu

----- Original Message -----
From: Carl Johnson <carl_johnson@BYU.EDU>
Date: Wednesday, September 27, 2006 8:25 pm
Subject: Costs and funding for electronic reserve materials

> I have been assigned the responsibility of providing some 
> answers to the following questions and to recommend the "best" 
> funding/budgeting/payment approach for library reserve 
> licensing costs.
>
> Fundamentally, what type of expense is this?
>
> 1.  University?
>
> 2.  Library?
>
> 3.  Bookstore?
>
> 4.  Student?
>
> 5.  Other?
>
> What is the most efficient way to pay for this expense?
>
> 1.  Centrally---single entity?
>
> 2.  Shared with many entities?
>
> What entities should be responsible for budgeting and paying for
> this expense?
>
> 1.  Library?
>
> 2.  Copyright Licensing Office?
>
> 3.  Colleges/Departments?
>
> 4.  Students?
>
> What are the related issues/questions that need to be addressed?
>
> 1.  Implications for and effect on other similar costs?
>
> 2.  Is this issue interrelated to other issues/questions that
> need to be resolved?
>
> 3.  Will the present rate of growth for this activity continue or
> decline?
>
> If anyone is willing to share your information or respond to these and
> any related thoughts/questions, please contact me on or off this list.
>
> Carl Johnson
> Director, Copyright Licensing Office
> Brigham Young University
> 801 422-3821 (O)
> carl_johnson@byu.edu