Tri-C Library Services: Faculty Services

Faculty Librarians at Eastern, Metro, Western, and Westshore provide the following services to College faculty: 

• Customized research instruction sessions for general topic or assignment-specific research needs

• Collection management (book, resource, journal, AV, or serial acquisition)

• Research support and assistance

• Topic / Classroom / Assignment-specific information literacy assessment and assignments

• Question: “Is (fill in the blank work) still under copyright?”

Answer: Find out when the work was published. If it was published after 1922, it may still be under copyright. If it was published after 1922, investigate what rules apply to works copyrighted in that specific date of publication. You can also consult a librarian if you are still unsure.

• Question: “When using copyrighted material, how to do I know what and how much of it I can use?”

Answer: See if Fair Use applies. Fair use is the legal doctrine that limits a copyright holder’s exclusive rights on their materials.

There are 4 factors that determine if fair use applies. They are purposely vague, open to interpretation, and they need to be considered holistically

1. How is the work being used and by whom? (commercial or non-commercial use)
2. The nature of the work (fiction or nonfiction, published or unpublished)
3. The quality and quantity of the parts being borrowed
4. How does borrowing the material affect the market?

Here is a Fair Use Checklist from Columbia University Libraries that you can use to help you determine if Fair Use applies to your particular situation.

• Question: “As an educator, I can borrow a certain percentage or amount of a work and be covered.”

Answer: Not, necessarily:

• • Are you borrowing the “heart” of the work? If so, quality may trump quantity.
  • Are you supplanting the purchase of a work? If so, you are affecting the market.
  • “I am only using 10% of the work.” Fair use does not give us any hard numbers. The “10% rule” is a non-binding guideline. Most copyright legal experts do not recommend using this guideline. Instead, determine if fair use can apply.

If you determine that you can use a copyrighted work in your online class, be sure to place the materials in a secure environment that only your students can access, like Blackboard.

“I have a DVD that I want to upload to Blackboard so my students can watch it.” If you have a VHS or DVD and would like to make a copy of it onto a more up to date medium (like one you could upload to Blackboard), you are most likely out of luck. In many instances, only the copyright holder can legally change the medium of a work. You may want to see if it is available for purchase in this new medium or find a replacement.

• Question: “Can I use Netflix or Hulu in the classroom?”

Answer: Often, this is not a copyright issue, but rather a violation of your agreement with the provider. Look at your user agreement for the answer.

• Question: “How can I show a movie to my students in an online environment?”

Answer: The laws regarding movies in the classroom were written at the infancy of online teaching, and therefore are most applicable in a face to face environment. If you can provide a link to a movie via YouTube or an online library database, that may be your best bet. If you cannot, you can have your students try to procure a legal copy of the work on their own. If none of these options work, you may need to forgo the use of that particular movie.