Faculty members are responsible for complying with copyright laws. The library cannott give legal advice, but can offer some general guidelines.

Three Methods of Making Copyrighted Materials Available

1. Place the item on E-Res, the library's electronic reserves service. This will ensure that the University has permission in our license agreement with the database provider to make the article available to students via electronic reserves or for distance education and that the article meets the guidelines of Fair Use.

2. Provide a link to the library website via WebCT so students can search library databases for articles. If you want them to find a specific article, you can provide an example of the search which will retrieve this article.

3. Provide links in your WebCT course page directly to full text articles from a list of databases in which we have license agreements that allow us to place the electronic articles on reserve or be used by distance learners. Faculty are then responsible for determining if the article meets the guidelines of Fair Use and that copyright permission is obtained for subsequent use. If you would like help determining the exact URL you should use for a direct link to an article, please contact Deborah Thompson at 974-2880 or email dthompson@uco.edu

Regardless of the method you use to make copyrighted materials available for your students, they are responsible for knowing the Fair Use provisions of copyright law. In general, if they make their own copies for their own use in the course of their studies, they will not be violating copyright law.

Further reading:
UT-Austin: crash course on copyright
Copyright issues from the American Library Association
How to determine if material is public domain

Copyright Act of 1976  (17 USC 107: Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use. )

Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.  In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include- 

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; 

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work; 

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted word as a whole; and 

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.