Bibliocycle

Tomorrow,  Amazon will begin selling the second-generation of its popular Kindle electronic book device.  The OWHL library wan an early adopter when Kindle 1 was introduced in 2007.  I bought the device for the library on the first day that it was available,  believing that it was a technology to watch. 

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I know I have mentioned in previous posts the fact that working at a boarding school is not a one-hat job.  Yesterday, I took 18 members of the Andover debate team, the Philomathean Society, to Loomis Chafee for a multi-school tournament sponsored by the Debate Association of New England Independent Schools (DANEIS.)  The students in [...]

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Because I am studying copyright issues on my sabbatical this year, I have been curious as to how the many complications of this topic might be resolved under a new administration. I was therefore delighted to discover, on the new “whitehouse.gov” site, the following notice of copyright. Copyright Notice Pursuant to federal law, government-produced materials [...]

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Recently, I wrote about the historic settlement reached last week in the class-action suit against Google brought by the Author’s Guild and the Association of American Publishers.  On balance, I have reservations about the terms of the settlement.  However, I have decided to adopt a “wait and see” attitude, since it is clear that the [...]

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It is a safe assumption that not under the copyright law we will sometimes have to request (and pay for) permission to use materials in support of teaching.  (Even though, interestingly, Georgia State University seems to be arguing that ALL educational use inside a CMS is fair use in defense of the copyright infringement lawsuit [...]

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Last week Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers announced a proposed settlement to the 2005 lawsuit over Google’s claim that its plan to scan all of the world’s books was covered under the fair use provisions of the copyright act.  Google agreed to pay $125 million dollars (peanuts, for them) to [...]

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One of the strengths of our Blackboard CMS is that it makes it easy for faculty to deliver digital copies of readings and supplementary course materials to their students.  If we start with the premise that the Academy is committed to full compliance with copyright law, it is useful to consider the ways in which [...]

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The implementation of the Blackboard CMS as part of PANet three years ago made it possible for individual faculty members to deliver digital content to students quickly and easily.  This electronic content is chosen to reflect the educational objectives of the particular course and comes from many sources.  Many documents are available over the free [...]

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A “coursepack” is a collection of readings from books, periodicals, and other sources, chosen by an instructor in support of a particular course.  Coursepacks may be physical or virtual.  In the case of physical coursepacks,  the selected materials are copied, collated, bound, and sold to students for a price that allows costs to be recovered.  [...]

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Not everything about copyright is unclear.  There is some solid guidance for libraries on the handling of inter-library loan requests.  The “first sale” exemption allows libraries to lend materials from their collections to other libraries or users.  Section 108(d) of the legislation allows libraries to copy an article from a journal and send it to [...]

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