new Code of Best Practices in Fair Use

Assocation of Research Libraries logo

Today, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) announced the release of the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries, a clear and easy-to-use statement of fair and reasonable approaches to fair use developed by and for librarians who support academic inquiry and higher education. The Code was developed in partnership with the Center for Social Media and the Washington College of Law at American University. Winston Tabb, Johns Hopkins University Dean of University Libraries and Museums and President of ARL, said, “This document is a testament to the collective wisdom of academic and research librarians, who have asserted careful and considered approaches to some very difficult situations that we all face every day.”

For more information about the new code and how it might apply to your current research, teaching, and publishing projects, please see: http://centerforsocialmedia.org/libraries or http://www.arl.org/pp/ppcopyright/codefairuse/code/index.shtml

In addition, the UC Berkeley Library and the Law Library are co-sponsoring a special event on February 6, 2012 that will feature some of the facilitators of the new code:

New ARL Best Practices in Fair Use

Event Type: (none)
Location: The Warren Room (295 Simon)
  Monday, February 06, 2012 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Calendar: Berkeley Law Events
Contact: autstein@law.berkeley.edu

What is fair use, and how can libraries use their fair use rights to better accomplish their missions, from preservation to support for scholarship and teaching to digitizing collections for public access? A ground-breaking new document, the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries, provides powerful new insights into the ways librarians can apply fair use principles to resolve central and recurring copyright challenges.

Brandon Butler of the Association of Research Libraries, and Peter Jaszi of American University Law School, co-facilitators of the code, will introduce this new document at this event.  They will provide an overview of its contents and discuss policies and scenarios to help librarians and library staff determine how its principles can help them solve local challenges and improve local policies dealing with copyright and fair use.

Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and based on two years of research into the core challenges that libraries face and the considered opinions of librarians from across the country on how best to solve them using fair use, this new code gives librarians tools to help reason through challenging copyright issues. The code, along with supporting materials, can be downloaded free of charge at http://www.arl.org/fairuse beginning January 26th, and hard copies will be available for free at the event as well.

The session is open to all librarians, library staff, and champions of fair use. Admission is free; registration is not required.