Effectively Managing Copyright Clearance: Electronic Reserves in a Large Distance Education University

Abstract

This paper describes the automated copyright clearance process for electronic reserves materials by the electronic reserves staff at the Information and Library Services (ILS), at the University of Maryland University College (UMUC). Besides the standard practice to handle and post required course readings in digital format for UMUC's distance education online classes, a large portion of the electronic reserves process is devoted to obtaining copyright permissions. This is to ensure that UMUC is in compliance with all laws that control the use of copyrighted materials. The ILS's small team of electronic reserves staff takes the lead in managing a high volume of copyright requests each semester for the three UMUC geographic divisions: United States, Europe and Asia. The experiences and practices of the in-house copyright request management system for the electronic reserves services will be featured, including related data and statistics.