Copyright and Fair Use: Best Practices

Investigating the copyright status of a work

There are several ways to investigate whether a work is under copyright protection and, if so, the facts of the copyright. These are the main ones:

• Examine a copy of the work for such elements as a copyright notice, place and date of publication, author and publisher. If the work is a sound recording, examine the disk, tape cartridge, or cassette in which the recorded sound is fixed, or the album cover, sleeve, or container in which the recording is sold.
• Make a search of the Copyright Office catalogs and other records or have the Copyright Office make a search for you
• Meets the cumulative effect test as defined below; and,
• Each copy includes a notice of copyright

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The Educator’s Guide to Copyright, Fair Use, and Creative Commons

You may need to obtain copyright permission to:

• Distribute a coursepack in print or electronic format
• Post content on an e-learning system
• Post content to an institution's intranet
• Photocopy content for classroom use
• Photocopy an article for library reserve
• Borrow or lend material through ILL
• Reproduce an out-of-print book
• Use content in a private consulting engagement
• Republish content in a dissertation
• Use or republish content in university fundraising or recruiting, or in an exhibit
• Conduct research for non-classroom use (e.g., during an instructor's private consulting engagement)

Books, articles, etc. that have been borrowed through interlibrary loan may NOT be placed on reserve

• Personal copies of a book MAY be placed on reserve for your students to use