Copyright laws and the fair use guidelines have a great impact on procedures for interlibrary loans.
In your library work, you may have seen the acronym CONTU. This stands for the National Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works. This commission was established by Congress after the passage of the 1976 Copyright Act when it became apparent that more guidance was needed. This group came up with guidelines for interlibrary loan. These guidelines state, but are not limited to, the following:
In a calendar year, a library may request a maximum of five recent (published in the past five years) articles from a specific journal title.
The requesting library must keep records on these transactions for three years.
These restrictions do not apply to journal articles that were published more than five years ago.
The lending library may comply with the request only if the borrowing library states that the request falls within the guidelines.
You have probably seen "CCG" and "CCL" on interlibrary loan forms. Checking one of these is the standard way the borrowing library informs the lending library that it is complying with the guidelines and the law. "CCG" stands for "Conforms to Copyright Guidelines" and refers to articles less than five years old. "CCL" stands for "Conforms to Copyright Law" and is used for copies that are older than five years.
What should you do if your library receives more than five requests for recent articles from a journal within a calendar year? The library has several options:
Deny the request or suggest the requestor wait until after January 1st.
Order the article from a document delivery service. Be aware that the service will charge you for the royalty fees.
Submit the request and pay the royalty fees either to the Copyright Clearance Center or directly to the publisher.
Subscribe to the journal; placing a subscription to a journal is considered to be complying with copyright guidelines (CCG).
Interlibrary loan is a valuable service that can greatly expand the resources available to your patrons; as library staff, we have both a legal and an ethical responsibility to make sure we use it properly.
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