Copyright and Course Reserves: Legal Issues and Best Practices for Academic Libraries. By Carla S. Myers. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited. 2022. 294 p. $80 softcover (ISBN 978-1-4408-6203-8).

From the creation of the first US federal copyright law in 1790 to the present, those charged with interpreting its meaning have faced a daunting task. Mark Twain joked near the turn of the twentieth century, “Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.” Anticipating the passage of the 1976 Copyright Act, The New York Times predicted, “no bells are likely to ring [in celebration].” Why? “The matter is simply too technical, complicated and cumbersome for anyone but specialists to get very excited.”1

I wasn’t surprised to see Twain’s quote in the epigraph of Carla S. Myers’s new book, Copyright and Course Reserves: Legal Issues and Best Practices for Academic Libraries, the first book, to my knowledge, that focuses on these two subjects in tandem. Myers, an Associate Professor and Coordinator of Scholarly Communication at Miami University Libraries, is an expert on the topic, having spent well over a decade of her career navigating copyright in higher education. The goal of the book, as the author states in the “Introduction,” is to highlight the “myths and misconceptions about the law” that hinder reserve services in academic libraries, and in so doing, “help colleagues avoid some of the frustrations . . . [that arise when trying] to sort copyright facts from fiction” (xv). The author successfully does both.

Myers’s book is divided into three parts: part 1, “Reserve Administrative Considerations,” part 2, “Copyright and Course Reserves,” and part 3, “Additional Legal Considerations for Reserve Services.” You don’t need to read them in order, or even completely, to learn a good deal about copyright and course reserves. In fact, for those interested in the book’s title but who don’t need to know about the day-to-day functioning of course reserves in a library, part 1 could be skipped. Indeed, the three chapters that comprise the first section only briefly touch on copyright and include such detailed information about establishing and running reserve services in an academic library that it wouldn’t be a stretch to call it a “how-to” manual. The author discusses print, electronic, and media resources and covers everything from what to do if your library doesn’t own a copy of a requested work, to marketing reserve services to instructors and students (hint: marketing should happen well before and after an instructor initiates a reserve request).

Myers is particularly attentive to student needs in part 1 and highlights several important issues for libraries that are considering or currently offering reserve services, including affordability, the digital divide, time, and accessibility. However, while Myers emphasizes that reserve services can be critical to students’ success in the classroom, the author in no way suggests that reserve services are mandatory. In fact, Myers argues that “Libraries should not implement reserve services that are being offered by peer institutions because it seems like the right or trendy thing to do, nor should they offer them because a few instructors and students have requested that they do so” (10). Rather, each library should conduct an institutional scan with the following questions in mind: “Is there truly a need for these services?” (10) and “To what extent can the library support reserve services?” (11).

Part 2, “Copyright and Course Reserves,” forms the core of the book and consists of eight chapters (chs. 4–11) that are primarily concerned with the sections of US Copyright Law related to user rights. Sections 107, 108, 109, 110, and 1201 are all covered in depth in separate chapters. Material from previous chapters occasionally reappears in other chapters verbatim, which the author did intentionally so the work could be read in piecemeal. Each chapter of the book also ends with a section titled “Putting It All Together,” which I found particularly useful after wading through some of the heavier chapters. The numerous chapter headings/subheadings are sometimes difficult to follow. As such, I found it easier to read each section as though it were a separate topic or idea rather than a continuing flow of thought.

One of the most useful chapters in part II discusses Section 107 of the US Copyright Law (Fair Use), in which the author emphasizes the doctrine’s flexible nature and advises librarians to take full advantage of this important user right. This requires making fair use determinations on a “case-by-case basis” (130), Myers argues, rather than letting arbitrary guidelines, such as the 10% rule, do the hard work for you. When it comes to fair use, nothing supplants a thinking human being.

Case studies appear throughout the book, and the two included in chapter 6 will likely be of interest to any librarian managing reserve services. The first, “Transformative Uses and Course Reserves,” considers the copying of material for uses other than the original purpose of the work, which applies to the first factor of fair use. Since transformative uses occur regularly in educational settings (i.e., using archival materials for teaching), this might be a helpful thing for librarians to keep in mind when considering reserve requests and fair use guidelines. The second case study, “The Georgia State E-Reserves Lawsuit,” provides an overview of the case and urges libraries to “not let fear of claims of infringement prevent them from exercising their fair use rights when providing these services” (135). For situations where user rights don’t apply, Myers concludes part 2 with a helpful chapter on permissions and licensing, equipped with a template for writing a permissions request.

Part 3, “Additional Legal Considerations for Reserve Services,” is made up of three chapters that in some ways seem like a grouping of random but important topics that simply didn’t fit neatly anywhere else: “A Copyright Workflow for Reserve Services,” “Accessibility Considerations Related to Reserve Services,” and “Mitigating Legal Risk.” Nonetheless, readers will almost certainly find something useful for their work within the pages.

To be sure, Copyright and Course Reserves is a timely book. As I’m writing this review, the ink is not yet dry on the ruling against the Internet Archive for violating copyright and fair use guidelines by circulating digital copies of books online (Hachette Book Group Inc v. Internet Archive). While I know that I will be perplexed by a fair use application in the library in the future, I also know where I’ll turn for clarity.—Anna Simonson (anna.simonson@usd.edu), University of South Dakota

Reference

1. David E. Rosenbaum, “Ford Due to Approve New Copyrights Law,” New York Times, October 11, 1976., p. 11.