Sources: Managing Copyright in Higher Education: A Guidebook

Managing Copyright in Higher Education: A Guidebook. by Donna L. Ferullo. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 206 p. Paper $45 (ISBN: 0810891484).

Need to know how to manage copyright at your academic library, or, scarier yet, your university? Yes? Then read this now. Unlike Kevin L. Smith’s more abstract (but also excellent) monograph, Owning and Using Scholarship: an IP Handbook for Teachers and Researchers, Donna Ferullo’s text focuses on the practical. She earns the book’s subtitle, striking a balance between explanations of the law and practical workaday advice, and for that, librarians throughout the land will rejoice.

Ferullo’s and Smith’s texts would complement one another nicely in a master’s level library science course on copyright, or reside comfortably on any veteran librarian’s shelf. Smith provides examples of intellectual property disputes, digs into the history of intellectual property law, and speaks more thoroughly to its dynamic nature, while Ferullo’s call-and-response sections are utilitarian, posing the kinds of questions that librarians with copyright expertise are surely already tackling for students, faculty, and administrators at their institutions.

Has an administrator tasked you with starting a copyright office? Never fear. Ferullo devotes a chapter to this endeavor, laying out the questions to ask, a sound approach given the variety of ways institutions create such offices. Need to develop a policy on copyright? Build a website? Ferullo has advice on those projects too.

She devotes ample attention to fair use, of course, and this is where she excels, explaining in clear language how the courts apply it—and continue to apply it—in key cases such as the Georgia State University e-reserves case, the Authors Guild’s infringement lawsuit against Google, and many more. These marvelous examples elucidate the four-factor test for determining fair use and show the state of flux intellectual property law is in today. All of Chapter 6, Copyright Services for Librarians, is an essential reference for day-to-day copyright issues at an academic library, whether related to interlibrary loan, e-reserves, archives and special collections, digitization projects, institutional repositories, conversion of VHS tapes to DVD format, or e-resource licensing.

Ferullo is just as effective and thorough at addressing copyright services for faculty, administrators, staff, and students, leading the way through scenarios (in print and online) that copyright librarians will encounter with increasing regularity.—Paul Stenis, Librarian for Instructional Design, Outreach, and Training, Pepperdine University, Malibu, California