A Student Assembly effort to make course reserve readings available over the College's computer network is running into legal barriers that are inhibiting the process.
Four months after the Assembly's Project Committee began the task, three documents are available through the Online Library program that enables students to tap into a vast array of other database information from their computers.
This term the Reserve Room has 2,600 photocopied documents -- and that does not include books, according to Ploeger.
Most of the reserve readings are protected by copyright laws that prohibit the reproduction or electronic transmission of the document.
Currently, only non-copyrighted materials can be put on-line, Circulation Services Librarian Pamela Ploeger said.
Jeff Bell '96, the committee's liaison with Baker Library, said 20 non-copyrighted readings will be put on-line for the Fall term.
Bell said laws restricting use of copyrighted materials on computer networks are untested and the legal implications are unclear.
"In effect, we're waiting for someone to get sued," Bell said. "We don't know how to proceed until that time."
But the Assembly's committee, along with Ploeger and Director of Library Automation Kathy Klemperer, are trying to maneuver around the current copyright laws.
Currently, Ploeger said Baker's Reserve Desk pays the publisher $2 to $3 in royalties for each photocopied document placed on reserve.
"It's a profit motive at the bottom of the royalties," she said.
Ploeger said the library is trying to create a similar system of royalty payments for putting a document on-line. But such a system of royalties is complicated, because the College could pay publishers for each time a document is accessed on-line or for the number of copies printed.
Klemperer said the other option is to allow students to access the documents but not allow copies to be printed or saved to computer hard drives.
And copyright laws aren't the only problem difficulty in putting Reserve readings on the Kiewit network.
Ploeger said pictures and foreign characters cannot be used with the program that displays reserve readings.
"When we went down to the Reserve Room," Klemperer said, "there was virtually nothing we could input."
Librarians discussed different possibilities, such as taking computerized pictures of each Reserve reading page instead of displaying the text as if it were typed in by hand. Klemperer said this would allow illustrations such as diagrams and charts to be included with each reading.
The College is currently creating a program that will allow students to pull images up on their computers like weather maps. Klemperer said reserve reading documents could be incorporated into the project.
