Hampshire College

Course Website Help (PDF file)

Datatel Uploads For Course Websites

June 15, 2009 for Fall 2009 Semester

November 15, 2009 for January Term 2010

December 15, 2009 for Spring 2010 Semester

Course Web Sites and Copyrighted Material

Hampshire has attempted to make the creation and use of course websites as easy as possible for faculty and students. But we do have to heed copyright and intellectual property laws.

When you enter materials on your course website, you are asked to check off a box to indicate that the material is copyrighted. At a decent interval after the end of each semester, the copyrighted material will be deleted from the site. The scheduled deletion dates are April 1 for fall semester courses, May 1 for January Term, and August 1 for spring semester. 

Your old courses remain available to copy and update, but you will have to recreate any articles or book chapters that you wish to use for the next iteration of the course.

Please remember that personal fair use guidelines, which entitle you as a scholar to make a single copy of an article, book chapter, musical selection, etc. for scholarly purposes are not the same as the guidelines for classroom use. You are responsible for the use of materials for instruction, and there are some helpful guidelines on the website of the Copyright Clearance Center. In 2006, the Association of American Publishers sued Cornell University for misuse of copyrighted material; the Cornell guidelines developed as a result of that suit are also helpful.

If you have not flagged copyrighted material on your fall, January Term, or spring sites this year, we strongly encourage you to do so. We would also be happy to help you locate licensed electronic copies of articles that you use in your classes; if the college has a license for a database, the issue of copyright is moot.

If you have any questions, please contact your librarian, or Susan Dayall, Director of Library and Information Services.

Hampshire College Library Reserve Guidelines

What to place on Reserve:
Required reading should be placed on Reserve. Hampshire library material as well as personal copies of books, videos, DVDs, CDs, cassettes, etc. may be placed on reserve. Books from the other Five Colleges may be placed on reserve, but require us to ask permission from the owning library first.

How to place material on Reserve:
Blank reserve lists are available at the circulation desk, in the circulation office, and in the School offices. The list forms are on cardstock (heavy paper) because they go into notebooks at the circulation desk for students to consult, and receive a great deal of handling through the semester. Please do not hand in lists on computer or other paper. Also, please do not email or fax lists: all these will need to be re-written, causing further delays. Additions to existing reserve lists may be made using a blue paper form available at the circulation desk.

Library Books: Hampshire library books should be listed with the call number in the first column. When at all possible, please pull books from the stacks and bring them to the circulation office. You or your TA can ask at the circulation desk to use a cart for this purpose. Personal copies should be listed with "PERS" in the first column.

Ordering books for Reserve: You are responsible for asking the library to order books for use on reserve. Book orders may require up to six weeks for receipt and processing, so please plan ahead.

Videos and DVDs: Hampshire College and Five College videos can be placed on reserve for two week time periods. Please go to Media Services with your completed reserve list addition form (blue, and available at the circulation desk) to begin this process. Do not request videos from the other schools on your own; Media Services must do this for you. Rented videos from area distributors like Blockbuster may not be placed on reserve.

Journal articles: Only one copy of any copyrighted material (journal articles or chapters of books), may be placed on reserve.

Instant Reserve: If requested, one "Instant Reserve" folder can be processed for articles only, and you may add or remove material at will, without waiting for additional processing. Materials should be given to a circulation worker to be placed in your folder.

Very Important:
Please do not hand out your syllabus before submitting your reserve list for processing, or there may be a further delay while we recall books your students have checked out.

Hampshire College Electronic Reserve Policy

Hampshire provides electronic reserves only as a component of the course website system.

Copyright Law
The policy governing electronic as well as paper reserves is based on the provisions of fair use of the United States Copyright Act of 1976. Section 107 of the Copyright Act expressly states that "such use by reproduction in copies...for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include--
    (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
    (2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
    (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
    (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work."

Purpose and Access
The readings component of course websites provides access to supplementary course materials. Access to the material is limited by password to students and faculty of each course. The database is not browseable outside the course, nor is it available to web search engines.

A copyright warning will be posted on each course website. The text is consistent with the notice described in section 108 of the Copyright Act: "NOTICE: The copyright law of the United States (Title 17 U.S. Code) governs the making of photocopies of copyrighted materials. The person using this system is liable for any infringement."

Authorized users may view, download, or print copies from the system using Adobe Acrobat Reader. Users may make one copy for private study, personal reading, research, scholarship or education. No copyrighted material from a college course website may be re-posted on any Internet site.

Obtaining electronic copies of scholarly material
If material is available in electronic form already, either from a contractual service such as JSTOR that permits such use or elsewhere, a link should be made from the course website to the electronic copy. If no persistent URL is available, a copy may be downloaded for the course website.

If the material is not available in electronic form, copies of articles or chapters of books supplied by the faculty member can be scanned by Duplications and added to the course readings.

Complete or longer works, such as books, will not be scanned if an existing printed copy can be purchased for regular reserve. If no copy is available for purchase at a reasonable cost, a scanned copy may be made.

Copyrighted materials are removed from the course website approximately three months after the conclusion of the course.

Monitoring Future Developments
Electronic copying and scanning of copyright-protected works for library reserve systems and distance learning are uninterpreted areas of the law which may be addressed by the Supreme Court or by Congress in future revisions of the copyright law. We will monitor developments concerning fair use to ensure that library services remain in compliance with U.S. copyright law.