Well, here comes another can of worms involving copyright and technology. Add to the mix a little cost-effectiveness and library policy and I come up with a quandary.
We have had a policy of making photocopies of reference books, including mishnah and gemara, for students at no cost to them. Our photocopy bills have been outrageous this last year. I am thinking of using a high-quality scanner to cut costs and to make the work (in titles not bound by copyright) accessible to students who would then borrow the disk (either CD or floppy) and return it. It would also save wear and tear on the volumes to scan them rather than photocopy. I have floated this idea to one of our rebbeim who is very technology savvy. He questions whether or not it is legal under both Jewish law and secular law to use the technology to do essentially the same thing we did with photocopying. For some reason, the prevailing thought here is that using the technology makes it less acceptable to copy for what I would consider fair use. Is there any legal basis to the belief that scanning to disk for loan is less legal than photocopying for fair use? Is there any basis in Jewish law for not scanning pages of gemara and mishnah to disk? We are not thinking of reproducing the material for profit but rather for research purposes in the writing of student papers. Any approaches to any of these issues will be greatly appreciated. Anne Jaron Library Director Hebrew Academy of Nassau County 215 Oak Street Uniondale, NY 11553 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ========================================================================== HaSafran - The Electronic Forum of the Association of Jewish Libraries Submissions for HaSafran, send to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] SUBscribing, SIGNOFF commands send to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Questions, problems, complaints, compliments;-) send to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org/
