TIPsters,
I have been teaching an advanced undergraduate seminar in learning
and conditioning for the last 18 years or so. It is a difficult
"readings based" course in which students read primary-source
articles beginning with Pavlov and Romanes moving right up to very
recent material. The course is modeled after the type of
readings-based seminar that I am sure all of us experienced in
graduate school. In fact, the purpose of the course is to give
students experience in the type of seminar they will likely encounter
in graduate school.
Traditionally I have put these readings on reserve in the library
(formerly physical reserves, more recently electronic
reserves). Note that the library owns copies of all the books and
subscribes to all of the journals, so there should be no copyright
issues. At least so I thought....
Recently our library has instituted what I consider to be a draconian
policy toward reserve materials. Specifically, the policy places
serious limits on how much material I can place on reserve - to the
point that it will be difficult to continue teaching the course. To
summarize, reserve materials cannot form the required reading for the
course (reserves must be supplementary material), and no more than 30
such items can be used for a single course (I have 47 assigned
readings, all required). In addition, no more than 20 percent of the
pages of a book may be photocopied (although the entire book may be
placed in reserve).
The library claims that these changes are being made because
publishers are getting nasty in enforcing copyrights - and the old
principle of "fair use" is being severely curtailed.
Is anyone else experiencing these problems? Any suggested solutions?
-- Jim Dougan
P.S. I was originally told the students could purchase an electronic
course-packet - but have recently been told that the course packet
itself would be too large and they won't do it...
P.P.S. The other solution is to circumvent the library completely
and make the PDFs available on my own website. The library warns me
that I am putting myself at grave risk - implying that they might
even file a complaint with the university administration. Despite
the luxury of full professorship I would rather avoid that....
---
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