Looks like we're a chatty bunch today.  Let me add, if I might, a hypothetical 
for the collective wisdom that is videolib.

Let's say a campus's multicultural concerns committee (or some such entity) 
wishes to hold a faculty development session.  Said session will be closed, 
attended by 20 or so faculty members, with an outside guest speaker who likes 
to utilize a short film in his sessions.  Let's say this 
somewhat-more-than-just-a-clip short isn't commercially available.  In fact, 
it's been produced by a news agency... say, someplace like CNN.  You, as the 
media person, get tasked with determining whether this item can be purchased, 
whether rights are needed for it to be used in the session and, if so, whether 
rights can be arranged for an off-air recording if the item cannot be purchased.

You with me so far?

Now let's say you attempt, via email and phone, to contact the licensing folks 
at said news agency, you receive an absolutely worthless email in response 
which totally misses your point, and that in response to your phone inquiry, 
you are instructed to fax a request form.  You do fax this form... and you 
wait... for a month.  You fax it again and still receive no response.

So, anyone want to take on any part of this:
The need for rights in a case like this?
The appropriateness of using of an off-air if no copy is commercially available?
How the hell you get rights people to respond to requests?
What a reasonable timeframe ought to be or, correspondingly, what constitutes a 
good faith effort?
How one encourages faculty to continue to try to do things the 
right/proper/legal way when doing so leads nowhere?

All hypothetically, of course.

Susan at Wabash


Susan Albrecht
Library Acquisitions Manager
Wabash College Lilly Library
765-361-6216
765-361-6295 fax

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"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." --Neil Peart
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VIDEOLIB is intended to encourage the broad and lively discussion of issues 
relating to the selection, evaluation, acquisition,bibliographic control, 
preservation, and use of current and evolving video formats in libraries and 
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working tool for video librarians, as well as a channel of communication 
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