Bridging the Gap: Building Relationships and Overcoming Copyright Anxieties

Abstract

Nine years ago the Course Reserve Library at Brigham Young University (BYU) partnered with the newly developed Copyright Licensing Office (CLO) on campus to continue the arduous task of copyright compliance for materials placed on reserve. The labor intensive process was tedious and often frustrating, especially as faculty struggled to understand what copyright, fair use, and electronic course reserves were or even meant.

Having spent seven years as the Assistant Department Chair in Access Services before joining the Copyright Licensing Office eight years ago, I was well aware of the challenges that lay ahead in trying to build a cohesive bridge between these two departments that would also function as an efficient service to the faculty, staff, and students at BYU.

Through the dedicated efforts of employees in both departments, a system was developed and enhanced that allows professors to electronically submit their electronic reserve request online from the ease of their desktop. An average new request used to take over an hour to process. This can now be done in approximately twenty minutes (seven minutes in the Reserve Library and ten minutes in the CLO). As a result, each department has reduced the number of students it employees to process requests.

Affectionately known as RMEO (Romeo), the system works with Doctuek, the CCC, and Workflows, yet also operates independently. Additional benefits to the system include:

* An index of a publishers and copyright owners. * The ability for faculty to submit, renew or withdraw existing requests. * The ability for staff to request and track permissions via fax, email, or mail and retain statistics. A tutorial of the RMEO system is available at http://reserverequest.byu.edu. The efficiency and features of the system have significantly improved the relationship between staff in the Library, the CLO and with faculty, staff, and students.