How does Copyright Law affect ILL?
Copyright law does place limits on how much the University of St. Thomas Libraries (or any library) can request for its users. According to the guidelines, we can request only five articles from any one journal title published in the last five years. So, for instance, if in 2006, you request five articles from one journal title published in the years 2001 through the present date, you will have used up St. Thomas’s 2006 allotment. Fortunately, we can exceed this limit by paying copyright royalties to the publisher (which we do through the Copyright Clearance Center.) The payment of copyright royalty does not allow us to copy every article in one issue of a journal. There are a number of websites where you can learn more about copyright, including Copyright at UST.
• Copyright law does place limits on how much the University of St. Thomas Libraries (or any library) can request for its users. According to the CONTU guidelines, we can request only five articles from any one journal title published in the last five years. So, for instance, if in 2010, you request five articles from one journal title published in the years 2005 through the present date, you will have used up St. Thomas’s entire 2010 allotment for that journal. Fortunately, we can exceed this limit by paying copyright royalties to the publisher, which we do through the Copyright Clearance Center. (In 2008, on articles with copyright royalities, we paid copyright fees ranging from $6 to $46, but averaging about $21/article, on behalf of our patrons.) • Requesting multiple articles from one issue of a journal is especially problematic, because we pay royalties on all articles except the first (considered “fair use.”) This can add up to over $100 very quickly. If you are ordering mutiple
