[LIS-Forum] request for an article

Mailing List Manager mailman at ncsi.iisc.ernet.in
Fri Mar 3 15:25:55 IST 2006


Dear Member:

I would like to thank the members who have expressed their views/comments
on the subject "whether requests for full text articles coming from
members working for commercial organizations should be entertained on this
list or not".

I have consolidated the replies received till 03 Mar, 2.30 pm and have
appended it to this message.

Let's wait for couple of more days before we take a final decision on the
matter. Meanwhile, I would like to stress the point that this forum should
be used only as a last resort to seek help from fellow members. Many a
times the members just shoot off their queries to the forum without doing
any homework themselves. I return at lease one or two mails every other
day because the expectations of such mails is that the fellow members have
to refer to the resources to answer the queries, which very well could
have been done by the requesters themselves.

Please ensure that you append full signature to your messages, especially
when you are seeking help/response from fellow members.

Thanks for your cooperation

With warm regards,

 - moderator

-------------------------------
I.

I think there is no harm in providing reference service - availability
related information or referral information - if tracking of full text
article is really a problem for a member working for a commercial
organisation. Let the requstee then collect the orginal article from the
referrals. Many a times even an expert searcher experience lack of
information regarding availability of articles, etc. Think about those who
really need our help.

Completely ignoring or not entertaining the request will be a negative
approach for the profession. It also does not match to our ethical
standards.

Regards,

Aman Jha
Librarian
Confederation of Indian Industry

------------------

II.

I agree with you.

Krishna Yeri
Librarian,IRMA,  Anand

-------------

III.

I beg to offer a slightly different view. As far as copyright infringement
is concerned, supplying one copy for personal use of a researcher is OK.
It is immaterial whether the end user or his organisation is carrying out
research in academic institution or is attached to an industrial research
unit, whether fully commercial (say ranbaxy) or industrial research
establishment funded by public funds (CDRI, for example). Research is
research and the benefits of research go to all. Copyright laws pose no
threat either, as per my understanding. However, if a company say Ranbaxy
in private sector or IDPL in public sector wants to use the information
for commercial purposes (marketing, publicity, beating down competition
etc) then copyright fee or licensing fee for each copy must be paid for.
Librarians who are a party to this kind of infringement must be aware of
their limitations. The best thing would be to avoid ALL requests for
photocopies being distributed via Lis-forum. Let us encourage large
libraries and library networks funded by govt funds to be more responsive
and co-operative in this matter.

Regards

Dr P vyasamoorthy

----------------------

1V.

I agree.

We are an organization that procures and supplies articles to BOTH
non-profit/academic, as well as commercial organizations. For the latter,
we procure copyright fee paid copies and provide it to them. We have even
procured from local libraries and then paid the copyright fee to the US
Copyright Clearance Centre, and charged commercial clients for the same.
(We discontinued this, because very often we got poor quality copies and
the client was unhappy about that, specially after paying a high fee)

Our experience has been that many Indian commercial companies are
"conveniently unaware" of copyright fee for articles, and many libraries
still do provide articles to commercial organizations, charging only a
membership fee for services. The libraries do not take care of paying the
copyright fee to the publisher/CCC So these commercial organizations take
advantage and take copies from the libraries. They come to us if they
cannot procure from a library, or if there is an urgency.

I would urge that libraries either take on the onus of paying copyright
fee on behalf of commercial organizations, or request such organizations
to approach us, or any other agency that does similar work.

Just as an additional information........We have been a Private Limited
company, but are now running as a non-profit organization. Our legal
status is in the process of change (taking much longer than I hoped it
would), but we have been operating as a not for profit entity since Apr
2005

Vasumathi Sriganesh
Director, QMed Services






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