Document delivery by anyone is not a violation if proper systems are followed. 1. If the requestor is asking for personal research and study - then there is no need to pay a copyright fee to a publisher 2. The supplier - whether it is the librarian of the reqeustor's institution or another librarian - has two responsibilities: a) Not to retain a copy of the article given to the requestor (print or electronic) b) Getting a declaration from the requestor - saying that he/she will use it only for non-commercial purposes, and that he/she has not got the same article from anyone else. As long as these two points are followed - there is no violation. Document delivery is a major process followed in International libraries with complete importance to the above two points. 3. If a requestor is asking for an article for commercial purposes - he/she needs to pay a copyright fee to the publisher (or an intermediary like a country's copyright clearing center). There are libraries that supply articles to users for commercial purposes and pay the copyright fee on the user's behalf. They charge users for the copyright fee plus a service fee for supplying and taking care of copyright issues. British Library, UK and CISTI, Canada are examples of such libraries. Even when they supply to a user for commercial purpose, the user needs to keep in mind that he/she cannot make further copies of the article. Regarding our Forum - while I believe that we should help each other, I think it is important to mention other sources we tried first. If an article is available through locating the same through Union Catalogs - that should be tried first. If there is no success, only then the Forum should be used Regards Vasumathi Sriganesh Director, QMed Services A-3, Shubham Centre, Cardinal Gracious Road Chakala, Andheri East, Mumbai 400099, India Tel: 91-22-40054474 / 75 Fax: 91-22-40054358 Indian Medical Sites- www.indianmedicalsites.in -------------------------------------------------------
Dear Dr Shukla and LIS-Forum Members
I feel it is an interesting topic, therefore I have changed the subject of the discussion.
The question is whether a Librarian violates Copyrights Laws if he supplies an Article to his user for personal use and research? This is perhaps accepted because here he is only working on behalf of the user........................
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