NISO Members Participate in Fair Use Week

Greater Understanding Emerges From Five Year Tradition Celebrating Fair Use

In amongst all the social media buzz regarding snowy Nor’easters during March, you may have noticed various items circulating on the topic of fair use/fair dealing. More than 150 academic institutions and non-profit associations took part in the Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week event held February 26-March 8, including more than 30 participating Voting and Library Standards Alliance members of NISO.

The American Theological Library Association provided a robust background on how this five-year tradition got started. The Sheridan Library of Johns Hopkins University suggested celebrating Fair Use Week with images and provided information about the fair use of images. The University of Manitoba Libraries featured an infographic about fair dealing in the context of Canadian copyright law.  on Canadian policies on Fair Dealing. Krista Cox of the Association of Research Libraries provided a useful discussion on the Policy Notes blog on the topic of Fair Use and Captioning for Those Who Are Hearing Impaired while her daily round-ups of contributions from participating institutions were cross-posted to the Fair Use Week blog. Tweet streams were lively with pointers to the following:

• a pointer to Harvard Libraries’ The Origin of U.S. Fair Use two-page graphic;
• a pointer to Fair Use, Not Free Use by Johannes Munter referenced the frequent back-and-forth rulings in Fox Television vs. TVEyes;
• a different view of the same ruling was brought in via Jonathan Band’s examination; 
• frequently tweeted was the fun video offered by MIT on how to construct a Fair Use Kaleidocycle;
• from the NLM Director’s blog, NLM Celebrates Fair Use, a guest post from members of the NLM Copyright Group.