Library Journal in the US reports that a battle is brewing between research libraries and an association of academic publishers over the right to engage in international interlibrary loans and document delivery.
Here’s the report’s introduction
The full article can be found at http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/891002-264/research_libraries_publishers_stake_out.html.csp
Both well-established library practices that are increasingly important to scholarship as the amount of discoverable information expands.
The International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM), representing some of the major STM publishers like Elsevier, Wiley, Springer, among others, released a statement on June 8, which says that library exceptions for document delivery in the digital environment, particularly of individual journal articles, are justified only in very limited circumstances and with the permission of the publisher. Among other points, STM asserts that:
In order to “maximize legal clarity,” cross-border deliveries “should be governed by voluntary licenses negotiated directly with publishers”;
Direct digital delivery to an end-user “is best governed and coordinated by rights-holders”;
Libraries should only be able to deliver on-site, print copies to walk-in library patrons;
Libraries should exercise “due diligence” to ensure that any deliveries to individuals are for “private, non-commercial use.”
“We do believe that digital document delivery must take place in a licensed environment, especially for international deliveries and especially for commercial deliveries,” said Michael Mabe, the chief executive office of STM.
The association, which is headquartered in Oxford, England, has over 110 members in 21 countries who collectively publish nearly 66 percent of all journal articles and tens of thousands of monographs and reference works, according to its website.
“It seems to want to place limits on ILL and document delivery that are completely unnecessary under American law,” said Brandon Butler, the director of Public Policy Initiatives for the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). “They are just asking us to forebear from using the rights the law gives to libraries,” he said, referring to Section 108 of U.S. Copyright Law.
