[ILL-L] Friday "fun" question (copyright & extra credit)

[Laura Barnard]

If none of the articles fall within CONTU, and no one patron is asking for more than one article from a single issue, what would be the difference between 20 students each requesting the same two articles and 20 students each requesting different articles?  There would be 40 articles either way and legal either way.

Other than asking the professor to please give you a heads up that he is assigning work specifically to include ILL, this seems more of a positive than a negative.  The students are introduced to the possibilities of ILL in a way that could potentially include education that creates good habits (perhaps the professor could invite you to come to the class and explain the needs, limits and opportunities of good citations).

Laura Barnard
Interlibrary Loans
Seattle Public Library (UOK)
206-386-4601
ill at spl.org

>>> "Schwartz, Andrea" <aschwart at bloomu.edu> 11/21/2008 6:17 AM >>>
I need some advice from other ILL-ers.  What would you have done in this situation?

A professor on our campus gave out an extra credit assignment to his class which required them to request one or two articles through Interlibrary loan and answer questions about them.  The articles are older (1996) but I now have about 20 requests for both articles from 20 different students.  My assistant and I processed many of them as they trickled in without realizing they were all for the same two articles-just realized last night.

I just spoke to the professor.  He explained the assignment to me and reported that he'd assigned the same extra credit at his previous university and "never had any trouble from ILL" about it.  Couldn't they request ANY article from X Journal and write about it, I asked?  No, he wanted these 2 articles that he knew well enough to know that the students had read/understood the article.  Couldn't he have posted the articles on Blackboard or put them on Reserve in Library, I asked?  Well, he wanted them to do a little more work than that.  My main objection to him was that this is a huge waste of my time, my assistant's time, and all the lending libraries who are out there scanning these two articles over and over for us.

But is this also violating some copyright guideline?  What are my options for the requests I haven't processed yet?

Thanks,

Andrea Schwartz
Bloomsburg University [OCLC:PBB]
Andruss Library, Interlibrary Loan
570-389-4218 (voice)
570-389-3895 (fax)
ill at bloomu.edu<mailto:ill at bloomu.edu>