Dear Nicola,

The situation in general is that the author of a
dissertation is the owner of the copyright in it and any
copying must be done only with his or her permission (cf.
ss.1-11, Copyright Designs & Patents Act, 1988).

However things are not necessarily as simple as that; the
following may have happened:

1. The author/writer of the dissertation may have agreed to
give your institution certain rights, which may be why you
have copies available in the library, in which case you
will need to find out what that agreement was between the
author and the institution;

2. Even if there is no actual written agreement there may
be certain implied rights of the Institution to make a copy
available in the library etc. which may arise from a
long-standing convention in the institution, for example;

3. In any event, there are what are known as the "fair
dealing" provisions under ss.28-31, CDPA, 1988, the
principle section for your purposes is s. 29 which allows
copying by the researcher for the sake of research and
private study.

4. The only other people who are regularly allowed to make
copies for the purposes of research and private study other
than the researcher themselves are Librarians under ss.
37-44.

In essence the statute and accompanying regulations say
that the Library must be a "prescribed library", and I
would have thought that you would almost certainly be one;
that you must get the students requesting copies to sign a
declaration that the copy is for themselves for the
purposes of research and private study; that they pay the
real cost of the copy (including a contribution to
overheads); that noone is supplied with more than one copy
of an article or more than one chapter of a book; that
multiple copies are not made; nor that the same copy is
made for a number of people at substantially the same time
for substantially the same purpose; etc.

I feel sure that you or your colleagues will be familiar
with all these conditions already, but in essence they are
to ensure that only a limited number of copies of a limited
amount of material are made for a limited number of people
who pay the real cost of the copying.

s.42 specifically deals with 'replacement copies of works'
which have been damaged or destroyed if it is not
reasonably practical to purchase a copy, which would seem
to be your situation;

s.43 deals with 'certain unpublished works' and allows
copying and issue of copies to researchers subject to
declarations etc. as long as the copyright owner has not
prohibited copying.

In my opinion you are currently faced with two situations
viz.: (a) the existing archive, & (b) future works.

(a) there would seem to be a choice of possible arguments
and defences within ss.37-44 to justify you copying
dissertations by digitising them in the absence of express
prohibitions. It would be courteous and politic to at least
try to contact the authors if there are any doubts, and, in
any event, acknowledge authorship.

If any authors or owners do subsequently object then try to
negotiate a nominal fee or perhaps free access to the
library for a limited period or whatever, and if that is
not possible then pull the material off the computer and
apologise, if you feel that they have serious objections;

(b) consult the powers that be in your institution and try
to incorporate a suitable clause in the students' agreement
with the Institution that a limited copyright in any
dissertation is acquired by the Institution, possibly in
return for the remission of certain fees, for the sole
benefit of staff & students, which would then make the
situation perfectly clear to everyone.

In short my advice would be to go ahead and digitise, it is
very unlikely that anyone will object (if only because
there is unlikely to be any money at stake)unless they have
been published and become best-selling textbooks, but that
if they do object forcibly then be prepared to take them
off the hard disk.

In future try to anticipate the situation and draft an
appropariate agreement.

I trust that this is of some assistance.

Tom Davidson, LLB, LLM, Barrister.
Senior Lecturer University of North London.

On Fri, 23 Mar 2001 09:56:48 +0000 Dennis Nicola
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dennis Nicola [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: 22 March 2001 15:47
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Dissertations held in library stock
>
>
> Dear all,
>
> We have recently had a lovely open access short loan area built which allows
> the students to enter that area, browse the shelves, choose an item and
> photocopy the section they want or have that item issued onto their ticket
> for a short period.  Unfortunately, this has resulted in alot of our
> dissertations being mutilated - from afew pages being torn out to being left
> with the cover and nothing else.
>
> Has anyone else had this problem and found a way round it?
> Has anyone digitised their dissertation collection? - If so what are the
> copyright issues?
>
> At the moment - we have most of the dissertations on trolleys behind the
> short loan desk and the students have to have them issued to them before
> they can look at it.
>
> Can you help?
>
>
>
>
> Nicola Dennis
> Assistant Librarian
> Northampton Business School
>
> University College Northampton
> Park Library
> Boughton Green Road
> Northampton
> NN2 7AL
>
> Telephone: 01604 735500
> Fax: 01604 718819
> E-mail: [log in to unmask]

----------------------
Tom Davidson
[log in to unmask]