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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if it is not reasonably practical to purchase a copy, which would seem to be your situation; s.43 deals with 'certain unpublished works' and allows copying and issue of copies to researchers subject to declarations etc.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]