George Mason University

What about that cool article that you found that you want your students to read that's not in your textbook(s)?

As you know, Copyright Fair Use principles say that you can make a copy available for each student in the class as long as

• the use is "spontaneous" (you can use it this year for teaching a new class, but next year you'll have to get formal permission in order to use it for the same class)
• AND the selection you're using is either one chapter/essay or 10% (whichever is less) of the larger work, journal, or collection it's from. Can't go photocopying 60 pages of Write to Learn, sorry.

See more information about all of the rules and options, as well as information about course packets, at http://library.gmu.edu/copyright/fairuse.html.

So how can you make it available to your students?

For one or two very very short articles you may be able to send them for copying for your class by the English Dept. Right at the start of the semester, there may be a 3-4 day delay; later, usually everything gets returned within 24-48 hours. See the photocopying policy or ask Annie in the main office for any questions about submitting a photocopying request. (They can also do transparencies.) The university copyshop people also abide by Fair Use Principles: if you exceed your 10% or one section, it'll get sent back to you uncopied.

If you have a web page that you can password-protect, or you'd like to use Blackboard, you can scan and upload the readings for students to download. (You could also email them a PDF file.) The department has a scanner and Adobe Acrobat available for faculty use. The copyright rules still apply: spontaneous use + 1 piece or 10%. (The Copyright Fairy will know if you're cheating!) If you're happily operating on broadband or on-campus download-and-print options, please remember that downloading a big PDF via second-hand modem and fritzy dial-up can take a while -- it's not at all an unreasonable request to make of Mason students, but some of them may protest gently and require additional encouragement.

You can also put articles -- or movies, or artwork, or books -- on Library Reserve for students. You can put any of these on Regular Reserve, where the students need to go to the library and read, view, or make a copy of the original text. The highly-convenient E-Reserves option (http://furbo.gmu.edu/OSCRweb/index.html), where they scan the article for you and let students download it, is a great resource. If you've found an article in Time Magazine or the Journal of Microeconomics, or a selection from an anthology or textbook, they'll put that online for you. For more information, see our E-Reserves Guide.

If you'd like to do a coursepack, where students purchase a collection of readings, that needs to go through the copyright office, and you need to start ASAP. See the page noted above for info.

You can send students, of course, to anything that's available to them online: Please check out GMU's expansive collection of full text journals. To see quickly whether an article you're interested in is available in full-text, go to the George Mason University Library E-Journal Finder, type in the name of the journal, and see which if any database(s) contain that journal.