CopyRight

CopyRight considerations

Fair use is an exception to copyright which allows use of copyrighted materials without obtaining permission as long as the use can be considered fair. Please read about this here

If you need to get permission or want to know your copyright rights, this website is helpful.

If you are uncertain about using material in your course, you may email the librarian, for an opinion: sjsm-library@mail.sjsm.org

Understanding fair use and copyright permissions protects both you and the original authors whose work you rely on for research, teaching, or publication. When in doubt about whether a particular use falls within fair use, it's always better to ask the Library before incorporating copyrighted material into your coursework, presentations, or published papers.

A few practical examples: posting a single journal article for students in a password-protected course shell is generally considered fair use, while distributing an entire textbook chapter to the whole class typically is not. Linking to a legally posted copy of an article is almost always safer than uploading and redistributing the file yourself. When a work is not clearly covered by fair use, the safest options are to request permission directly from the publisher, use the Library's interlibrary loan service, or substitute an openly licensed resource instead.

Copyright questions come up often in course preparation, especially when faculty want to share a figure, a case study, or an excerpt from a textbook with students. Rather than guessing, it's worth building a habit of checking with the Library before a semester starts, since planning ahead gives us time to help you find a properly licensed version or secure permission, rather than scrambling right before a lecture. The same principle applies to students preparing presentations, posters, or papers that incorporate outside material.