Copyright Resources

Materials that instructors wish to place on Reserve for a course may be physically reserved in Strozier, Dirac, or Engineering Libraries or in some cases made available electronically through the course Canvas site.  FSU Libraries Course Reserves policies follow the fair use provisions outlined in U.S. copyright law.  Copyrighted material, including journal articles, should be placed on Course Reserve rather than posted to a course's Canvas site to avoid copyright infringement. 

To place items on reserve, please submit the online reserves request form. Any items that need to be on Reserve for the first week of the semester should be placed three weeks in advance and no later than two weeks in advance. Reserve requests may take up to 72 hours to process, though ones submitted during the first week of the semester can take up to 5 days. 

Contact the Reserves Team with any questions at lib-coursereserves@fsu.edu. 

FSU Libraries will do the following regarding course reserves:

• place material requested by an instructor for the educational use of students on reserve
• evaluate material to determine fair use before placing on reserve
• request permission from copyright holders when necessary in order to place items on e-reserve
• evaluate purchasing or licensing material as needed
• limit online access to Florida State University students, faculty, and staff
• place a copyright notice on physical and electronic reserve items
• remove access to e-reserves material when the class ends

• Books in their original format that are legally owned by the FSU Libraries or a faculty member
• Media in its original format that is legally owned by the FSU Libraries or a faculty member
• Works or sections of works in the public domain
• Works or sections of works produced by the U.S. government
• Portions of books, journal articles, and other print resources that fall within "fair use"
• Materials created by the instructor for the course
• Copyrighted materials for which the instructor has obtained permission and supplied written documentation of that permission

Permission to place scanned journal articles or book chapters on reserve for multiple semesters requires obtaining written copyright permission from the copyright holder. 

FSU Libraries reserve the right to refuse to place materials on reserve if they deem that those materials exceed fair use and would constitute copyright infringement.

The following items likely constitute copyright infringement and are generally not placed on reserve:

• Scanned or electronic copies of materials obtained through Interlibrary Loan or Uborrow
• Consumables, such as workbooks
• Course packs
• Personally reproduced versions of copyrighted films, television programs, documentaries, sound recordings, etc.
• Excessive portions of copyrighted works that exceed fair use
• Works prohibited by licensing restrictions

Permission to place scanned journal articles or book chapters on reserve for multiple semesters requires obtaining written copyright permission from the copyright holder.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Sections of this guide are adapted from UF Libraries.