Thanks all.  I'm consulting an attorney colleague who is also a 
librarian working in copyright and digitization.  I'll let you know what 
I learn...
Michael Lindsey
UC Berkeley Law Library

On 4/25/2012 11:54 AM, Roy Tennant wrote:
> A number of years back I pitched a project at UC Berkeley, of all
> places, to do a "scan on the fly" project to scan tables of contents
> and indexes of books returned from circulation. I even prototyped a
> system for the indexing and display of the resulting pages, with
> filenames derived from the barcode number and automatic links into the
> catalog record for the item. The management at the time, in their
> infinite wisdom, decided to put their resources elsewhere.
>
> I still believe that such a project could provide a good deal of value
> and would be defensible under current copyright law, but then I am
> completely unqualified to even have an opinion about it.
> Roy
>
> On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 11:38 AM, Jonathan Rochkind<[log in to unmask]>  wrote:
>> ILL at most institutions does not keep scanned copies for future patrons,
>> not even in a database that's not "publically searchable."
>>
>> To do so would be of highly questionable legality with regard to copyright.
>> As would be this plan, alas.
>>
>> You can easily violate copyright just sharing within the (eg) university
>> community, or even just among librarians, it does not need to be 'publicly
>> searchable' to violate copyright.
>>
>>
>> On 4/25/2012 2:20 PM, Ross Singer wrote:
>>> I am not sure this would be as much of a problem as long as it's not a
>>> publicly searchable database (that is, people can't browse scans are there
>>> and choose them).  Of course, this restriction makes it difficult to
>>> envision how the UI would work, but something triggered by an exact match
>>> should work.
>>>
>>> Then again, I am not a lawyer.
>>>
>>> -Ross.
>>>
>>> On Apr 25, 2012, at 2:05 PM, Andrew Shuping wrote:
>>>
>>>> What type of pages from books are you talking about?  Like reference
>>>> materials, histories, biographies, fiction?  Because while my first
>>>> thought is that would be an interesting idea, my immediate second
>>>> thought is that publishers and authors would never allow it to happen
>>>> because of Copyright.  Even in ILL land we can't keep scanned pages
>>>> for a long period of time due to copyright restrictions.
>>>>
>>>> Also this sounds a lot like the Google Books project...
>>>>
>>>> Andrew Shuping
>>>> Interlibrary Loan/Emerging Technologies&    Services Librarian
>>>>
>>>> Jack Tarver Library
>>>> Robert Frost - "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned
>>>> about life: it goes on."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 1:36 PM, Michael Lindsey
>>>> <[log in to unmask]>    wrote:
>>>>> A colleague posed an interesting idea: patrons scan book pages to
>>>>> deliver to
>>>>> themselves by email, flash drive, etc.
>>>>> What if the scans didn't disappear from memory, but went into a
>>>>> repository
>>>>> so the next patron looking for that passage didn't have to jockey the
>>>>> flatbed scanner?
>>>>>
>>>>>   * Patron scans library barcode at the scanner
>>>>>   * The system says, "I have these pages available in cache."
>>>>>      o Patron's project overlaps with the cache and saves time in the
>>>>>        scanning, or
>>>>>      o Patron needs different pages, scans them and contributes to the
>>>>>        cache
>>>>>
>>>>> Now imagine a consortium of some sort where when the patron scans the
>>>>> barcode, the system takes a hop via the ISBN number in the record to
>>>>> reach
>>>>> out to a cache developed between a number of libraries.
>>>>> I know there are a number of cases where this may not apply, like
>>>>> loose-leaf
>>>>> publications in binders that get updated, etc.  And I'm sure there are
>>>>> discussions around how to handle copyright, fair use, etc.
>>>>> Do we as a community already have a similar endeavor in place?
>>>>>
>>>>> Michael Lindsey
>>>>> UC Berkeley Law Library
>>>