Individual users and organizations must get permission to distribute or republish copyrighted works. The Copyright Clearance Center is one organization that faciliates the permissions process. See also, Copyright@CUNY, How to Get Permission.
Fair use allows the use or copying of a limited amount of copyrighted materials as long as the following four conditions are met:
1. the purpose is educational, not commercial, and the audience is limited to a person, a class or a group of students, i.e. not public. Allowed purposes include teaching, news reporting, criticism, scholarship and research (17 USC 107);
2. the work is published, and not meant to be consumed by one user (like a workbook);
3. a relatively small amount of a work is copied (e.g., not the whole book);
4. the material is not easily purchased at a reasonable price.
An article on fair use in the academic environment appears in a recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education : "Pushing back against legal threats by pushing fair use forward" (Jeffrey R. Young, May 29. 2011).
This guide was originally developed by librarian Ellen Kaufman who left Baruch to join the library of a major New York-based law firm. It is updated by Rita Ormsby of the Newman Library.