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Copyright Resource Guide: OU Interlibrary Loan and CONTU Guidelines

A guide that provides direction and resources to faculty with regards to the application of the Teach Act, and to students with regard to intellectual property and photocopying.

What is CONTU?

The CONTU Guidelines were created to provide librarians and copyright specialists to better understanding how to apply copyright laws to their Photocopying and Interlibrary Loan arrangements.

Ottawa University Interlibrary Loan Rules and CONTU

Interlibrary Loan and CONTU

·       Ottawa University Interlibrary loan services cannot obtain copyrighted material from other libraries for users unless the materials are intended only specifically for individual study and research

·       Materials obtained through Interlibrary Loan may not be shared with others or be used for profit

·       Materials obtained through Interlibrary Loan by an OU instructor/student may not be copied and uploaded to any Blackboard class

·       OU instructors may not use interlibrary loan services to request materials to be used for course reserve

·       Copyright permissions MUST BE obtained and fees MUST BE paid on any material that exceeds the amounts specified by the CONTU guidelines which aids the interpretation of U.S. copyright law. Please see the CONTU Guidelines in the Research Guide and ask questions of the OU librarians if you have any


Journal articles and Copyright:

·       Copyright fees apply after Ottawa University receives more than five articles per journal title per calendar year for journals published within the last five years. (This is the "rule-of-five" from the CONTU guidelines); thus we do not allow users to request more than five articles from the same journal per calendar year

·       For publications more than five years old, OU staff will determine what the total quantity of copying is, that is appropriate

·       No person can order more than two articles from a single recent journal issue at one time

·       We cannot order complete journal issues via interlibrary loan. If you wish to see an entire issue, please contact our Ottawa University ILL department

Book chapters and Copyright:

·       Copyright laws must also be applied when copies of book chapters are made

·       If you need more than one chapter of a book, please order the actual book on ILL instead

·       No more than one-quarter of any book(textbooks included) can be photocopied, without specifically breaking fair use and copyright rules.


Copyright-free notice:

·       Copies made of a chapter from a book held by the OU Gangwish Library is available free to OU students

·       Please check the OU Library Catalog to see if we have books on the subject you are researching

·       If you are requesting a copy of an article that is not held by the Gangwish Library in any of the OU databases, then unless otherwise stated, these are available free to all OU students; and these photocopies are also yours to keep

·       If you are looking for Government Documents, please contact a reference librarian or look for Open Source documents on the web; see http://www.ipl.org/div/pfarch/entry/81375

·       Books that have been published in the United States prior to 1923 are copyright-free and these are then in the public domain