Perhaps there are documents, book chapters or multimedia materials you would like to use in teaching, but you worry that posting them online would infringe copyright. It's possible that such usage may fall under the "fair use" provisions of the copyright law, which allow for the use of excerpts from copyrighted works under certain conditions. The law also contains special provisions for the use of copyrighted materials in teaching, provided that access is carefully limited to students.

Cornell Library offers help for instructors trying to understand the rules, and electronic tools to help comply with them.

Most answers can be found on the Cornell Copyright Information Center Web site at http://www.copyright.cornell.edu. Among the resources available on the site are a fair use checklist and copyright guidelines for using electronic course content. Both documents were created by the University Counsel's Office.

"There are lots of options that are legally acceptable," said Peter Hirtle, the intellectual property officer at Cornell University Library. "Faculty need to know there is a lot they can do."

It may not always be necessary to obtain permission or pay a fee to make materials available electronically. Works published by the federal government and all materials published before 1923 are in the public domain. Furthermore, there are many instances where rights to use material still covered by copyright have already been licensed by the library, or materials are freely accessible through open-access repositories.

Copyrighted materials such as articles and book chapters can be excerpted and reproduced electronically without permission when there is a reasonable belief that the use is a fair use. Fair use copies should be used only for teaching purposes and must include proper attribution and copyright notices. Instructors can use the fair use checklist to determine if their use of electronic materials is allowable under copyright law.

All electronic course materials made available online should be restricted to students enrolled in the course, and their access should be terminated upon completion.

The library now provides its electronic reserves service on Blackboard, a widely used online course-management tool at Cornell that requires users to log in so that access to a site can be restricted, for example, only to students enrolled in a particular course. Information about setting up electronic course reserves can be found at http://library.cornell.edu/services/reserves.html.

"Whether we're doing it or faculty is doing it, the rules are the same," said Carmen Blankinship, an access services librarian.

For courses that already have Blackboard sites, the library can create an electronic reserves section and post documents and links selected by the instructor. Help is available for instructors who want to use electronic reserves but do not have a Blackboard course Web site. For more information about Blackboard, visit http://blackboard.cornell.edu.

Chris Philipp is a writer and editor for Library Communications.