Copyright compliance is always a concern in corporate or academic research. You want to be able to share articles and conference papers with your colleagues. But you don’t want to place your organization in danger of a mulit-million dollar lawsuit.
As a librarian serving the Saudi Aramco enterprise, I faced the same problem. A solution to the problem was to produce a weekly listing of several technical articles of interest to some 100 engineers and scientists throughout the enterprise. Dubbed Technology Alert, it provided a brief description of each article, and served three purposes …
• Awareness … Provided busy researchers with a quick look at articles and other documents of interest
• Copyright Compliance … The description of each item provided enough information for an individual subscriber to decide whether to request a copy of the full document. When I received such a request, I provided the document to the requestor, following copyright guidelines. This avoided the problem of “broadcasting” a document by posting it to a Web site, a clear violation of copyright
• Quality Control … The number of requests for articles described in the weekly alerts provided feedback indicating whether the alerts were providing any value to subscribers. Over time, the feedback guided me in the areas of interest to the subscribing community, improving the value of the alerts
You might suggest a similar service to your corporate librarian, if your management is farsighted enough to employ one.
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