Sunday, January 7, 2018

Ethics emergency

I'm currently at the desk watching a patron flagrantly copy a whole academic text using the library's document scanner. I went and spoke to him about it once and reminded him that he had pressed "accept" to a screen explaining copyright law and stating that he would follow it, but I was brought up short by the fact that the book he was copying wasn't something from our collection. I had been planning a spiel trying to get him to borrow the book instead, but obviously that isn't going to work.

I suppose I could kick him out of the library for the day because he is violating the library's code of conduct (which says you must obey all laws), but the enforcement culture at Mystery Library is definitely on the relaxed side and my boss isn't here to ask. The only way to stop him short of that is to power off or unplug the machine right in front of him, and that's awfully confrontational.

I know we have some academic librarian readers who probably deal with this kind of stuff all the time. How do you handle it, and, also, how do you wish it would be handled?

UPDATE: The scanner was overwhelmed because it's not designed to capture 200 images at a time, and it froze! Ultimate justice! He wanted "help" with the problem, and when I told him the situation he A) complained that he flagrantly violates copyright all the time at Other Branch and that never happens there and B) said in an aggrieved tone of voice that since I wasn't offering him any other options he guessed he'd let me restart the machine, but he wasn't going to start over all his "work."

7 comments:

  1. Well as a law librarian (you know who I am) I was disturbed to see that at my "new" law library, the staff members actively encourage students to scan textbooks. I questioned the practice and they pushed back, implied I was anti-student.

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    1. That's disrespectful enough to make me grind my teeth! (But I won't, since I know who you are and you know who I am.)

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  2. We just post the required notice and look away

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    1. Not really, our copiers aren't where we see them from circ or ref

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  3. I hate academic publishers so much I don't care who copies what

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  4. our acad library is so desperate for students to like us we wouldn't ever talk with them about what they were scanning but i know they are violating copyright law

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