Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries

This guide was published by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) as a clear and easy-to-use statement of fair and reasonable approaches to fair use developed by and for librarians who support academic inquiry and higher education. The Code was developed in partnership with the Center for Social Media and the Washington College of Law at American University. Winston Tabb, Johns Hopkins University Dean of University Libraries and Museums.

The Code identifies the relevance of fair use in eight recurrent situations for librarians:

• Supporting teaching and learning with access to library materials via digital technologies
• Using selections from collection materials to publicize a library’s activities, or to create physical and virtual exhibitions
• Digitizing to preserve at-risk items
• Creating digital collections of archival and special collections materials
• Reproducing material for use by disabled students, faculty, staff, and other appropriate users
• Maintaining the integrity of works deposited in institutional repositories
• Creating databases to facilitate non-consumptive research uses (including search)
• Collecting material posted on the web and making it available