ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries Monke Joins Committee to Revise Standards Arthur Monke, librarian at Bowdoin Colleg in Brunswick, Maine, has been appointed to the ACRL Committee to Revise the 1959 Standard for College Libraries. Mr. Monke replaces Bar bara G. LaMont, who has recently resigne from the committee for personal reasons. The committee, chaired by Johnnie Givens librarian at Austin Peay State University i Tennessee, has prepared a set of background working papers which are available from th Executive Secretary, ACRL, 50 E. Huron St. Chicago, IL 60611. Miss Givens has discusse the progress of the committee at a recent meet ing of the Pennsylvania Library Association an e s ­ d , n / e , d ­ d at the Midwest Academic Librarians Confer­ ence in Milwaukee. At the ALA New York Conference in July, the committee will hold a series of hearings. In ­ terested persons are invited to present their comments on the revision of the standards at any time during the following scheduled hours: Wednesday, July 10, from 2:00 to 6:00 p.m., and Thursday, July 11, from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon. The committee acknowledges its apprecia­ tion for the support of a J. Morris Jones-World Book Encyclopedia-ALA Goals Award, which has funded the first year of the project. Inside Washington Christopher W right Assistant Director A L A Washington Office Like some wayward streetcar, copyright law subcommittee’s chief counsel, Thomas C. Bren­ s nan, told librarians and publishers over lunch ­ that he too saw “absolutely no chance” of the t bill’s passage during this Congress. t As a result, said Brennan, there would be in­ terim legislation aimed at specific immediate e problems, including library photocopying. r Something must be done to get the various par­ ties back speaking together and on the road to a solution. Brennan suggested that Congress might en­ act Title II of the bill, which establishes a na­ ­ tional commission on new technological uses of t copyrighted works, and give the commission , eighteen months to come up with a solution to the photocopying problems. Ringer told the meeting of federal librarians that she expected Congress and the publishing interests to press for establishing the commis­ sion as part of the copyright office itself. Asked if she was requesting funds for such a project, she said, “No, but I think others will.” , Although the principal stumbling block in re­ vising copyright continues to be the endless r dispute over cable television, the issue of ­ photocopying is rapidly becoming, in Ringer’s ­ words, “the most dangerous, most difficult, and ­ most urgent problem. . . .” Photocopying would be the commission’s first order of business. revision continues to grind along, passenger grumbling, stops bypassed, schedule lost, desti nation forgotten. Exhausted riders still shou directions: “that way to Fair Use,” “turn a Manufacturing Clause,” “when do we get to Cable Television?” Among themselves, som have resorted to epithets, calling each othe “record pirates” or “systematic copiers.” Observing the faltering progress of this ten- year odyssey, passenger Barbara Ringer, the Register of Copyrights, announced last month that “at some point you have to say this street car’s at the end of the line and it’s time to ge another one.” The copyright revision omnibus S.1361, was breaking down. There was now “no chance” it would reach its destination this Congress. “In my opinion, it’s had it.” Instead, Ringer urged fellow passengers to abandon their seats and resort to other means of transport taking them to their own separate destinations. Russian authors this way, expiring copyrights there, sound recordings th at way photocopying there. Ringer’s announcement came only days afte the latest version of the copyright bill, a com mittee print of Senator John McClellan’s Sub committee on Patents, Trademarks and Copy rights, was made public. Early in April, the 127 Meanwhile, the rhetoric has been growing stronger. A New York Times article on Sunday, March 24, described the newly formed Research Li­ braries Group (R L G )—Columbia, Yale, Har­ vard, and N.Y. Public—as “a sweeping and controversial program of combined operations that will entail cutting back purchases of many publications and systematically exchanging photocopies of previously published writings.” The implication was that now, with Williams & Wilkins in the libraries’ favor, the four in­ stitutions were preparing to set up a massive photocopying operation. The word “systemat­ ically” occurred repeatedly in the article, which was followed shortly by a blast from Townsend Hoopes, president of the Association of Amer­ ican Publishers. Hoopes accused the group in an April 12 Times article of “the deliberate in­ tention of avoiding the payment of royalties and even for avowedly systematic and unlimit­ ed photocopying.” Presumably on the strength of the Times ar­ ticle, Brennan told the April 4 luncheon meet­ ing that the new bill would definitely prohibit the kind of photocopying planned by the New York group, although it would allow “isolated” copying in the course of normal interlibrary loans, as before. Yet there is no mention of “systematic pho­ tocopying” in the RLG prospectus, which dwells almost entirely on administrative mea­ sures and collection development. Warren J. Haas, Columbia University librarian and a spokesman for the group, called the photocopy­ ing accusation “a red herring.” Said Haas, “The plans of the Research Libraries Group have me­ ticulously observed the principle of a single copy for a single patron. We’re talking about sending books back and forth on buses, about delivering materials, not copying materials.” But the image remains. To the publishers, the new breed of library network means sharp­ ly reduced sales thanks to “systematic photo­ copying” and cooperative collection. The publishers argue that all photocopying of rare scientific journals should be subject to licensing and royalties. But librarians fear that any concession on licensing will destroy the concept of fair use for individual library pa­ trons. The problem, in addition, is to define “systematic.” To a librarian it means one thing, to a publisher it means something else. Wil­ liams & Wilkins didn’t help. One judge decided that was systematic, the other decided it wasn’t. The revised copyright bill is no help either. Library photocopying rights “extend to the iso­ lated and unrelated reproduction or distribu­ tion of a single copy or phonorecord of the same material on separate occasions, but do not extend to cases where the library or archives, or its employee . . . engages in the systematic reproduction or distribution of single or mul­ tiple copies or phonorecords of material de­ scribed. . . Nor does the committee report, still in con­ fidential draft form, shed any light on the mat­ ter. “While it is not possible to formulate spe­ cific definitions of ‘systematic copying’,” the re­ port concedes, “the following examples serve to illustrate some of the copying prohibited.” Two of the three examples are vaguely like the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health, the parties of the success­ ful Williams & Wilkins defense. But you can’t be sure. Because of this built-in uncertainty, the draft legislation fails to answer the judges in the Wil­ liams & Wilkins case, when they concluded “the truth is that this is now preeminently a problem for Congress. . . .” Because so far Congress has not conclusively answered the judges’ question as to what is fair and unfair in photocopying. Meanwhile libraries and publishers continue to jostle for position. At the Center for Research Libraries in Chicago, a micropublisher has pro­ posed charging the center seven times its nor­ mal price because it says it loses seven sales every time the center acquires one of its publi­ cations. And the issue of blanket licensing, giv­ ing libraries license to copy as often as they want after paying a premium price for a publi­ cation, is gaining acceptance in some quarters. In spite of the assurances of those closest to the legislation, there is always the diabolic chance that the old omnibus bill will rattle through Congress at some late hour in its pres­ ent inconclusive form. Or, if Congress estab­ lishes the copyright commission to study pho­ tocopying, there is the chance that the com­ mission’s decision will go against libraries, or still fail to answer the basic question. Much will depend on the makeup of the commission and whose interests get their day in court. The first step toward a solution to photocopying may lie in the choice of commission members. This de­ cision is up to Congress. Meanwhile, librarians continue to maintain regular contact with members of the publishing community through ALA’s copyright commit­ tee, and the search for a workable compromise goes on. 128