CAUSeS: An Alternative to CONTU for Assessing Interlibrary Loan Copyright Fees

Abstract

This article describes the process used at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries to develop and implement a new method for interlibrary loan copyright fee assessment as an alternative to the outdated CONTU (Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works) which we call “CAUSeS” (Copyright Assessment for Uses that Substitute for Subscriptions), by reviewing legal standards and considering practical needs.

Keywords:

• assessment
• CAUSeS algorithm
• collection development
• CONTU
• copyright
• evaluation
• interlibrary loan
• resource sharing

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to the other members of the 2019-2020 UMass Amherst Interlibrary Loan Copyright Evaluation and Payment Task Force:

• Sarah Fitzgerald, Assessment Librarian

• Lisa Di Valentino, Law and Public Policy Librarian

• Paulina Borrego, Science and Engineering Librarian

• Scott Stangroom, Acquisitions Unit Coordinator

• Jaime Taylor, Discovery & Resource Management Systems Coordinator

And to the those who shared their new copyright evaluation processes with us; learning from what others had done was invaluable:

• Brian Miller, Head, Interlibrary Services, Ohio State University Libraries

• Amanda Rudd, Interlibrary Loan Services Supervisor, Georgetown University Library

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.