Research Guides: Copyright and Fair Use: Best Practices

Best Practices in Fair Use, by format type or user group

Various organizations and groups have created guidelines, statements, and codes of best practices in fair use when using copyright-protected works for specific purposes. These documents offer practical guidance and, often, case studies for exercising fair use rights in a responsible manner, within the limits of U.S. copyright law, for the purpose(s) of advancing creativity and building new culture.

Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries (Association of Research Libraries)
This website provides "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."
Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education (Center for Media & Social Impact)
"This guide identifies five principles that represent the media literacy education community’s current consensus about acceptable practices for the fair use of copyrighted materials ..."
Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for OpenCourseWare
The mission of the OpenCourseWare Consortium is “to advance formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality educational materials organized as courses.” This document is a code of best practices designed to help those preparing OpenCourseWare (OCW) to interpret and apply fair use under United States copyright law.
Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Poetry
This code of best practices helps poets understand when they and others have the right to excerpt, quote and use copyrighted material in poetry.
Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts
This Code describes common situations in which there is a consensus within the visual arts community about practices to which this copyright doctrine should apply and provides a practical and reliable way of applying it.
Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums (Cornell University Library)
This document “addresses the basics of copyright law and the exclusive rights of the copyright owner, the major exemptions used by cultural heritage institutions, and stresses the importance of 'risk assessment' when conducting any digitization project. Case studies on digitizing oral histories and student work are also included."
Copyright and Your Dissertation or Thesis (PDF)
This document, written by copyright authority Kenneth Crews, provides guidance with copyright issues related to dissertations and theses.
Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use
This Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use makes clear what documentary filmmakers currently regard as reasonable application of the copyright Fair Use doctrine. Documentary filmmakers should have the same kind of access to copyrighted materials that is enjoyed by cultural and historical critics who work in print media and by news broadcasters
Fair Use and Sound Recordings: Lessons from Community Practice
This report presents strategies for reasonable application of copyright’s fair use doctrine to a series of recurring situations affecting curation and/or reuse of recorded sound collections.
Fair Use in the Visual Arts: Lesson Plans for Librarians
The lesson plans in this book all use the College Art Association (CAA) "Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts" to create learning experiences that empower students to understand copyright and take advantage of fair use in their art, design, and academic practices.
Orphan Works: Statement of Best Practices (Society of American Archivists)
"This statement describes what professional archivists consider to be best practices regarding reasonable efforts to identify and locate rights holders."
Set of Principles in Fair Use for Journalism
Journalists have created a set of principles that allows them to stop censoring their journalistic choices, especially in emerging digital environments.
Society for Cinema and Media Studies’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use in Teaching for Film and Media Educators
This code of best practices in fair use in teaching for film/media educators was designed by The Society for Cinema and Media Studies. It deals with classroom screenings, broadcasts, and derivative works.
Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use of Dance-Related Materials
Produced by the Dance Heritage Coalition, this document clarifies what librarians, archivists, curators, and others working with dance-related materials currently regard as a reasonable application of the Copyright Act’s fair use doctrine.
Statement on the Fair Use of Images for Teaching, Research, and Study
The Visual Resources Association code describes the need for professionals working with image resources to know their free speech rights in regard to fair use. This code of best practices describes six uses of copyrighted still images that the VRA believes fall within the U.S. doctrine of fair use.

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Copyright and Fair Use

Best Practices in Fair Use, by format type or user group