Copy woes hit campus

Time is an important aspect of the student's lifestyle. The benefit of having books and course packets in the first place enable the student to have his or her materials ordered, styled and collated for convenience. Time is spent reading, not gathering texts.\nYet due to the recent crackdown on copyright infringement that followed the Collegiate Copies lawsuit, all that has changed.\nFor students, perhaps the most noticeable repercussion of these events has been a drastic decrease in course packets available for use this semester. Kay Ackerman, the manager at Collegiate Copies, confirmed that there has been a "significant decrease" in the amount of course packet orders that have come into her store due to the several new restrictions being placed on how professors can request materials.\nMany of these new restrictions include a heightened sensitivity to the 10 percent rule -- only 10 percent of a book can be legally reproduced for a student's use in copy form. Victoria A. Elmwood, a Ph. D. candidate in the Department of English and American Studies program, noted that such strictures are far from desired.\n"Unless I deviate highly from most instructors -- and I doubt that I do -- 10 percent of a book is rarely sufficient," she wrote in an e-mail.\nAnd though the prices for students are the same by Collegiate Copies and Mr. Copy, the stricter copyright enforcement has placed an unwelcome burden on professors. \nNew fees to garner the proper publisher's approval to use requested materials add to instructor costs, and furthermore, the establishments are being forced to suggest that professors turn in material selections for next spring's courses this October.\nIt's no surprise that Collegiate is losing business.\nThe availability of materials and the time needed to compile said materials is vital to the function of classes this semester, and the University should acknowledge this. To assuage these unexpected complications, we urge the University to seek for an answer. \nOur answer: move with the times, redouble the University's current investment in e-reserves, which are the downloadable texts offered by the IU Libraries.\nA cheaper alternative to course packets, e-reserves cost the student roughly 5 cents a copy (once one's print quota has been depleted). Furthermore, there are no middle-man costs. E-reserves operates strictly non-for-profit, so no third party markup is necessary -- as it would be with the copy establishments in town.\nHowever, this new program simply needs more man and machine power. For instance, at the Main Library, there exists only one scanner with which to process e-reserve materials, thus only one material, via one employee, for one class can be entered at a time. In the hectic portion of the year when every professor for every class is requesting texts, this new and revolutionary service needs more attention with which it will hopefully grow.