Can fair use be adequately taught to librarians? Assessing librarians’ confidence and comprehension in explaining fair use following an expert workshop

Fair use is often viewed as a topic too difficult for librarians and library staff to engage with and, hence, avoided altogether. However, with the right training, librarians can learn how to employ fair use in their daily work. This study utilized testing both before and after an expert led fair use training session in order to measure both librarian confidence and comprehension of fair use. The results, though limited in scope, provide encouraging evidence that librarians can tackle the concept of fair use when provided with appropriate training. Both the level of confidence and the level of comprehension rose after the librarian participants were provided with training, indicating that the training did indeed have impact. Further evidence of impact was evidenced by the survey distributed two weeks after the training wherein some librarians noted that they had had the opportunity to utilize the skills learned in the training workshop during their daily work. The results, therefore, are encouraging and hopefully will lead to further training program development and implementation regarding fair use and other copyright issues in libraries.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Library & Information Science

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2018

Author dc:creator

• Benson, Sara R.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Weech, Terry

• Copyright
• Fair use

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2017 Sara R. Benson

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/99423

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/99423