On the surface, the management of a school library might seem relatively simple – you collect books and other educational resources, you make them available to students and you look for ways to enrich their education. Unfortunately, this process is often far more complicated than it looks on the surface.
In order to curate a large collection of educational materials, schools have to clear a lot of logistical hurdles.
Copyrights are a big reason why. In order to curate a large collection of educational materials, schools have to clear a lot of logistical hurdles – paying for intellectual property rights, managing them and sometimes even dealing with difficult or slow rights clearance processes. All of this busywork ends up costing the schools a hefty sum of money. What can be done to fix this problem?
The steep cost of maintaining compliance
It’s crucial to maintain copyright compliance when running a library – without it, you risk serious legal trouble. Unfortunately though, this process can get expensive as tools to support and help librarians manage their copyright obligations are not widely known. It has been estimated that up to $11 million each year in Australia goes towards the display of works whose authors can’t be found.
This inefficiency in workflow and lack of tools to make things easier is a major problem, exacerbated because most libraries lack an efficient means of determining what copyrighted products they own and how much they’re paying for all those rights.
The laws in the United States are a little different than here in Australia.Managing your library as efficiently as possible
For schools that are operating on tight budgets, it’s important to have methods of handling copyright reporting and other logistical issues as efficiently as possible. No one wants to waste time or money on manual processes when they don’t need to.
Luckily, with eReserve Plus, library administrators can crank out accurate copyright reports with the click of a mouse. This makes the busywork easier than ever, and it allows schools and their librarians to allocate resources more efficiently. Everyone wins.
