The International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) has joined the fray over the right of libraries to engage in international interlibrary loan and document delivery.
The ICOLC has released a statement critical of the position staked out by the International Association of Scientific Technical and Medical Publishers (STM) on June 8. The STM statement advocates a set of new guidelines for document delivery (http://www.stm-assoc.org/industry-news/stm-statement-on-document-delivery).
According to ICOLC, while intellectual property laws vary from country to country, STM's approach would radically alter well-established library practices that advance knowledge, support scholarship, and are compliant with current copyright laws. It noted that the STM recommendations are in conflict with widely held principles that provide a copyright exception for interlibrary loan activities.
The regime anticipated by the STM statement would place unfair restrictions on researchers' access to information, according to ICOLC. In particular, ICOLC contends that interlibrary loan, under existing principles and laws, is consistent with the three-step test of Berne; cross-border deliveries are adequately and appropriately governed by current copyright law; digital document delivery directly to an end-user is best coordinated through the end-user's library or community of learners; libraries are able to deliver on-site articles to library walk-up patrons in any format, including both digital and print; and current copyright law appropriately places the burden on the library user to affirm that the documents they receive are for private, non-commercial use.
ICOLC, an informal international group comprising about 200 library consortia, has joined with the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) in opposing STM's effort. An ARL task force has published a three-part report that reaffirms the right of domestic research libraries to engage in international interlibrary loan and document delivery and to send copies of some copyrighted works to foreign libraries.
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