Teaching Support

The Law Library maintains several reserve collections, described below. Reserve collections may consist of both materials purchased by the Library and personal copies.

Course Reserve: The Law Library maintains a limited collection of print resources for use in supplementing course readings. These materials are available for limited two-hour checkout. We discourage students from relying exclusively on Course Reserves for access to casebooks because books are shared among multiple students and will be inaccessible if the student cannot come to campus (e.g., during an illness).

Electronic Course Reserve: In order to support learning on- and off-campus, the Law Library offers limited digital course reserves when requested by faculty and as licenses are available. Casebooks are not provided due to cost and licensing limitations. Electronic materials are usually provided via links on the course’s Canvas page.

Whenever possible, the Law Library is happy to assist faculty by licensing ebook versions of monographs or selections from books for course readings, or by locating unrestricted digital copies of monographs. Licensing options are controlled by the publisher and vary from unlimited access to use by one reader at a time. Some books are not available for any form of digital licensing.

Faculty are encouraged to contact the Law Library at least one month in advance of the start of the semester with a reading list to allow for time to obtain needed resources.  Faculty may be provided with a URL to the ebook to make available to students on the course’s Canvas page. Copiers in the law school can also serve as scanners (please remember to include the title page and copyright statement from the source item with materials duplicated for academic purposes). Contact your library liaison (locating materials), Melanie Coleman (ILL & library materials), or Iantha Haight (ebook licensing) for additional assistance.

A/V Reserve: A/V reserve consists of audio/visual items, software, and similar material. These items are located behind the Circulation Desk and may only be borrowed for a limited time. Course reserve and professor files may be borrowed for 2 hours at a time. Audio/visual and software reserve items circulate for 24 hours.

Reserve Room: The Reserve Room is located on the second floor, in room 280 JRCB (near Circulation). The Reserve Room consists of high-use monographs (treatises, study aids, Nutshells, etc.), self-help materials (Nolo guides), six months-worth of newspapers (the Wall Street Journal, the Deseret News, the Salt Lake Tribune, the Daily Herald, the Intermountain Commercial Record), and the Utah law collection — including copies of the state code and Utah secondary sources. The Biblical Law and Benson Collections are also located in the Reserve Room.

Law Library faculty are available to come into law classes to teach students how to conduct legal research in specialized areas and demonstrate how to use specific library and research resources. Librarians can give students an overview of the Library’s print holdings and relevant electronic databases. This type of instruction can be very useful to students, especially in seminar courses where a paper is required. Requests for such lectures can be arranged through library liaisons.

The BYU CLO has posted the following guidelines for all supplemental course materials:

• Linking to authorized online sources is a preferred option.
• Directing students to subscription content available through the BYU Librar[ies] is also a great option. For assistance linking to any particular Library content, contact [your liaison or Law Library Reference].
• Copying entire works is generally not recommended. Alternatively, copying limited portions of works to share with students will often be fair use. (The Fair Use Checklist and Interactive Fair Use Evaluation Log are helpful tools for analyzing fair use.)

Read the Law School Copyright Policy.

Links to supplemental resources are always the recommended option, because links do not involve making copies. Linkable resources include authoritative sites on the open web, LexisNexis, Westlaw, HeinOnline and other library-licensed material. The Law Commons is an open-source repository of scholarly legal content, including law review articles from many highly-ranked journals. The Library of Congress provides access to online federal legal resources, as well as links to state primary legal resources. Cornell’s Legal Information Institute is another good portal to legal resources and information. Google Scholar can be also be useful as a tool for locating authoritative legal content, including case opinions.

If the supplemental material to be shared with a class is not openly available online or included in a library subscription, you will likely need to obtain copyright permission for that use. Faculty always have the option to obtain clearance themselves, and then keep a record of that permission. This approach is often the best choice if the copyright owner of the desired content is a known colleague. A fillable PDF form letter is provided as a model, but a less-formal email is sufficient if it contains adequate detail.

• Copyright Clearance Request Letter (PDF form letter allowing faculty to request permissions directly)

Getting Help

Please contact your liaison or Annalee Hickman Pierson if you would like help with locating sources for supplemental course materials.

Questions regarding copyright issues and requests for clearance should be directed to the BYU Copyright Licensing Office.

J. Reuben Clark Law School and Hunter Law Library

The Law School is committed to the enforcement and protection of copyrights as both a legal and an ethical imperative. A copyright is a set of exclusive rights that vests in the author of an original work of authorship (including literary, musical, dramatic, pictorial, sculptural, and motion picture works). The copyright attaches upon the work’s creation (when it is “fixed in a tangible medium of expression”); current law does not require the formalities of registration or of a copyright notice such as the “©” symbol. The exclusive rights covered by copyright include the right to (1) copy or reproduce the work or portions of the work (including by making electronic copies); (2) prepare “derivative works” based on the original; (3) distribute copies of the work or portions of the work (including by electronic means); and (4) publicly perform or display the work.

Any faculty member, staff member, or student who intends to copy or distribute any material that is not in the public domain and is, therefore, protected by copyright must first receive copyright clearance from the law school’s Copyright Coordinator under the procedures set forth here, unless the copyright is held by that faculty member, staff member, or student. Copyright clearance is required even if the material is believed to be covered by the doctrine of fair use, and even if permission has already been secured from the holder of the copyright by the individual faculty member, staff member, or student. “Copying” and “distributing” include not only making and distributing hard copies, but also making any digital or electronic copies, posting such copies on the internet or the law school’s web page, or distributing copies via e-mail.

Any faculty member, staff member, or student seeking copyright clearance must contact the law school’s Copyright Coordinator. Requests for clearance should be submitted on a form approved by the Copyright Committee. The request should be submitted as far in advance of the use of the material as is reasonably possible (preferably at least one month in advance). The form for the written request may be completed in hard copy or on the law school’s web page, and will require the person submitting the request to (1) identify the copyrighted works in question by author, title, publication date, journal citation (where applicable), publisher (if known), and ISBN/ISSN (if known); (2) describe the nature of any copying and/or distribution (e.g., hard copies, scanning, uploading, etc.); (3) identify the name of the course and number of students to whom the material will be distributed; (4) indicate whether the person submitting the request has ever previously received permission to use the material in question, and attach any documents memorializing such permission; and (5) indicate whether the person submitting the request believes that a fair use privilege applies, and provide a brief justification for such privilege.

Many single copies made purely for research purposes will be covered by the doctrine of fair use, particularly where only a portion of the original work is copied. For such uses, the Copyright Coordinator may provide clearances that may cover certain uses, without requiring specific clearance requests for each individual copy.

If a faculty member disagrees with a decision of the Copyright Coordinator, appeal may be made to the Associate Dean for Faculty & Curriculum.