Few issues related to academic library work have found their way into both the popular press and the professional literature quite so often over the past year as those related to copyright management. Whether the topic is Google Print (also known as Google Book Search < http://books.google.com/>), publication in open access journals, or author self‐archiving in institutional repositories, there is no question that today's librarian has an opportunity to play an important role on campus in discussions of copyright management and copyright compliance. While each of the topics noted above is relatively new to our work, another key arena for discussions of copyright is, as Austin notes, almost a century old, i.e. the creation and management of reserve collections. In few areas do library services interact so directly with classroom practices as in the management of reserves, and the impact of new technologies on our understanding of the application of “fair use” to reserve collections suggests that we are now in the midst of a sea change in professional practice not seen since the introduction of commercial copiers. With best practice still emergent in areas such as staffing for copyright management, liaison to faculty making use of electronic reserves, and integrating electronic reserves into course management systems, there is clearly a place for a book that provides a cogent overview of these issues. Unfortunately, this extremely slim volume is not that book.
What Austin is able to provide in the very few pages allotted to text in this monograph is a cursory introduction to the history of reserve services and a brief overview of some of the major technological and legislative developments that influence current practice. The fact that Austin discusses recent developments such as the passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and the Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization (TEACH) Act in just over three pages of text suggests precisely how cursory his review of the issues is likely to be. While those charged with managing reserve collections (print and electronic) will likely find a number of useful bullet points in this volume, any serious query about emergent issues related to electronic reserves will have to be referred to a more substantial text, e.g. Kenneth Crews, Copyright Law for Librarians and Educators (2005), or Gretchen Hoffman, Copyright in Cyberspace 2 (2005).
Perhaps the most valuable contribution that Austin makes in this volume is the call to action issued in its final chapter. Collaboration with faculty, with campus bookstores, and with campus computing, he writes, is essential to the library meeting its potential as a vital resource for campus discussions of copyright management and the impact of new legislation and new technology on scholarly and classroom practice. This is true, and, as noted above, it is an issue that goes far beyond the scope of discussions of reserve collections. If Austin's brief introduction to the history of reserve services can help to spark this sort of collaboration, it will have made a worthwhile contribution to the literature. Given its length, however, and the concomitant lack of depth to its analysis of what are genuinely complicated issues, it is more likely that the current work will simply serve as a springboard for a more substantial work yet to come.
