Copyright Law for Faculty
What about the reserve and subsequent
use of student work in my instruction?
According to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) , students,
18 or older, are allowed to examine their scholastic records. The act
broadly defines scholastic records to include "all records, files,
documents, and other materials containing information directly related
to a student that are maintained by an educational agency or institution."
The Act permits only certain individuals to have access to these records,
those with legitimate scholastic interest in the records such as teachers.
Otherwise a school must obtain consent from the student before disclosing
any information contained in an educational record. (West's Encyclopedia
of American Law, vol. 8, pg.165)
Institutions have been threatened with lawsuits from students claiming they did not give written permission to their instructor allowing them to maintain their papers as examples of acceptable or superior work. One such incident at Portland State University was recently documented, where a professor kept copies of old papers and projects in the reserve library. Since this time, the university now requires students and instructors to sign a statement if the paper is to be reserved in any area of the campus. (Anderson, Judy. Treading Carefully through the murky legalities of electronic reserves. Computers in Libraries, June 2001.
The following information is necessary to include in a permission form:
- Specify the records that may be disclosed.
- State the purpose of the disclosure.
- Identify the party or class of parties to whom the disclosure may be made.
An example of a permission form that includes the above
If there is inaccurate information on this page, please send correction or comments to: lrcdesk@chesapeake.edu