Determining whether a published work is protected by copyright can be very confusing. Was the work published before 1923, without the © symbol, was copyright renewed? These are just a few of the things a faculty member must determine before distributing copies of a work to their class. Luckily there is a Web tool that can help. The Digial Copyright Slider is a tool that allows the visitor to slide the arrow to see exactly what they need to determine about a work to determine its use status. This doesn’t really address the issue of Fair Use but it is at least a place to start.

The copyright image used on the front page comes from here and was found through a Creative Commons search.