Here are authoritative answers to the critical legal questions that make digital collection development and management so challenging and complex for librarians, educators, technology leaders, information science educators and anyone involved with digitized content. This new work examines the intersection of digital library technology, and digital content, and the law. John N. Gathegi, Director of the School of Library and Information Science at the University of South Florida is uniquely qualified to address these questions from his decades of work as an attorney, author, speaker, and as a faculty member. From an opening discussion of general intellectual property issues to the application of copyright law to digital collections, the Handbook covers all the key topics in the field of intellectual property including several new issues, such as the problems of non-permanence, the complexity of multimedia content, issues surrounding open and closed access, evaluating data providers, proprietary search engines, derivative works, annotations and metadata, privacy, and more. Practitioners will also appreciate the book's practical checklists and compliance tools. Anyone looking for a definitive guide to intellectual property applied to the world of digital content will keep and use this book as an ongoing source of insight and critical information.--Publisher description.

Introduction to legal issues in digital libraries -- What are the special features of digital libraries and what are some of the legal impacts of those features? -- Who are content owners? -- What rights do content owners have and what are the limitations to those rights? -- How long do the rights last? -- How are rights acquired from owners? -- What should you know about digital media licenses? -- What is infringement and what are the results of infringement? -- What should you be aware of in digital rights management systems? -- What are service providers and what is the service provider safe harbor? -- What are copyright royalties? -- What is proprietary and private information? -- International aspects of copyright -- Appendix 1. Notices of termination of transfers and licenses (Code of federal regulations) -- Appendix 2. Exemption to prohibition against circumvention (Code of federal regulations) -- Appendix 3. Quick-reference compilation of notable points from each chapter -- Appendix 4. Quick-reference compilation of compliance checklists -- Appendix 5. Resources for finding copyright owners and clearances -- Appendix 6. Suggested analyses for hypothetical questions from each chapter.