HathiTrust Verdict Could Transform University Access for the Blind; Library Journal, 11/7/12

Meredith Schwartz, Library Journal; HathiTrust Verdict Could Transform University Access for the Blind: "Now that the HathiTrust verdict has held that digitizing works for the purpose of providing access to the blind and print-disabled is not only a fair but a transformative use, schools can feel safer hanging onto those scans until the next student who needs them comes along, and can spend their efforts on improving them or scanning more books, instead of doing the same bare minimum of texts over and over. And Goldstein believes making the text available to sighted persons to crowdsource the manual work would also be fair use. Even more revolutionary than just keeping their own book scans, the Honorable Harold Baer, Jr., held that the University of Michigan libraries can be considered an authorized Chafee entity. That means the library could make digitized collections available not just to the university’s own blind and print disabled students, or even to blind and print disabled students at other colleges, but to any American who qualifies as blind or print disabled under the Chafee amendment."