[NABS-L] Proof of Purchase

[Chris Nusbaum]

Hello All:

I hope this email finds each of you enjoying a smooth start to your spring
semester! It seems that, on this first day of classes for me, I find myself
stumped on an accessibility question which I'm hoping you can help with. I
received an email this morning from my DSS coordinator asking me to provide
her with a "proof of purchase" for each of my textbooks. She says that
students who receive alternative accessible copies of books are still
required to buy the books from the campus bookstore in order to avoid
copyright infringement on the part of the DSS office. As far as I
understand, if DSS obtains a book from an accessible online resource such as
AccessText, Bookshare, or Learning Ally, the Chaffee Amendment would protect
them from copyright problems. Furthermore, if they get the accessible book
directly from the book's publisher, the publisher is granting them access to
the text, which should also protect the college from copyright problems. But
my DSS coordinator is telling me I still need to buy my books from the
Campus Store anyway.

So, can anyone explain how this works? Do I really need to buy the print
books if I already got them from DSS in an accessible format? If I do need
to buy them, what do I do with the print books once I get them? It seems
like it would be a waste to buy a perfectly good book only for it to sit on
my desk as I read the accessible copy which DSS got somewhere else. I want
to do all that I need to in order to get access to my textbooks, but I also
don't want to spend money unnecessarily. Thank you in advance for helping me
make sense of this.

Chris Nusbaum

Sent from my iPhone