Director of the Copyright Advisory Office
Photo Credit: Sam Scott
Kenneth D. Crews
Director
Copyright Advisory Office
Columbia University
Kenneth Crews joined Columbia University in January 2008 as founding director of the Copyright Advisory Office (CAO). The principal service of the CAO is to provide guidance with respect to the relationship between copyright law and the research, teaching, and service mission of the University community. Beginning in 1994, Dr. Crews was director of the first such copyright office if its type, based on the IUPUI campus of Indiana University (IU). At Indiana he also held a named professorship in the Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis, with a joint appointment in the IU School of Library and Information Science.
His main research interest has been the relationship of copyright law to the needs of higher education. His first copyright book, Copyright, Fair Use, and the Challenge for Universities: Promoting the Progress of Higher Education, was published by the University of Chicago Press in October 1993, and it reevaluated understandings of copyright and policymaking at the university. A more recent book, Copyright Law for Librarians and Educators, published in a fully revised second edition by the American Library Association in 2006, has been widely received as an insightful and practical source for understanding copyright law. Crews has been an invited speaker on college and university campuses and at conferences in 43 U.S. states and on five continents. He has participated in many governmental commissions and task forces addressing copyright issues.
Dr. Crews brings a variety of academic and professional experiences to his duties at the University. He earned his undergraduate degree in history from Northwestern University and received his law degree from Washington University in St. Louis. He practiced general business and corporate law in Los Angeles from 1980 to 1990, primarily for the entertainment industry. During those years, Crews returned to graduate school and he earned his MLS and PhD degrees from UCLA's School of Library and Information Science. Between 1990 and 1994 he was a professor of business law in California.
Photo Credit: Brian McLaughlin/Syracuse University LibraryDuring 2003, Crews was the Intellectual Property Scholar for the Center for Intellectual Property and Copyright in the Digital Environment, University of Maryland University College, and he has served as a faculty member for the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center since its inception in 2003. Dr. Crews was the first recipient of a major award from the American Library Association (ALA) in 2005. Named for a leading advocate of public rights, the L. Ray Patterson Copyright Award was granted in a festive ceremony at the ALA Annual Meeting.
Crews brings a wide range of experience to the task. He has been a faculty member in three disciplines: law, business, and library and information science. His publications encompass the fields of copyright, constitutional law, political history, and library science. He has worked in a university archives and conducted historical research on windmills and tide mills on Long Island, N.Y., for the National Park Service. In rare moments of recreation Crews enjoys bicycling, hiking, architecture, astronomy, archeology, art, and early rock and roll. He is married and has two college-age children.
Selected Publications by Kenneth D. Crews
Books
Copyright Law for Librarians and Educators. Second edition. Chicago, Ill.: American Library Association, 2006.
Copyright Essentials for Librarians and Educators. Chicago, Ill.: American Library Association, 2000.
Copyright, Fair Use, and the Challenge for Universities: Promoting the Progress of Higher Education. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, October 1993.
Corwin's Constitution: Essays and Insights of Edward S. Corwin. New York: Greenwood Press, 1986.
Edward S. Corwin and the American Constitution: A Bibliographical Analysis. Foreword by Alpheus Thomas Mason. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985.
Journal Articles
Copyright Duration and the Progressive Degeneration of a Constitutional Doctrine. Syracuse Law Review 55 (2005): 189–250.
"The Law of Fair Use and the Illusion of Fair-Use Guidelines." The Ohio State Law Journal 62 (2001): 602–700.
"Distance Education and Copyright Law: The Limits and Meaning of Copyright Policy." Journal of College and University Law 27 (Summer 2000): 15–51.
"Perspectives on Fair-Use Guidelines for Education and Libraries." Edited by Kenneth D. Crews and Dwayne K. Buttler. Journal of the American Society for Information Science 50 (December 1999): 1303–1357 [series of nine articles; three written by Dr. Crews].
"Fair Use of Unpublished Works: Burdens of Proof and the Integrity of Copyright." Arizona State Law Journal 31 (Spring 1999): 1–93.
"Harmonization and the Goals of Copyright: Property Rights or Cultural Progress?" Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 6 (Fall 1998): 117–138.
"Copyright and Distance Education: Displays, Performances and the Limitations of condensedt Law." In Growing Pains: Adapting Copyright for Libraries, Education, and Society, pp. 369–385. Edited by Laura N. Gasaway. Littleton, Colo.: Fred B. Rothman, 1997.
"Copyright at a Turning Point: Corporate Responses to the Changing Environment." Journal of Intellectual Property Law 3 (Spring 1996): 277–316.
"What Qualifies as 'Fair Use'?" Chronicle of Higher Education, May 17, 1996, B1–2.
"Copyright Law and Information Policy Planning: Public Rights of Use in the 1990's and Beyond." Journal of Government Information 22 (1995): 87–99.