Intellectual property question

["Valerie A. Lang" <langval@xxxxxxxx>]

Colleagues,

Suppose a professor is developing a new course for which there is no
textbook available.  How can an instructor assign students to read a
selection of articles as the "text" for the course without running afoul of
copyright?

Essentially, the articles or excerpts would function as the text, but the
instructor would refer to them in course materials as assigned readings.

I can imagine three ways of doing this so far, but I'm not certain of the
copyright implications.

1) Copy articles or excerpts and distribute them to students in class. 

2) Assign students to locate hardcopies of articles and read them.

3) Assign students to read articles that are available online via research
databases.


Thanks in advance.

Valerie A. Lang
Instructor/Librarian
Hudson Valley Community College
80 Vandenburgh Avenue
Troy, NY  12180
518.629.7319