University of Tennessee Library Lectures, 1976-1978 (no. 28-30)

Copyright has been a much debated issue of the mid-1970s. Julius Marke here addresses the inherent conflict between the rights of the creator and the needs of the users of intellectual property. He identifies the problems of libraries as disseminators of information and the possible impact of new federal copyright legislation.

In lecture twenty-nine, Doralyn Hickey defines a central problem in American librarianship as a struggle "with the dilemma of providing relevant collections and services while at the same time preserving the materials entrusted to its care so they may be available for serious research and investigation by future generations." Her approach to this problem encompasses a dialectic analysis of American bibliographic history.

The thirtieth lecture in the series celebrates the contributions which a librarian may make to research, especially in an interdisciplinary field. Specifically, Dena Epstein describes her twenty-year search for information on black folk music in America prior to the Civil War. Her discussion of sources which may be used across disciplines and her hard-won but evident success should serve as encouragement to librarians interested in research.