When individual societies do take on the issue, they do so in meetings of the National Humanities Alliance or the American Council of Learned Societies. What little such societies do know is through ARL's leadership in the National Humanities Alliance where Duane Webster has helped to create a committee on copyright and libraries. He has spoken to the Alliance on several occasions and continues to help members understand the issues. There are reasons that scholarly societies have been so slow and relatively silent. First, most societies have extremely limited resources.
Most scholarly associations are small or medium-sized groups with limited, overtaxed staffs.
Some have no full-time paid staff members at all. Few have ready access to legal counsel. Most do not have a technical computer person on staff. The scholarly organizations that do not reside on a university campus were on the whole slow to get on the Internet because until recently access for an entire of fice was costly and because the technical expertise was lacking. The second reason that scholarly societies have not been vocal in the copyright in an electronic age conversation is that the challenges of the electronic future are paralyzing.