Notice Board

If you are teaching in the upcoming Fall term, this is a friendly reminder that copyright help is available if you plan to distribute copies of articles, chapters or other copyrighted material, or want to ensure your students have copyright-compliant ways to view particular films online.

U of L Copyright website resources:

• Copyright Permissions Flow Chart: Outlines when permission is and is not needed.
• Guidelines for Copying under Fair Dealing: Summarizes what fair dealing is under the Canadian Copyright Act and kinds of copying that may be permissible without permission or fee payment. See also the FAQ on fair dealing.
• Readings in Moodle: An overview of your options for distributing copyrighted materials in Moodle. See also the page on reusing content from a prior semester.
• Readings on E-Reserve: Find out how to put readings and other items on E-Reserve as an alternative to Moodle. In some cases, the Library may be able to acquire e-book excerpts you need via Interlibrary Loan for placement on E-Reserves, or you may send scans you have made to the copyright office for formatting. (Print Reserve remains available if you would like physical materials to be available for students to sign out).
• Articles in Library e-journals: Use the Copyright Permissions Look-up tool to determine, for example, whether you can download an article from a particular journal into Moodle, or share it with a colleague outside of the U of L.
• Chapters in Library e-books: Find out how many users may access an e-book (or an e-book chapter) concurrently.
• Harvard Business Review (HBR) articles: An FAQ on options for using “top 500” online HBR articles as assigned readings in your courses. 
• Copyright tutorials: For background information on copyright, check out our Copyright Q & As series of interactive copyright tutorials and a short Copyright Course in Moodle (self-registration; seven modules, each about four to six minutes long).

If your students will need online access to particular films for your course, please contact your subject librarian for assistance in determining whether streaming access is in place or can be arranged. In the event the Library owns the DVD but streaming access is unavailable for educational institutions, subject librarians will ask the University Copyright Advisor to assess whether the film can be made available on YuJa under the Copyright Act’s fair dealing provision. Investigating streaming availability and converting a DVD to a streaming format are time-consuming, so please submit your online film viewing requests to your subject librarian well in advance of your desired screening date.

It’s important to note the Copyright Act prohibits the circumvention of any technological protection measures that control access to works such as films on DVDs. This means we cannot use any of the programs that are widely available to rip a video file from a DVD in order to make the film available to a class.

The University Copyright Advisor office is happy to assist you with permissions clearance for your course materials. If you would like some help, feel free to:

• e-mail your course readings list or syllabus to copyright@uleth.ca, or
• e-mail individual readings as you assign them throughout the semester to copyright@uleth.ca, or
• provide me with temporary course access to enable a permissions assessment of copyrighted content in your Moodle course.

For each item or reading we will:

• assess whether permission is needed
• determine if needed permission is covered by an applicable license agreement or statutory user’s right
• cover the cost of pay-per-use licensing through the Library’s dedicated course materials licensing fund, when possible
• on request, format PDF scans of your selected book chapters for posting on Moodle or E-Reserve
• provide a persistent link that you can post in Moodle or distribute to students to ensure they can access items in subscribed Library databases without encountering publishers’ paywalls.

When you ask us for help in assessing copyright/permissions for course materials you wish to distribute in Moodle, we will provide you with a permissions summary for all items assessed. We can also lend a hand if you wish to explore potential alternatives to expensive textbooks for future courses. 

Let us know if you wish to book an appointment to discuss your copyright questions or needs in detail. As well, you are welcome to make arrangements for a class presentation or workshop on copyright if your students will be working on assignments or projects that require knowledge of copyright, reproduction permission issues, or the ability to find and use copyright-compliant content.