It is important to consider copyright and licensing conditions when creating and sharing digital materials. The following FAQs have been generously prepared by the members of the College Libraries Ontario (CLO) Copyright Interest Group to help library staff navigate these considerations.
Please also consult with in-house copyright or risk-management experts within your institution while making use of digitization and digital resource sharing functionality in Alma and Primo VE.
Copyright gives its owner the exclusive right to make copies of their creative works in any format. So, generally speaking, copyright prohibits making copies for resource sharing.
However, fair dealing and eResource licence agreements may permit us to share parts of resources with internal and external users.
Fair dealing is a users’ right found in the Canadian Copyright Act. Amongst other things, fair dealing allows educational institutions to make copies of materials, in paper or digital form, within reasonable limits to support the teaching, learning and research activities of faculty, staff and students. Reasonable limits on aspects such as the amount copied and distribution are generally guided by the fair dealing policy of an institution.
Many CLO colleges have adopted CICan’s Fair Dealing Guidelines (refer to this handout for more information). However, be sure to check the fair dealing policy or guidelines of your institution. Also, a few colleges have a licence with Access Copyright that would guide their copying practices.
Yes, there are exceptions such as:
The eResources our libraries provide are typically governed by licences libraries signed with third-party publishers and vendors, which state what uses are permitted as well as any limitations. These licence terms are negotiated by OCLS or individual libraries to ensure reasonable educational uses and resource sharing are permitted when possible. The permissions provided by these licences vary, so it is important to check each licence’s terms of use prior to any use of the content.
The general consensus is that the licence terms for an eResource supersede fair dealing rights. Therefore, if the licence does not permit copying or limits it to less than the 10% benchmark under most fair dealing guidelines, libraries are advised to abide by the licence.
OCLS maintains the CLEAR database, which identifies the permitted uses of the databases that OCLS manages on behalf of CLO libraries. Your library may also have resources that are not licensed through OCLS. Depending on whether your library has a local instance of CLEAR, these licences may not be included in CLEAR.
It is your library’s responsibility to check the licence terms of a resource when there is a question not answered by CLEAR. Many of these licences can be found in Consortia Manager. Your institution may also have its own system for recording and managing its licences.
When reviewing a licence, check for phrases and headings related to Interlibrary Loan or Fair Dealing. Licences that contain provisions for either may permit digital resource lending. If you are uncertain whether the terms of your licence permit digital resource sharing, consult with your copyright specialist or offer an alternative that fits within the scope of the licence. For example, some licences may prohibit the sharing of content via electronic methods, however, may permit you to fax a copy to the lending library.
To check the relevant CLEAR record for an eResource, first click the “More Information” or the “Permitted Uses” link on the item’s record in Page 1+. This takes you to the public record for the item’s database. To view the staff record, append ‘/staff’ to the URL of the public record. You should see a CLEAR record with three entries under the Interlibrary Loan heading.
For eResource sharing, staff at the lending library should first check if there are any additional notes that may affect the sharing of this eResource. If there are none, proceed to the next step. Otherwise, send the request along to your library’s copyright specialist for their advice.
Second, staff should check whether an eResource’s CLEAR page states “Yes”, “Ask”, or “No” under ILL Electronic. This will determine what you can do with the eResource:
Contact the OCLS Help Desk (help@ocls.ca) if you are not able to find licence information in CLEAR.
Note: Please refer to the Page 1+ Resource Sharing – Sample Staff Workflow for Digital Resource Sharing Requests for instructions on how to process requests for digital resource sharing requests. OCLS is conducting an audit of the CLEAR database. At this stage, OCLS recommends rejecting requests when the public CLEAR record is coded as Ask or No for ILL. OCLS will update the Workflow and provide additional instructions for colleges once the audit is complete.
Licensed streaming videos are typically not available through interlibrary loan or resource sharing.
Most e-books from library databases are protected by digital locks and have limits on how many pages can be downloaded for personal use or sharing, provided interlibrary loan is permitted by the license. If a request for an e-book does not specify page numbers, be sure to follow up with the patron. E-books from platforms like EBSCO eBook Collection or ProQuest Ebook Central vary in how many pages can be downloaded. Some titles do not allow any downloads at all, while some titles permit more than the 10% benchmark of fair dealing. The item record usually includes information about download limits.
Yes, a library may identify certain resources for exclusion due to factors like potential copyright risk and the demand impact on their services.
For example, high-demand resources such as textbooks on short-term loan or on reserve may not be feasible given the time and work required to take them off circulation to digitize. Also, there could be a higher risk to copy from commercial textbooks for cross-institutional digital lending.
A library’s lending policies and workflow can also determine whether some materials should be excluded from the service.
These guardrails help ensure copyright compliance and mitigate misuse by patrons.
Fair dealing is evaluated on a case-by-case basis so a patron should make a new request if they want to reuse the material in a different context (e.g., faculty requesting the same book chapter for another class). This helps a library to track statistics and monitor potential usage that falls outside of fair dealing or licence agreements. We also want to reduce the chance of the link to a digital copy being shared with someone other than the requestor.
Borrowing libraries will need to monitor patron requests for copyright compliance and potential impact on workflow.
For example, cumulative requests from a patron for different chapters from the same book likely fall outside of fair dealing (multiple chapters that exceed 10% of the book). In this case, the copyright expert at the college should be notified so they can reach out to the patron to investigate.
Another example is multiple requests by different students for the same chapter of a book. While these requests may fall within fair dealing (a short excerpt for the educational use of students), they add to a library’s workload. If the chapter is required for a course, the faculty should be the one making the request and sharing the copy with students.
Libraries can also consider the number of items from a patron they can reasonably accept for their workflow and whether there should be a limit depending on the patron group (e.g., request limit for students may differ from the limit for faculty and staff).
Copyright free or public domain materials are those in which their copyright has expired (70 years after the passing of the creator) or the creators waived their copyright (e.g., images marked as public domain or CC0).
Copyright friendly or openly licensed materials are those in which the creators retain their copyright but have allowed people to copy, use and share their work under certain conditions. For example, open educational resources are typically available under a Creative Commons licence that permits their reuse and adaptation (refer to The Learning Portal’s OER Module for more information).
In the landmark Alberta v. Access Copyright (2012) case, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that under fair dealing, faculty may provide copies of excerpts of copyrighted works to facilitate the private study of their students. CICan’s Fair Dealing Guidelines have also provided guidelines to assist faculty in their teaching and facilitation of student learning. However, refer to your college’s fair dealing policy or Access Copyright licence for the most relevant guidance.
Generally speaking, faculty may share a copy obtained through eResource sharing with students in a course provided that access is limited to those students (a copy uploaded to a LMS with student-restricted access is acceptable).
This type of request is outside the scope of our guidelines for digitization. However, section 32 of the Copyright Act addresses some conditions under which it is permissible to create an alternate format. Additionally, institutions may undertake a detailed fair dealing analysis to determine whether the request is fair dealing.
Ultimately, we recommend contacting the staff at your college who are responsible for accessibility or using an alternate format database such as the Accessible Content E-Portal to assist in facilitating this request.
The Learning Portal’s Copyright Learning Modules are an excellent resource to learn more about copyright, licensing and Creative Commons.
You may also find it helpful to ask how other libraries have handled a copyright issue through the CLO Copyright listserv maintained by OCLS: copyright-cig@gaggle.email