Jane Secker, Chair of the CILIP Information Literacy Group, reports on the UUK / GuildHE Copyright Working Group event, which took place on 20th June 2017.
On 20th June the CILIP Information Literacy Group sponsored the Universities UK / GuildHE Copyright Working Group Summer Event at Woburn House in London. The event was mainly attended by copyright officers in higher education and discussions centred around the relationship between licences and exceptions and the role of copyright education. The event was chaired by Professor Ronan Deazley from Queens University, Belfast.
The day included workshop activities which were facilitated by Chris Morrison (University of Kent), Jane Secker (City, University of London) Neil Sprunt (University of Manchester), Kate Vasili (Middlesex University), Monique Ritchie (Brunel University) and Ralph Weedon (University of Strathclyde) (all members of the UUK / GuildHE team). The purpose of the day was to discuss a range of hot topics related to copyright in the higher education sector and try to see if a consensus could be reached about institutional practice and policies.
We had around 45 delegates and the day opened with a keynote from Professor Deazley entitled Licences, Exceptions and General Confusion (click link to see the slides).Topics for discussion in the morning workshop included a range of issues where copyright exceptions and licences come into play, particularly looking at what constitutes fair dealing in an educational context. Everyone worked really hard and we had some great discussions about how comfortable we felt about certain activities, and what different institutions felt was acceptable practice. The topics we discussed included:
- Use of images and audiovisual resources in teaching (e.g. PowerPoint slides ) and recording of lectures and uploading to VLEs
- Use of images and other third party content in research outputs (to include online submission of theses)
- Provision of scanned readings under Section 36 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act and the relationship with the CLA HE Licence
- Use of readings for research purposes including Interlibrary supply / interlibrary loan (ILL) and sharing of resources amongst research groups
- Quotation and reuse of third party copyright content (songs, poems, short stories, logos etc.) in original creative coursework.
Following lunch (and a quick fire copyright quiz to wake everyone up) we were joined In the afternoon by representatives from five external organisations (click links to see their presentations):
- Andrew Yeates, ERA (Educational Recording Agency – no presentation)
- Sarah Brear and David Duffield, Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA)
- Henry Petit, NLA Media Access
- Paras Junejo, Intellectual Property Office
- Ben Taplin, Jisc Collections.
Following a lightning talk from each organisation, we held a number of world cafe style discussions to allow delegates to share their thoughts with the guests about what was working with regards to their organisation’s relationship with the sector, where improvements could be made and to raise any specific questions they had. We will be sharing notes from this session with delegates and the guests shortly.
Overall it was a really tiring day (copyright can be hard as Professor Deazley told us at the start of the day!) but feedback from delegates suggested that despite the warm weather and hard work they were expected to do, everyone got a lot out of the event.
Quite a number of us ended the day by attending the launch of the Copyright Cortex which is a new online resource dedicated to copyright and digital cultural heritage developed by Professor Deazley and also sponsored by ILG. The Cortex provide libraries, archives, museums and other memory institutions with information and expert commentary on how copyright law affects the creation and management of digital cultural heritage.
