To Copy or Not to Copy

At this year's annual FIL conference Interlend 2016, there was probably a collective gasp in horror as we found out that we, as ILL providers, perhaps should not have been sending copies of book chapters to others libraries for their reader's private study purposes.



As you can imagine we were a little concerned as there seemed to be a little confusion over this matter and we did have two conflicting ideas surrounding this very important topic. However, today I received some clarification from Graham Titley that he asked me to share via the FIL Blog so here it is:

Following Conference it was agreed that I would investigate the situation in regards to the advice about copying and supplying from books. As a result I have an apology to make!

As part of the presentation I mentioned that the Copyright Design and Patents Act (s41) prevented the copying and supply of book chapters. I have since discovered that this section was not meant to apply to document delivery/Inter-Library loans despite the words used in the text.

It was intended to allow libraries to supply copies of part or the whole of a work to another library if you could not reasonably find out who could give permission – a sort of allowed sharing of ‘orphan works’.

You can now breathe a sigh of relief because s42A allows libraries to make and supply a copy of one article in any one issue of a periodical or a reasonable proportion of any other published work - providing a declaration/request is received. (Note: it does not state chapter only ‘reasonable proportion’!).

The section goes on to state that any term of a contract (or licence) that purports to prevent or restrict the doing of an act that would be lawful under this section is unenforceable. This means that providing you think the proportion is ‘reasonable’ you CAN utilise all e-resources to fulfill ILL/Document Supply requests for end-users, regardless of the products terms.

So carry on what you are doing!

My thanks to Kate for prompting the re investigation and to Mala for also reminding me that I had done some investigating early in 2015 which I had forgotten!

I really enjoyed Conference and congratulate the Committee and my fellow speakers for providing a well-run, engaging and informative programme. My apologies to you all for my error in interpretation!

I will supply a corrected version of the talk and ‘quiz’ slides – so please make sure the versions you download from the FiL website (when available) all state ‘corrected 1^st July 2016’ on the title slide.

Regards

Graham

Many thanks Graham - collective sigh of relief all round! Phew

 photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/13836188@N04/2233139278">pulling hair out</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">(license)</a>