Course Materials and Copyright

Order textbooks through the Campus Store’s VIU Textbook Adoption. If you have any questions regarding textbook adoptions, contact Debbie Richards at Debbie.Richards@viu.ca

If you have decided to adopt an Open Textbook for your course, please note that the Campus Store will offer printed copies of your BC Open Digital Textbook for purchase.

The physical bookstore is currently closed, but the e-commerce site is operational for physical and digital items with home delivery and social distancing pick-up available at the store.

Please note that due to publisher restrictions, most digital textbooks cannot be made available through the Library. Also, due to necessary materials quarantining procedures for Fall 2020, the Library will not be able to place instructor copies of print textbooks on course reserve for short-term loan.

There may be some restrictions on using textbook supplementary materials in VIULearn. Consult the Terms of Use for the supplementary materials or contact the textbook publisher. You may be able to include material based on the Fair Dealing Exception in the Copyright Act. Contact copyright@viu.ca

Order custom courseware through the Campus Store’s VIU Custom Courseware Adoption. If you have any questions regarding custom courseware, contact Janice Speed at Janice.Speed@viu.ca

The Campus Store is diligently working to make as many materials available digitally as possible to accommodate the shift to online learning, including offering a digital option, along with the physical option, for all custom courseware.

Please note that many library-licensed materials may be used in coursepacks. Contact your Liaison Librarian or research.help@viu.ca to confirm if the material is licensed for coursepack use.

VIULearn is an excellent choice for student access to course materials that also helps with copyright matters because it is secure, password-protected, and only accessible by students enrolled in your course.

The easiest method to provide access to course materials is to create a link in VIULearn.

For library materials, use a stable link. Consult VIU Library’s Stable Links Guide and CIEL’s Creating a Link in Content. Most library-licensed materials allow stable links. (Note that Harvard Business Review does not permit linking to articles under its license.)

For material on the internet, first ensure you are linking to a legitimate and reputable site and not to copyright-infringing material that has been posted without the consent of the copyright owner, and that might consequently be subject to take-down at any time. Read any website Terms of Use to make sure linking is not prohibited. Do not “frame” the other webpage content, and by the link you should also include a citation with the author, copyright owner, and source of the materials, to ensure it is clear the website content is not your own material and you are not affiliated with it.

In cases where a link is not available, you may upload course materials if

• you are the copyright owner;
• you have received permission from the copyright owner;
• the material is in the public domain;
• the material is licensed for such use (e.g., Library license) or has a permissive license (e.g., Creative Commons License); or
• you have conducted a Fair Dealing analysis.

If you want to digitize physical materials to upload to VIULearn, there are several options, including:

• Using phone apps (e.g., Genius Scan, Adobe Scan) to digitize materials, and using an OCR tool to make the digitized materials more accessible
• Using VIU Print Services

In each case, when digitizing materials it is your responsibility to ensure you are complying with copyright laws and copying within the limits allowed. See the Fair Dealing Exception or contact copyright@viu.ca

Library Digital Materials

Posting stable links to Library materials in VIULearn (rather than uploading a PDF copy) ensures students are accessing the most recent version of an article and is more likely to be copyright compliant. Consult VIU Library’s Stable Links Guide and CIEL’s Creating a Link in Content. Read the license’s Terms of Use for materials to see if linking to or distributing digital copies to students is allowed. Example of the Terms of Use for a licensed journal.

The Library collection includes thousands of open access (OA) journal titles, as well as open books and other open content, that are selected for relevance to learning and scholarship at VIU. Find OA versions of materials using Library OA search and/or Google Scholar (VIU access).

For more information on OA and Open Education Resources (OERs), consult the VIU Library OA Guide

Library Print Materials

Library Collections: To access print materials from the Nanaimo campus, please place a hold through our online catalogue. At this time, delivery is by mail or through curbside pickup. To have your material mailed to you, please select "VIU Library - Mail Delivery" as your pickup method when placing your hold. Staff will contact you by email with information on how to pick up your hold after they have processed it if you have selected Nanaimo campus as your pickup location.

Course Reserves: If you need an article or book chapter from a print source in the Library collection to include as a digital course reading in your VIULearn course, please contact library.reserves@viu.ca. Library staff will scan the material and email it to you in PDF format. Please ensure your request is copyright compliant. See the Fair Dealing Exception or contact copyright@viu.ca. Due to the need to quarantine materials before and after lending, the Library will not be able to offer course reserves for short-term loan during the Fall 2020 term. We will reassess options for Spring 2020 course reserves later in the fall.

The Library does not typically acquire course textbooks for the collection. Liaison librarians are happy to consult with faculty about alternatives to commercial textbooks, such as creating custom reading lists from resources already available through the Library, and finding Open Access (OA) materials, Open Education Resources (OERs), and Creative Commons licensed resources.

Always consult the Licenses/Terms of Use for Open Education Resources (OERs) or Open Access (OA) materials before use.

The Library collection includes thousands of OA journal titles, as well as open books and other open content, that are selected for relevance to learning and scholarship at VIU. Find OA versions of materials using Library OA search and/or Google Scholar (VIU access).

For more information on OA and OERs, consult the VIU Library OA Guide

You can browse BCCampus’s Open Textbooks 101 for guidance on available open textbooks and adoption processes. If you have decided to adopt a BC Open Digital Textbook for your course, the Campus Store will offer printed copies for purchase.

The easiest method is to provide a link to the material because this does not entail making a copy. First, ensure you are linking to a legitimate and reputable site and not to copyright-infringing material that has been posted without the consent of the copyright owner, and that might consequently be subject to take-down at any time. Read any website Terms of Use to make sure linking is not prohibited. Do not “frame” the other webpage content, and by the link you should also include a citation with the author, copyright owner, and source of the materials, to ensure it is clear the website content is not your own material and you are not affiliated with it.

Materials in the public domain are not copyright protected and you may copy and distribute them. However, finding and using public domain materials can be tricky. Consult this helpful Public Domain Guide.

The Fair Dealing Exception in the Copyright Act allows any person to use a copyrighted work for the allowable purposes of research, private study, education, satire, parody, criticism, review, or news reporting, without the copyright holder’s permission. To qualify for the fair dealing exception, two tests must be passed: Is the dealing for an allowable purpose? Is the dealing “fair”?

The CMEC Fair Dealing Guidelines and Section III of CAUT’s Guidelines for the Use of Copyrighted Material are helpful for conducting a fair dealing analysis for an educational setting. For further support, contact copyright@viu.ca

Fair dealing is an interpretation. To lower risk, consider the guidelines above and the following best practices:

• use the content only once;
• use the smallest amount of the work necessary for your purpose and consider the “short excerpt” amounts in the CMEC and CAUT guidelines above;
• make the content accessible for the smallest amount of time possible to a narrow audience of your students in a password-protected learning management system (e.g., VIULearn);
• remove content as soon as it is no longer needed;
• document all the materials used under fair dealing to be consistent and to have a record of your decision-making process in case of a challenge; and
• include a copyright notice, so that students understand the material may be copyrighted and should not be further distributed or posted online.

Sample copyright notice for fair dealing material:
“This copy is made solely for your personal use for research, private study, education, parody, satire, criticism or review only. Further reproduction, fixation, distribution, transmission, dissemination, communication, or any other uses, may be an infringement of copyright if done without securing the permission of the copyright owner. You may not distribute, email or otherwise communicate these materials to any other person.”

If the materials or images are short excerpts that qualify for the Fair Dealing Exception in the Copyright Act, then you may use them in your slide decks and distribute them to your students. See the Fair Dealing Exception or contact copyright@viu.ca

If the materials or images are in the public domain, then there is no copyright protection and you may use them. However, finding and using public domain materials can be tricky. Consult this helpful Public Domain Guide.

If the materials or images are permissively licensed (e.g., Creative Commons License) or open access, then you may use them in your slide decks according to their Terms of Use, which usually includes attribution among other terms.

If you are seeking permission from a commercial publisher, such as a book or journal publisher, then you may be able to quickly obtain permission through the Copyright Clearance Center.

If you cannot obtain permission through the CCC, you may want to contact the publisher directly, using their website’s Permissions, Reprints, or Copyright service.

The following template may also be helpful for directly contacting publishers or individuals for copyright permission:

SUBJECT LINE:  Copyright permission request for ARTICLE/GRAPH/IMAGE/OTHER

MONTH DATE, YEAR

Attention:  PUBLISHER OR COPYRIGHT OWNER

I am requesting permission to

SCAN OR DIGITIZE AND DISTRIBUTE TO MY STUDENTS

UPLOAD TO A PASSWORD-PROTECTED ONLINE COURSE

UPLOAD TO ELECTRONIC RESERVES

SAVE ON MY STUDENTS’ CD/DVD/MEMORY STICK

the following:

Authors or creators of the work (year of the work). Title of the work. Journal or book or Website the work appears in. City of publication: Publisher. Volume, issue, pages of the work. URL of the work.

Approximately ## UNDERGRADUATE/GRADUATE students will access the work during the 2020 WINTER TERM (JANUARY - APRIL) on a Vancouver Island University password-protected Website.  The course name is CODE ### COURSE TITLE GOES HERE.  No profit will be gained from the use of the work.

Please confirm if permission is granted to use the work.  If you prefer to grant blanket permission for the work, please indicate that preference in your response otherwise I will renew my request as necessary.

Thank you.

TITLE, NAME, DEGREE
DEPARTMENT, FACULTY
ROOM NUMBER AND BUILDING NAME
Vancouver Island University
Nanaimo, BC
Canada  V9R 5S5
TELEPHONE NUMBER

The Library has films and videos that are licensed for use in courses, including online films and videos.

Commercial streaming services such as Netflix, Crave, etc. are for individual users, who must comply with their Terms of Use. For example, you wouldn’t be able to show a Netflix film to students in the classroom. Outside of the classroom, if students are individual subscribers of a streaming service, then they would be able to watch a film independently with their own accounts. However, some students may not have access to those services and streaming services may have different content available in various countries.

If you want to show your students a video from the internet for an educational or training purpose, then you may show the video as long as

• the video is available through the internet;
• you did not break or circumvent a digital protection measure (digital lock) that restricts access to the work or to the internet site;
• there is no clearly visible notice (not merely the copyright symbol) on the website or on the video itself that prohibits the use or reproduction of the video;
• you do not suspect that the video was posted without the consent of the owner of the video; and
• you identify the source of the work and, if available and applicable, the author, performer, maker, or broadcaster of the work. 

What can you do if you have a scheduled screening for a film that is not available online and your course is online-only?

Please contact copyright@viu.ca to find out what may (or may not) be possible.

Note: Information for showing films and videos in the classroom will be updated when classes resume on campus.

You may wish to include a copyright notice to remind your students that course materials are typically copyright-protected and should not be further distributed or posted online. For example, you may not want students to distribute course materials you have created such as presentation slides, recordings, or assignments. Students also should not be distributing course materials that are provided to them in their courses under specific Terms of Use, Permissions, Library licenses, and Fair Dealing or Educational Exceptions.

Some faculty are happy to share the course materials they have created and use a license (e.g., Creative Commons License) to indicate how their work may be shared and under what terms. Remember that the material you did not create may be copyright-protected and you have used it under specific Terms of Use, Permissions, Library licenses, and Fair Dealing or Educational Exceptions and thus it should not be further distributed by your students. It is helpful to indicate clearly what is your own content that you have shared under your license (e.g., Creative Commons License) and what is third-party content that should not be shared further.

Sample notices alerting students to copyright considerations

General copyright statement to protect both faculty-created materials and other copyright-protected materials:

“The materials you receive for this course are protected by copyright and to be used for this course only. You do not have permission to upload the course materials to any website. If you require clarification, please consult your professor.”

Statement for individual course materials you did not create and are distributing to your students and/or uploading to VIULearn:

“This copy is made solely for your personal use for research, private study, education, parody, satire, criticism or review only. Further reproduction, fixation, distribution, transmission, dissemination, communication, or any other uses, may be an infringement of copyright if done without securing the permission of the copyright owner. You may not distribute, email or otherwise communicate these materials to any other person.”

Students own the copyright in the works they create in their courses (except for third-party content they are using but did not create). If you want to use examples of student work in current or future courses, then you have to obtain the student’s permission (unless the use is considered insubstantial or Fair Dealing, and both determinations require an analysis that can be complex).

For the third-party material used in a student work, you will need to confirm the student obtained the copyright owner’s permission or the materials are in the public domain, used under the Fair Dealing Exception, or licensed for such use (e.g., Creative Commons License).

The best practice is to ask for student consent in writing. You may want to specify the work you are using, your uses of the work, the distribution methods (e.g., posting in VIULearn), the time limits (e.g., for the current course or for future courses), and the citation for how the student wants to be credited or perhaps remain anonymous for privacy reasons. You may also want to consider whether you will provide students with a post-consent opportunity to ask for their work to be removed from your teaching materials.