Preparing copyright compliant teaching material, Part 1: Textual Material and Images

While its true that many of our students will either be flying north to warmer climes or hunkering down to hibernate , it’s never too early to think about getting your teaching material ready for their return in second semester.  The Copyright Office will be keeping the fires burning during the winter break, and we’re here to help you keep your teaching material copyright compliant.

In this week’s post, we’ll be covering textual material and images.  Part VB (as in “Five-B”, and not like the beer) of the statutory licenses in the Copyright Act allow us to do a lot of things with text and images for educational purposes under certain conditions.  We’ve put together some handy hints which will hopefully ensure that you’re using them compliantly in your teaching activities.

1. Firstly, we must ensure that only students undertaking the subject have access to this material. Providing teaching material through the LMS requires students to log in and authenticate themselves before they can access these resources.  Avoid using external websites or social media platforms to communicate teaching material.  These platforms are often publicly accessible, and we risk infringing copyright by using them to disseminate teaching material to our students.
2. Be sure that book chapters, journal and newspaper articles, or any literary works that you upload to the LMS comply with the limits prescribed by the statutory license.  In most cases, you can copy 1 chapter or 10% of the total number of pages of a book, or 1 article per journal issue.  In some special cases, you can sometimes have more.  More information about limits on using copyright material on teaching can be found at the following URL: http://www.unimelb.edu.au/copyright/teachinglimits.html
3. Attach a copyright warning notice to teaching materials that you upload to the LMS.  For scans of book chapters and journal articles, for example, we recommend that the warning notice be inserted as part of the file itself.  Copies of this notice and information on how to insert them can be found at the following URL: http://www.unimelb.edu.au/copyright/notices/index.html
4. Remember to include an appropriate citation with the material.  This includes any images that you have used in your lecture presentations.  We recommend following standard citation formatting, or the referencing style preferred by your discipline.  The Library’s re:cite referencing guide can get you started.  Alternatively, checkout our website for information on the basic details to include in a citation.
5. Finally, you must register any textual material (book chapters, journal articles, etc.) and images (such as photographs, diagrams, charts and other illustrations) with the Copyright Office.  You will need to download the Electronic Use Scheme spreadsheet, fill it out in as much detail as you can and return it to the Copyright Office when completed.

Remember, that the Copyright Office is only a phone call (X46647)  or email  away if you have any questions.

In Part 2 of our blog post series on keeping your teaching material copyright compliant, we’re going to cover the use of audio-visual material, so stay tuned!

Image credit: Whooping Crane Ultralight Migration by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters (https://flic.kr/p/bjUwGd) CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)