Copyright and Course Materials

As of September 1, 2011 the University of Calgary is no longer operating under an Access Copyright license.  This results in some policy and procedural changes.  Please see the main copyright website — Copyright at the U of C (2011) — for the most up-to-date and complete information on complying with the copyright laws when creating materials for your courses.

A number of helpful resources are available on that website, including:

• A quick “Dos and Don’ts” handout from Wendy Stephens of the the University’s Copyright Office
• Wendy Stephen’s presentation to the Faculty of Law on August 30, 2011 

If you have any questions regarding the University’s copyright policy, please go to the copyright website or email Wendy Stephens.

The Law Library has provided the following pointers for determining whether you can link to or provide a copy of a document.

Print Materials

You must obtain permission of the copyright holder to use any print copyrighted materials.  This applies for materials you are putting on Blackboard, in a coursepack or on Reserve, or are handing them out in class.  See Guidelines for Obtaining Copyright Permissions.

Electronic Materials

There are two questions you have to consider when determining whether you can link to or provide a copy of a document (article, case, statute, etc) from one of our databases:

1. Do you have permission by the copyright holder (the database vendor) to either link to or provide a copy of the materials?

2. Is it technologically possible to link to the item in the database?

Permission

Staff in the library’s Collections unit looked through every licence agreement this summer to determine the permissible uses of the materials in each database.  For most legal databases, you are allowed to link to their materials from Blackboard but are not allowed to provide a copy of the materials either electronically or in print (in a coursepack or handouts).  However, this is just a general rule of thumb and you must verify the requirements of the particular database you wish to link to or copy from.

The Collections unit developed a database to help faculty members determine what licences to electronic library resources permit. You can access this information at License Information.  Please note that you must search for the official database or database package name, not the journal or case reporter name.  For example, you would search for Hein Online rather than the Alberta Law Review.  It can be difficult to identify the database’s name as they are not always obvious (for example, Westlaw is LawSource in the database) so if you need assistance determining the official product name, please contact the law reference desk at or (403) 220-7274.

If you want to link to or copy journal articles, there is a much easier way to determine the permissions.  From the Law Library website, click on Journals on the blue bar immediately below the picture of the TFDL.  In the Find Electronic Journals by title search box, type the name of the journal. Information for the database that title can be found in is provided with a link to “Permitted Uses.”  A journal may be located in multiple databases, each of which may have different permissions so look at each to see if one is more permissible than the others.  In the PURL Legal Database Instructions” document (referenced below), we have an example of a journal that is in three different databases with very different permission.  Please note: this source does NOT include information relating to some of the main legal databases, such as CCH, Quicklaw, and Westlaw, so you would still have to search the license database above to determine your permissions for these databases.

Linking Capability

If you have permission to link to materials in a database, you then have to determine if it is technologically possible to do so – and how.  To assist you in creating persistent URLs (PURLs) on Blackboard, staff at the Bennett Jones Law Library created a handout entitled “PURL Legal Database Instructions.” .

If you have any questions, please contact your Faculty of Law administrative support staff member or your librarian liaison.  As a reminder, your librarian liaisons are Nadine Hoffman for Natural Resources, Energy and Environmental Law courses and Kim Clarke for all other courses.