To learn about copyright in Canada, consult the library's Copyright Libguide.
Another great resource is the Fair Dealing Decision Tool.
It is useful to understand the following facts if you wish to use instructional materials in your online course sites:
1. As of 2012 Fair Dealing is part of our Copyright Law and as a result, if you
i. Meet the laws criteria for what constitutes Fair Dealing, and
ii. Do so in a manner that does not make the information open to non-institutional uses by locating these materials in closed Moodle classes,
Then you are within your rights to include copyrighted materials - that meet Fair Dealings - in your online classes. To have physical library content digitized for usage in Moodle, contact Donna Lowe in Library Reserves.
2. You can always Include any materials for which you are the creator and copyright owner (make sure the latter is true by checking any contracts you sign with publishers).
3. You can always include any materials for which copyright has expired (i.e. is in the Public Domain)
4. You can link to digital materials (e.g. journal articles, e-books, etc.) owned by the library via your Course Sites. You can learn how to do this by reviewing learning to use the Library's One-Search Engine's Permalinks.
5. You can link to materials on the Open Web (those not requiring a Username/Password) from your course sites. These can be used without restrictions.
6. If you learn of a document not in the library's collection that you would like to share, first check for a Creative Commons License. All Creative Commons license allow for Sharing of materials. More information about Creative Commons Licenses can be found in the Creative Commons Section of this Libguide.
7. Check out any number of Open Educational Resources (open content such as Open Textbooks, Open Books, Learning Objects, etc.) that can be used in Course Packs. These are often found in sites that people contribute educational content to. The Open Educational Resources section of this libguide lists many of them.
8. If you want to use something that does not fall under points 1-7, contact the copyright holder and ask for permission to use their material in your coursepack (whether in Print or digitized and placed in Moodle.) This information will need to be provided to ensure that we can deal with any legal challenges. To locate the owner, you might want to check the Canadian Copyright Database. Some MOODLE courses have used copyrighted materials openly with such permissions in addition to agreements around HOW the material will be displayed (e.g. images of text pages so they cannot be copied and pasted.)
Brandon University currently is a signatory to the tarriff offered by Access Copyright. Consequently, faculty and students can take advantage of the permissions of their license.
To learn more about what is allowed under our current Access Copyright Agreement, consult our libguide on Copyright and Coursepacks.