Jane Secker writes – On 20th June we attended and helped organise the Universities UK / GuildHE Copyright Working Group Summer Event at Woburn House in London. The event was chaired by Professor Ronan Deazley from Queens University, Belfast and focused on the intersection between copyright exceptions and licences. The day included workshop activities which Chris and I facilitated along with Neil Sprunt from Manchester, Kate Vasili from Middlesex, Monique Ritchie from Brunel London and Ralph Weedon from Strathclyde (all members of the UUK / GuildHE team). The purpose of the day was to discuss a range of hot topics related to copyright in the higher education sector and try to see if a consensus could be reached about institutional practice and policies. It was sponsored by the CILIP Information Literacy Group.We had around 45 delegates, the vast majority of whom were university copyright specialists, and the day opened with a keynote from Professor Deazley entitled Licences, Exceptions and General Confusion (click link to see the slides).
Topics for discussion in the morning workshop included a range of issues where copyright exceptions and licences come into play, particularly looking at what constitutes fair dealing in an educational context. Everyone worked really hard and we had some great discussions about how comfortable we felt about certain activities, and what different institutions felt was acceptable practice. The Group will soon be circulating a report of the morning’s event to the delegates.
Following lunch (and a quick fire copyright quiz to wake everyone up) we were joined In the afternoon by representatives from five external organisations (click links to see their presentations):
- Andrew Yeates, ERA (Educational Recording Agency – no presentation)
- Sarah Brear and David Duffield, Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA)
- Henry Petit, NLA Media Access
- Paras Junejo, Intellectual Property Office
- Ben Taplin, Jisc Collections.
Following a lightning talk from each organisation, we held a number of world cafe style discussions to allow delegates to share their thoughts with the guests about what was working with regards to their organisation’s relationship with the sector, where improvements could be made and to raise any specific questions they had. We will be sharing notes from this session with delegates and the guests shortly.
Overall it was a really tiring day (copyright can be hard as Professor Deazley told us at the start of the day!) but feedback from delegates suggested that despite the warm weather and hard work they were expected to do, everyone got a lot out of the event.
Quite a number of us ended the day by attending the launch of the Copyright Cortex which is a new online resource dedicated to copyright and digital cultural heritage developed by Professor Deazley. The Cortex provide libraries, archives, museums and other memory institutions with information and expert commentary on how copyright law affects the creation and management of digital cultural heritage.
So thanks again to everyone who took part. 20th June really was a very successful day for copyright literacy.
Copyright Literacy 
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