COVID 19 and the Copyright Challenges for Higher Education

Jane writes…

On 18th November 2020 the CLA held their winter CITE forum, which is an event for users of their Digital Content Store (the platform for making available scanned readings).

Chris and I were asked to present at the forum, on the copyright challenges that universities are facing during the pandemic. Unfortunately I was teaching at the time and so Chris agreed to deliver this talk flying solo. As well as being grateful for being able to get a word in edgeways [no comment – Ed], we do have different perspectives on copyright. Chris’s talk reflected the research he did for the Masters in Copyright Law which he completed in 2018 at King’s College London (his dissertation is online on university’s interpretation of Section 32: Illustration for Instruction, but there is also a summary in an earlier blog post).

The slides from his presentation are available as well as a recording (for those who weren’t able to join Chris’s talk starts 23 minutes into the recording). One paper of particular note that he drew on, was a paper ‘An Hundred Stories in Ten Days’: COVID-19 Lessons for Culture, Learning, and Copyright Law” published by Canadian legal scholars Carys Craig and Bob Tarantino. I’ll admit to persuading him to use the image from JW Waterhouse’s Decameron to illustrate their lovely metaphor of the importance of telling stories during a time of pandemic. Story telling is an essential element for communities of practice, the concept of which is a key influence on our approach to copyright education for the library and information community.

We are very pleased that Bob and Carys have agreed to join us for a copyright webinar on 15 January 2021, so we look forward to continuing the story telling. Now just need to get Chris a pair of stripy trousers and a lute…