from Paul Pedley's Keeping Legal: Legal Issues Affecting the Information Profession [U.K.]
June 8, 2004
The Copyright Licensing Agency Limited is carrying out free copyright health checks for businesses at this year’s Sunday Times UK Business Week Exhibition....Decision-makers and senior management attending the conference and exhibition are being offered the opportunity to visit CLA’s ‘copyright surgeries’ at exhibition stand W60 during this week’s show. Delegates can complete a small questionnaire and receive one-to-one advice regarding their current information management practices, in light of the changes to copyright law that took place at the end of October 2003.
Sounds painful!
The changes in the new UK copyright law per European Directive are summarized by Charles Oppenheim in Freepint #154 Feb 2004. Click here to go right to the paragraph on libraries.
Copying by Librarians [U.K.]
Copies for patrons now may only be made for research for non- commercial purposes, or for private study (which has also to be non- commercial). However, other exceptions for librarians, including supply of copies to other libraries and replacement copies of works for preservation, are unchanged. The standard declaration form also has to be changed. Also, the charges for one library supplying another (whether document supply or preservation copies) change slightly. Instead of the library supplying the copy charging not less than the cost for production, it must now charge precisely the cost of production. However, copying for patrons remains as at present, i.e., a charge not less than the cost of creating the copy. The new definition of private study is not referred to in the proposed changes to the declaration form, and it is up to a librarian to decide whether to (i) ignore the matter and assume patrons will know the new law, (ii) change the wording of the declaration itself, or (iii) add a footnote on the declaration regarding what private study now means. My own recommendation would be (iii).
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