Copyright: we make the change

For the first time in history, copyright laws in the UK are allowing more to be done with audio-visual materials for educational purposes. This gives immense opportunity for the learning of foreign languages, or, for international students, for the learning of English or Welsh languages. It is also of use to every librarian that understands the importance of learning with materials other than the printed text.

Since June 2014 it is now possible for librarians to treat audio and video materials exactly like books when it comes to making copies for readers and storing fragile materials. It is possible also for readers to make personal copies for non-commercial use of audio-visual materials.

Most language learning materials consist not only of books but also of:

• books accompanied by CDs,
• CD-ROMs
• DVD
• sometimes DVD-ROMs
• accompanying website

These materials allow students to listen to the language they are learning and interact with it as much as possible. Sound recordings, films and documentaries are as educational as text-only materials.

Many recent surveys, including an internal survey done by Oxford University IT Services, have shown that students have diverse new ways of learning:

• listening to podcasts
• watching television
• listening to the radio
• using facebook or twitter with other students or with tutors
• using web 2.0 websites such as e-flashcards on their mobile phone or laptop

Let’s follow for example the studying life of a German or Italian student at Oxford. He or she uses books of course, the university VLE but he or she will also makes the most of facebook. The Oxford German and Italy Societies will organise conversational evenings, guest talks, cinema outings and quite simply community chats on facebook. He or she will also use web 2.0 sites such as memrise or quizlet e-flashcards to remember vocabulary words, skype for language exchanges, he or she will watch Inspector Montalbano (the Italian student) or go to the Oxford lieder festival (the German student). Those two are models students perhaps, but most language learning students understand well that learning another language is learning another culture and books are not enough. Being a “one-person library” and learning Spanish at the Language Centre, I do spend a lot of time with students every day and therefore have the opportunity to see what their learning habits are.

There are several points to consider in the new copyright laws that came into place this year.

• Firstly, the Copyright and Rights in Performances (Personal Copies for Private Use) Statutory Instrument number 2361, allows the copying of audio-visual material for personal use. It is now completely legal for purchasers of CDs to make a copy into their mp3 player for example. I know quite a few of my readers who love to go for a jog while listening to the language they are learning.

• But there is more… Thanks to the Copyright and Rights in Performances (Research, Education, Libraries and Archives) Statutory Instrument number 1372. Previously, it was only allowed as you know, for librarians, to make photocopies for their readers of text-only materials. Now the same is possible for copying extracts of sound recordings and videos. From a practical point of view, things are made easier by being able to send copies electronically as well as a declaration, which can be easily adapted from the previous photocopy declaration used in libraries.

• Furthermore, it is now possible for librarians and archivists to transfer fragile audio-visual materials onto newer support, such as digitising analogue collections to put into in-house computers. Of course, the concept of fair dealing has to be respected: there is no point for example of transferring old cassettes or VHS into more modern supports if there is a new edition available with CDs and DVDs or CD-ROMs. Each librarian has to think carefully as to the amount or the materials that can be copied and its impact on the commercial market.

• Fair dealing of course, must be respected at all times. This has to be for non-commercial research and the use of the material in this condition must not diminish the “market of the original work” as the website Gov UK states, that is the amount of the material copied must not be detrimental to the selling of the product, exactly as with making photocopies of a book: photocopying one chapter of a book is fair, photocopying more is evidently unfair to the publisher.

·         This is great news for language librarians and I’m sure all my colleagues from the Association of University Language Centres (AULC) do feel the same but also every librarian that understands the importance of learning with audio-visual materials.Before this, one had to ask permission to ask for the transfer of materials from one support to the next, for example the digitisation of cassettes was rendered difficult and slow.

·         Long ago now, in 2008, I sent a comment for the Green Paper “Copyright in the Knowledge Economy” claiming that audio-visual materials could be copied for preservation purposes including copying to other formats to respond to user’s needs. I am very happy to see some of my wishes coming true in this country. Of course, I was not the only one to make comments of course: CILIP and LACA(the Library and Archives Copyright Alliance, also on LIS-COPYSEEK) are working towards changes each time there is a call for consultation, or even from their own initiative as with the recent Free our history petition.

·         As a foreigner myself, I know the importance of audio-visual materials when it comes to learning a language. Most of the English I learned outside of high school and then at university was from the television and the radio. I have learned a lot by going to the cinema and seeing films in English with subtitles or listening to the BBC at my home in Paris. I also know that I learned a lot in my music, and then my librarianship studies by not only reading books, but listening to broadcasts, watching documentaries on television, taking part in discussion forums in the VLE. And I know it is the same for the students of today. Books are important, but not enough.

·         Now, thanks to these new legislations that came into force in June 2014, the process of learning foreign languages or any other subject indeed is made much easier.

·         But of course, this is only the beginning of copyright changes… a world more connected with the possibility to use materials from different countries, the use of multimedia materials and web 2.0 pages, all those present copyright challenges.

·         It is our role, as librarians and archivists, to push for changes and also, quite simply, to make the most of these changes in our day-to-day jobs.

·         (this blog post was originally written for the blog competition for CILIP, the Chartered Institute of Librarians and Information Professionals)