For copyright purposes "text" is "literary works" which include most forms of writing, such as:

• Letters
• Novels
• Textbooks
• Poems
• Articles
• Catalogues
• Song lyrics
• Instruction manuals
• Tables or compilations expressed in words, figures or symbols
• Computer programs or a computer look up table

Readings provides students access to online material in units for required and optional readings. Students are provided with a consistent and organised interface for their unit readings. The tool allows teaching staff to store, review, organise and share student readings within VU Collaborate, and comply with copyright requirements. Several guides are provided via the link below regarding adding and organising student readings. 

For information about Readings go to the VU Collaborate 'Adding Library Content' help guides.

In this section you will find information about how much, and under what circumstances, text can be copied into VU Collaborate without infringing the Copyright Act. You will also find some things that you cannot do, and consider some examples.

Copyright law gives the copyright owner of text or a literary work the rights to control:

• reproduction,
• publication,
• communication,
• performance, and
• adaptation of their work. 

Under the Copyright Act there are a number of circumstances in which reproduction of a limited or reasonable amount of a literary work is permitted for educational purposes without seeking permission or payment. 

At VU we have a license which allows VU staff members to copy and communicate such material for certain educational purposes. However this does not mean that anything and everything can be copied or put online for educational purposes.

When reproducing text which is not from the Library's databases you are covered by the Statutory Licence called s113P and this allows you to copy a reasonable portion of text for your classroom or teaching purposes.

The VU Copyright Policy requires you to use Readings for any third party material you copy or upload to VU Collaborate. 

Under the Statutory Licence for text you can reproduce for educational purposes the following amounts:

• 10% or one chapter (whichever is greater) of literary, dramatic or musical works, uploaded into Readings.
• Journal articles – one article per journal issue, or more than one article from the same journal issue if the articles are for the same research, uploaded into Readings.
• Fair dealing covers uses for criticism and review, and parody or satire.  If you are genuinely producing a critique, review, satire or parody of a work. There is no limit to the amount of the work you can copy for these purposes but it must be considered ‘fair and reasonable’. 
  • There may be some risk in using this exception for review, parody or satire as the concept of what is “fair” is not clear cut.  Always check with your Copyright Officer or the University's Legal Section for advice.

When using VU Collaborate and Readings YOU CAN:

YOU CANNOT:

• Copy or communicate on premises other than the university or to anyone not enrolled as a student or employed as a staff member of VU.
• Place a pdf downloaded from a licensed Library database or resource on VU Collaborate.  Where possible a link to the source database, eJournal or eBook item can be provided via Readings.

Significant amendments to the Copyright Act (1968) came into effect in December 2017, including changes to the Statutory Licence (formerly Parts VA and VB).  The Statutory Licence is now outlined in Section 113P of the Act.

• New Spaces (from January 2018) will display the new notice referring to s.113P:

This copyright notice means that:

•  Material has been uploaded in compliance with the Statutory Licence agreement which specifies use of the Notice when relying on the licence.

Manuals  are also covered by copyright.  When copying from manuals always check any copyright statements on the actual work and include the attribution and the source.

'eMac User's Guide': https://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/0/MA476/en_US/eMac_OriginalUserGuide.pdf

Here is an example of the manual's copyright statement, (reproduced here under the Statutory Licence s.113P):

This manual is protected by copyright and cannot be downloaded as a PDF for use on VU Collaborate without permission.  It is possible to link.

'Macintosh Instruction Manual - clicking':

'Macintosh User Manual - Clicking' is by Peter Merholz (Photographer) and is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0

In this example (above) the CC licence is attributed to the photographer but the copyright owner for the original work would probably be Macintosh as they are also the original creator of the work.  This photo may be breaching copyright. When using this example we are covered by the Statutory licence s.113P. This Notice is included in all VU Collaborate spaces.

Questionnaires are often protected by copyright so you need to attribute the source or creator next to the work OR link to the file if you cannot copy the pdf. Use or adaptation of a questionnaire will often require permission.

EXAMPLE 1

This questionnaire example is freely available from Wikimedia Commons - see attribution at bottom - however the person uploading it to Wikimedia may not have had permission to do so. (When using this example we are covered by the Statutory licence s.113P.) 

Musculoskeletal survey Nordic questionnaire.png by "different" is licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0

This questionnaire was originally published in a study in 1987:

Kuorinka, I, Jonsson, B, Kilbom, A, Vinterberg, H, Biering-Sørensen, F, Andersson, G & Jørgensen, K 1987, 'Standardised Nordic questionnaires for the analysis of musculoskeletal symptoms', Applied Ergonomics, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 233-7.

EXAMPLE 2

Contrast the previous example with a genuinely open access questionnaire (below) from Vocational Psychology Research at the University of Minnesota, the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ), which is made available under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 Licence:

Information retrieved from <http://vpr.psych.umn.edu/instruments/msq-minnesota-satisfaction-questionnaire>.