Copyright and Intellectual Property

As an academic you will invariably want to use copyright works in some way to support your teaching. For example, you may want to:

• hand out photocopied or scanned extracts from books and journals
• include images in your lecture slides
• add digitised materials to your reading lists.

Staying compliant

There are a number of licences and exceptions under copyright law that allow you to use copyright works for educational purposes.

    The Copyright Licensing Agency HE License
 

The Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) Higher Education blanket licence permits multiple copies of certain types of copyright works to be made for all students on a particular module and for the tutor, but the limitations detailed below will apply.

Your copies must fall within the limits of whichever is the greater, 10% or:

• one chapter of a book
• one article of a journal issue
• one paper of one set of conference proceedings
• one report of a single case from a report of judicial proceedings
• one short story or one poem of not more than 10 pages in an anthology of short stories or poems.

Copies can be made from London Met Library's print or electronic collections and can be photocopied or distributed electronically via WebLearn.

All digital copying must be reported annually to the CLA, therefore all digitisation requests must be processed by the Library Digitisation Service. The Library Digitisation Service will check your course materials for compliance with CLA HE Licence terms, scan course material for you and advise you of your options where this is not possible.

Digitised course readings from published works for delivery to students via WebLearn. This is a staff-focused service to support the provision of copyright-compliant teaching material. 

The Digitisation Service provided by the Library offers a free service for academic staff providing: 

• High-quality digital copies in text-searchable PDF format for accessibility
• Compliance with copyright and CLA HE Licence terms
• Online access via user-friendly links
• Usage statistics to inform your teaching
• Digital scans will link directly to your reading list or you can use the permanent url we provide in WebLearn
• Where a subscription exists to an e-version of the work, please link to the Library catalogue using a permalink

Search ERA Radio and TV Services

Sources of broadcast material include on demand services like BBC iPlayer, ITV player, Channel 4oD, 5 Television and On Demand 5, National Geographic and the Discovery Channel. 

The University holds an Educational Recording Licence (ERA) to support educators to make the most of television and radio programmes broadcast in the UK. This licence allows you to use and record broadcast media via remote access to students and staff in the VLE (Canvas).

You may watch or listen to streamed audio or video for educational, non-commercial use within the UK under the terms of the ERA licensing scheme. You can share and embed clips or programmes in the VLE provided you use acknowledgement. Registration required - use your university credentials.

All electronic resources, including databases, e-journals and e-books are made available through subscriptions handled by the Library. Access to these resources is allowed under the terms of the licences drawn up by the supplier, all staff and students at London Met are responsible for ensuring that they comply with these licences.

General rules:

• You must not share any material with unauthorised users (ie non-members of London Met).
• All use must be for non-commercial purposes ie private study, teaching or research.
• You must not modify the text of any copyright material.

Not all database providers permit access by students and staff at London Met partner institutions. The database descriptions on each database page will tell you whether the database provider authorises you to access that particular database.