ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 57| June 2002
Australian Libraries Copyright
Committee Workshop:
Copyright and Digitisation
Now that everybody has ‘gone digital’ how have things really changed for libraries? Have libraries cancelled print equivalents of electronic resources? Is there less of a demand for document supply services? Or more? These questions and more were the subject of a recent workshop held by the Australian Libraries Copyright Committee (ALCC) at the National Library of Australia.
Copyright has always been an important issue for Australian libraries but the emerging digital environment has really brought it to the fore. Almost every conceivable use of electronic resources involves copyright or a licence agreement or both. The Copyright Amendment (Digital Agenda) Act 2000 updated Australia’s copyright regime and included important provisions for the benefit of libraries. But how useful are they exactly? And do they fit in with contemporary library practice?
These are not just academic questions; the Government has announced it will review the new digital copyright laws within three years of their commencement. The ALCC used the workshop as a means to work out where the library sector is heading, digitally-speaking, and what views it should put to the Federal Government during the review.
A variety of speakers got the discussion rolling. Jan Fullerton, Director-General of the National Library welcomed the participants and talked about trends in Australian electronic publishing; Tom Cochrane, Chair of the ALCC briefly described the history of digital copyright reform in Australia; Simon Cordina from the Attorney-General’s Department gave a run-down of the Digital Agenda reforms and loosely outlined the Government’s proposed framework for review; and Eve Woodberry of the University of New England gave a librarian’s perspective on the new digital licensing environment.
Librarians from a variety of sectors traded views on whether the various copyright provisions for libraries helped them in their work or inhibited them. Of much interest was the recently released joint-National Library and Copyright Agency Limited survey of document supply activities in the National Library. The survey tended to confirm what libraries have been saying to Government all along, namely that allowing libraries to do digital document supply was not going to harm emerging markets for Australian electronic publishers. (In fact, the survey, which can be found at: www.nla.gov.au/dss/calsurvey.html, shows an almost complete absence of supply involving born-digital materials and that nearly 90 per cent of the material is from overseas.)
The workshop ended with the ALCC making a commitment to gather more hard data
about copyright and the digital environment in the wider library sector.
—Nick Smith
Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: gateways@nla.gov.au