The Provost announced today:
The University of Calgary has announced that they will not enter into an Access Copyright model licence but instead will manage copyright compliance and payments in-house.
The Copyright Office in Libraries and Cultural Resources has been expanded and new tracking software, Ares, has been purchased. Information Technologies is working closely with LCR to implement the software, integrate it with Blackboard and link it to other campus systems as required.. Library staff has begun working with the software which will later be rolled out to all members of the University community.
This is great news. The last public statement was that we were looking at tentatively signing up for a short term, to give us time to get our copyright house in order, before withdrawing. I’m glad to see we’ve stepped up to manage our own copyright licensing without paying into the protection racket that Access Copyright had become.
This means that we’ll have to be much more proactive and mindful about how we use copyrighted materials – but that’s a a good thing. Blindly using copyrighted materials because they’re covered by an expensive blanket license isn’t helpful. Let’s figure out how we can legally and morally use copyrighted materials – and more effectively share the resources that we create.