#UKRGTower : AGM and 'In the News'

Naomi Korn (IP Consultant and Chair, Libraries and Archives Copyright Alliance)

Naomi Korn gave an extremely interesting and useful talk on some of the latest copyright developments that will no doubt have a direct impact at various points for all of us working in the heritage and arts sectors.

Firstly Naomi discussed what to look out for when thinking of publishing something within your collection. To illustrate her point she used the example of a diary written during WWI by Ethel M. Bilbrough, recently published by the Imperial War Museum.

Although the Imperial War Museum owns the diary, they do not own copyright. In this case it passed to Ethel’s husband to whom she had bequeathed her belongings, despite it not being explicitly mentioned in the will. When he passed away the rights passed to someone else, and so on, until they eventually managed to trace the person with whom the copyright currently sits and were able to gain permission to publish.

The diary also includes many newspaper clippings, images etc, also needing separate copyright permissions.  This highlighted the need to be vigilant when dealing with something that contains multiple sources and to always treat them as individual works within their own right.

Naomi also looked at the new government licensing scheme which allows you to apply for a seven year licence from the Intellectual Property Office for a fee, which includes an admin and licence charge. She also alerted us to the fact that it would be necessary to ensure that due diligence was carried out.

In addition, the talk gave an overview of some of the recent changes in copyright law which offer exceptions to copyright for non-commercial use. These appear to be particularly useful to the heritage sector as they will enable us to allow further access to collections and to be able to enrich education materials.

To name a few, the exceptions included; the right to make one digital copy available to anyone, from a dedicated terminal; the right to use unacknowledged quotes to illustrate points, e.g. in a presentation; the right to use copies for educational use; the right to make preservation copies, for example, transferring film from VHS to DVD.

For further information regarding copyright law and news on changes to the law, Naomi recommended the following associations.

CILIP– Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals

LACA – the Libraries and Archives Copyright Alliance

Georgia Grant

Royal Armouries

Please see the event reports section of the UKRG website for an actual copy of the presentation provided by the speaker for this event.