Michael Lean [HREF1], Copyright Officer, Queensland University of Technology[HREF2] and Griffith University[HREF3], Brisbane, Queensland 4000. m.lean@qut.edu.au
This paper describes how an Australian University set up a web-based system to deliver readings and other course materials online for students, whilst complying with the new digital copyright regime. The paper sets out the conditions with which the university had to comply, describes the planning and implementation of the new system, and looks at the benefits accruing from it.
On March 4, 2001, the Copyright Amendment (Digital Agenda) Bill passed into Australian Commonwealth Law, thus ending a long period of uncertainty, heavily tinged with frustration, for Australian universities, as the law now clearly allowed, subject to various conditions, the provision of readings in digital form and online for students. This paper describes the strategies used by one university to comply with the law in a distributed environment, using Web-based technology.
Prior to 2001, Australian Universities suffered a lengthy period of frustration; possessed of the ability and desire to deliver course materials online by the use of the World Wide Web, they were nevertheless unable to make use of the technology to provide anything other than material for which they either a) held the copyright, b) had obtained the permission of the copyright owners, or c) was in the public domain. Typical instructions for the period, advising faculties to exercise caution in making material available online, can be seen in the QUT Copyright Guide[HREF4], at http://www.dias.qut.edu.au/copyright/crguideInternet.html[HREF5]
This situation was in direct contrast to the print or hard copy world, where the universities have for many years held a licence with the declared collecting society, The Copyright Agency Limited (CAL)[HREF6] and have long been able to make multiple photocopies of monograph portions and journal articles for their teaching purposes, secure in the certainty that they were complying with the law.
The inability to move to the online world was caused by a number of factors, partly a general uncertainty as to what the Australian Copyright Act [HREF7] permitted in the way of digitisation and communication via the World Wide Web or the Internet, but even more by the seeming impossibility of reaching agreement on the issue between the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee (The AVCC)[HREF8] which has traditionally conducted negotiations on behalf of Australia's 37 universities, and CAL. Although both sides generally believed that online activity could be licensed, the main sticking point seemed to be CAL's belief that such activity should command a much higher rate than photocopying, with suggested rates entering into realms that were entirely beyond the reach of the universities. (At one point in the negotiations, suggested figures (by CAL) were $200 per document uploaded to a website, and $5 per hit on that document!) And so, unable reach agreement, the matter was held in abeyance until such time as the Government completed its deliberations and drafting, and clarified the situation through legislation. This came into force on March 4, 2001.
The Copyright Amendment (Digital Agenda) Bill [HREF9] which became law on March 4, 2001 gave a high degree of certainty to universities (and, indeed, other educational institutions) as to what they could make available online, but the requirements needed to comply with the law were complex, and somewhat difficult to apply in a distributed environment such as is to be found in the post-Dawkins multi-campus university. The amendments to the Act created, inter alia, a new right for copyright owners, the right of making available to the public.
The new legislation gave universities the ability to digitise, and, under the Statutory Licence administered by CAL, make available online, for their educational purposes extracts from monographs, journal articles, music and complete works which came under the heading of artistic works such as maps, photographs, diagrams, paintings, graphs and drawings. However, conditions applied, and they were not only complex, but numerous:
a) The material had to be made available on a secure site, i.e. not available to the public or the casual browser. This meant there were authentication issues to be dealt with. Fortunately, QUT already had a password access system for student and staff computer accounts in place, so this wasn't a major issue, but rather one that assumed a new significance in the process of compliance.
b) The material had to be provided with full bibliographic details. This was not only to aid in identification for the possible distribution of royalties through CAL, but also to comply with the new Part X of the Copyright Act which is the section on Moral Rights, introduced in December 2000. In this case, the author's right of attribution has to be observed. Of course, the proper citation of materials is part of regular academic practice, but instances where older documents were not properly identified had occurred.
c) Any Copyright Management Information on the original item had to be preserved. This could be a copyright statement, a bar code, some words identifying the publisher or copyright owner, and ISBN, or a digital watermark. The removal of such information became a serious offence under the new provisions of the Copyright Act. This was an area that would require careful monitoring, as the temptation existed to "clean up" copies by removing extraneous information (and thereby reduce file size).
d) The material had to remain online for not longer than twelve months. Although this requirement derives from the Copyright Act, it is more of an economic and administrative nature than one associated with the observance of author's rights. The Act deemed that the period for a remunerable use of an item would be twelve months; hence if material remained online for 366 days, another fee could be levied for its use. This requirement becomes a useful device for ensuring that the material online retains a useful degree of currency, so actually is an advantage.
e) Each communication online had to be accompanied by a regulatory notice:
NoticeCOMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA Copyright Regulations 1969 WARNING This material has been copied and communicated to you by or on behalf of (Name of Institution)pursuant to Part VB of the Copyright Act 1968 (the Act). The material in this communication may be subject tocopyright under the Act. Any further copying orcommunication of this material by you may be the subjectof copyright protection under the Act. Do not remove this notice. |
f) Each item had to be marked with a statement indicating the relevant section of the Copyright Act that was relied on in the making and communication of the copy, and the date on which the copy and communication was made, hence:
|
Copy made on behalf of the Queensland University of Technology in reliance on S. 135ZMB of the Copyright Act 1968 on 30/9/01 |
g) Finally, all copying and communication had to comply with the quantity restrictions. Whilst these were in most ways the same as the quantity guidelines for photocopying, there was one important and potentially difficult difference. The quantities are:
For journal articles - one article from any one issue of a journal, unless there are two or more articles on the same subject, in which case two or more articles may be copied from that journal. This amount applies to the individual, so that there is no restriction on different staff members selecting different articles from the same issue of a journal.
For monographs - ten percent or one chapter, whichever is the greater, per institution. In practice, this meant that once someone from the university had selected a book portion and made it available online, then no other person in that university could place another portion of that book online until the first portion had been taken down.
For electronic documents - ten percent of the number of words in the document, or if the work is in chapters, one chapter.
For artworks, graphs, tables, photographs, etc, the complete work could be included, provided all the requirements above were observed.
A reading of the list of requirements above will convey some idea of the potential for copyright infringement to take place in a university setting were teaching staff within the institution to be merely provided with a set of guidelines and asked to follow them when making material available on their own websites. The one-use-per-institution restriction on book chapters alone could almost guarantee that the law would be broken, with the attendant consequences. The difficulty of ensuring compliance with all these conditions across a multi-campus university with potentially hundreds of webservers strains the imagination.
As those responsible for the oversight of copyright compliance at QUT considered the new legislation, it seemed apparent that the only possible way that the university could move to online communication of teaching materials was via a centralised system, where marking of documents, quantity restrictions, attribution, time periods, single uses of monographs, and the attachment of appropriate notices could all be overseen, and it was decided that the university would embark on the creation of the Course Materials Database (CMD)[HREF10]
Of course, copyright compliance was not the only factor in the creation of the CMD; it was also a timely response to consistent student demand for a "one stop shop" for resources. A recent (May 2001) Division of Information and Academic Services survey on student need for online services at QUT shows that students were demanding a single site to access their course materials.
Comments such as these below were recorded:
"I would like to 'suck down' everything for my subjects in one hit"
"Other reference materials on the OLT page. Additional reading articles could be placed online so students would not have to get from the Library reserve area"
"Limit the number of ways to access lecture notes and other online notes"
"More cases and articles placed online. It is sometimes very difficult locating everything in a short space of time. I work during the week as well as attend lectures. Would be so much easier to find all that I need using my home computer and not waste 2 hours in public transport travel… We poor uni students have to utilise our time online and at home sparingly."
So, following the agreement between the universities and CAL, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor Information and Academic Services established a Project Team under his sponsorship, charged to prepare a plan for a database of high demand copyright journal articles and book chapters for use by the university's enrolled students, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The Project Team comprised staff from Teaching and Learning Support Services, Information Technology Services, the Library, the Publications and Printing Manager and the University Copyright Officer. The Project Leader was the Associate Director Library Services, Information Resources, who was seconded to the project full time for 3 months from May till August 2000. A Reference Group of academics with a commitment to flexible delivery was also formed to advise the Project Team.
Whilst devising a system of such magnitude is an exercise in itself, ensuring that staff use it is another matter. Very early in the life of the project, it was enshrined in the university's Manual of Policy and Procedures [HREF11] that the CMD was the only legal way to put teaching materials online. This eased the task of the developers somewhat in gaining acceptance by users, and to a degree reduced the university's vicarious liability for copyright infringement in the case of material being put online in an infringing manner, e.g. on a publicly accessible website.
The broad design of the project was to create a database that contained, or to which could be added, the various resources provided by the university for its teaching purposes. Teaching staff would make requests for material to be added to the database via a web-based form that they could complete at their desks. The request would go as email to the library where the CMD team, made up from existing library staff, would check for copyright compliance, find the best copy for scanning, and the item after scanning and conversion to PDF would then be added to the database, with the appropriate notices and citations attached. A URL for the particular item would appear on the Online Teaching (OLT)[HREF12] web page for that subject.
A number of resources already existed within the university, and it was decided that these also were to be included in the CMD, which would then replace:
· Library Course Reserve. At each of the 4 branch libraries, a closed collection of high demand books and videos, photocopies of book chapters, journal articles and lecture notes for use by students in the Library.
· Built Environment and Engineering Resource Centre. Amongst other services, this departmental centre kept the equivalent of a Course Reserve collection of articles and chapters for students in this faculty.
· E-Reserve. Lecture notes provided to the Library in electronic form by the lecturer and mounted on the Library Web page by unit (subject) code and lecturer's name.
· Past exam papers. With some exceptions, past exam papers were digitised and mounted on the Library Web page by unit code. They were also available in hard copy volumes in the Library.
· Online Teaching Pages. Some teaching staff had already made their lecture notes available from their unit's online teaching pages or from their faculty's web server. All online teaching pages were listed on the Teaching and Learning Support Services home page by unit code in a single list and some were also linked from Faculty or School web pages. Only one third of units taught at QUT had online teaching pages in May 2000.
The effect of this diversification was that students had to search a variety of places, both digital and hard-copy to find their high-use, lecturer-directed information resources. None of these places were linked and the same information resources could be duplicated in different places. Accordingly, it was planned to bring all these resources into the CMD.
The plan was completed by the end of August 2000, but a delay in budgeting meant that the university did not provide the funding of $200,000 to implement the project until November 2000. This did not allow enough time for the project to run as a trial in Semester 1 2001 as originally proposed. Instead, the Course Materials Database became fully operational from Semester 2 2001, after some very small trials with one faculty.
Staff from many areas of the University worked to make the project a success. Members of the CMD Project Steering Committee spent a great deal of effort in supporting the project work across organisational boundaries within the Library[HREF13], the Division of Information and Academic Services[HREF14] and within the wider University. Information Technology Services[HREF15] created the CMD software. Teaching and Learning Support Services (TALSS) [HREF16]created generic online teaching pages for those units that lacked them, finally creating over 3000 web pages, and linked these to the CMD and trained the many academic staff new to online teaching in their administration. The Printery staff carried out the digitisation of the Course Reserve documents.
Probably, the greatest load fell on the library staff in the lending services area. At each branch staff now scan all new requests, sort out problems and obtain any needed interlibrary loans. They also handle all lecture note files and load past exam papers onto the CMD. Library systems staff manage the hardware, train library staff in the new hardware and software, sort out the software problems and liaise with IT Services and TALSS staff on technical issues. Liaison librarians train and advise academic staff on how to use the CMD. Library Resource Services staff receive new requests from lecturers, check the CMD database for copyright compliance and, after consultation with the Copyright Officer negotiate with requesters on copyright conflicts, (for example where two lecturers both want to digitise parts from the same book).. They then locate articles, some of which are in vendor databases, convert scanned documents to PDF using Adobe Acrobat Capture software to reduce file size, monitor and resolve problems with document quality, index the CMD documents and manage the ongoing workflow including performance monitoring and reporting. Services staff right in a direct client service role. The staff deals with requests from academics, and have to meet a guaranteed turnaround time of 3 days for new CMD requests. They work together with Lending Services in the provision of this service, with staff from both areas contributing to the delivery.
Staff in the Library, IT Services and TALSS have been drawn together, working in new ways to provide this innovative service to QUT students and staff.
It should be stressed that the above approach is that of one university within the sector. Other universities have taken different approaches, and not all of them have the advantage that QUT has, that of centralised control of the IT facility. Many universities are trying to cope with, as mentioned above, a distributed environment of discrete faculties with their own individual IT environments, their own ISPs, jealous of their autonomy, in a situation which can only be likened to herding cats.
Whilst the service at QUT has been developing, CAL and the universities have
been locked in negotiations about the kind of records that should be kept by
universities of the works that they digitise, so that royalties can be distributed
to the copyright owners. Late in 2001, when the AVCC felt that agreement was
close to realisation, the negotiations were broken off by CAL, who then presented
their proposal for a record-keeping system to the Copyright Tribunal, asking
for a determination as to what system should be used - with the implication
that their system was the most appropriate. QUT had been cognisant of the need
for record-keeping in the design of their system and were confident that, when
records need to be given to CAL, the records that are created in the process
of administering the CMD will provide all the information that CAL requires
to distribute royalties. At the time of writing, this situation is unresolved,
and although CAL has returned to the negotiating table, there remain concerns
about the possible introduction of their record-keeping system, which is onerous,
expensive, invasive of both privacy and contract obligations, and requires many
details of copying which is not of a remunerable nature; e.g. CAL's system requires,
inter alia, details of links to outside websites supplied to students for reference
purposes. In addition CAL's plan proposes that any database of records of copying
created by the university will belong jointly to CAL and the university. Such
details, along with others of a like nature, are unacceptable to the universities,
and there is obviously much more negotiation required before an acceptable compromise
is reached.
Nevertheless, the records generated by the CMD system will provide an accurate
and comprehensive record of licensed material used online by the university
for teaching purposes, in much greater detail than any previous records for
photocopied material, as the CMD represents the only legal way that such material
can be made available online.
(Things have moved fairly quickly. Since the submission of this paper, an agreement has been reached between the parties, which, while it will involve some complex record-keeping, appears to be a satisfactory outcome. ML 16/5/02)
There were two separate client groups for this Project - the students and the teaching staff. Developing a system and processes that would suit the majority of the academic client base was one of the challenges of the project. Academics vary widely in their use and acceptance of electronic delivery of course materials. QUT's academic staff could be divided into three groups, each of whom required different levels of explanation and support to use the CMD. There were:
· those who already had well-advanced online teaching pages, but who questioned how the CMD would fit in with them and who also had concerns about retaining control over these OLT pages.
· those who had not previously had online teaching pages for their units. The CMD had given them some incentive to make the transition to online teaching but they needed support with the new technology.
· those who previously used the Library's E Reserve and Course Reserve collections and required assistance to move to the new service. (Staff in this group may also fall into one of the other two categories.)
The needs, perceptions and expectations of the different client groups were considered when drafting communications, documentation and in the support structures developed. For example, Liaison Librarians, who are knowledgeable about the needs and abilities of the academics with whom they work, were trained in the workings of the CMD and online teaching issues so they could offer a primary support role and tailor their support and awareness-raising strategies to suit their client group.
Where possible, the CMD links to articles on vendor databases, but certain requirements must be met:
· the link must be to article level
· the database must provide PURLs (permanent URLs) to ensure continuity of the link
· authentication is by IP address.
Previously, the Library provided access to vendor databases via the password embedded in the login from Library web pages and/or IP addresses. This enabled students dialling in from home to gain access even if they came from a non-QUT IP address. However, it was not regarded as good service to link students using the CMD to the front pages of the databases. When using the CMD, the student no longer sees the prompt for the password but is taken directly to the article. One anticipated but unfortunate result is that students dialling in from some ISP addresses will not appear to the vendor databases to come from QUT. They will therefore fail to be authenticated on these databases. While this is not a big problem at the moment, because only a small proportion of CMD references link to outside databases, this proportion will increase over time. Some students have complained and have been offered a work-around using software supported by the IT Services Help Desk staff. However, this software is complex and alternatives are being investigated.
In the first weeks of Semester 1 2001, the OLT server did not cope with the heavy load. The hardware had been upgraded, but a 50% increased load in Semester 2 over Semester 1 once again caused slowness and justifiable complaint. As a temporary measure, the Library made the CMD available by unit code through its Web pages to ease the burden on the online teaching server. An urgent hardware upgrade and rearrangement of the online teaching servers has resolved this problem.
At one campus, there were many complaints about serious slowness in printing documents from the CMD. Some errors in setting up the scanner at that campus led to documents with very large file sizes. There were other problems in labs with file sizes expanding back to original pre PDF size when transferred to the printer. Both these problems were solved.
Some lecturers have raised concern that students will be forced to use IT to access required readings. They see this as disadvantaging both students who do not have access to a computer at home and those who lack computer skills. Others are concerned that there will not be enough PCs in campus labs to satisfy demand. The University is providing increased lab access as a priority as well as providing laptop rental and docking facilities on campus. All students who attend campus have access to the CMD. The print-based Library Course Reserve service required students to go to the Library to access the documents at hours when the Library is open, with the usual problems that the articles could be stolen or misplaced. Students can read articles online, just as they could previosly read the Course Reserve photocopies if they could not afford to make a copy for themselves.
The Course Materials Database is a quality service that was delivered on time and within budget, largely due to good planning, adequate resources, consultation and the commitment of staff to make it work.
At the outset, the project was initiated and sponsored by the Pro-Vice-Chancellor Information and Academic Services. Support at this high level within the University captured the attention of staff approached to work on the project His endorsement and support also ensured that the University provided sufficient funds to undertake the project.
A senior member of the Library staff was assigned as the project leader to
research, plan, coordinate and later to implement the project. The choice of
a senior member of staff meant that the project leader had a sufficiently strategic
approach to both manage the project with senior staff from other departments,
and to extend the original boundaries of the brief from a focus on digitising
of copyright materials to provision of a comprehensive range of high demand
information resources including exam papers and lecture notes.
At all times, the Project has clearly been a cross-university project. This has been both a factor in the success of the project and a major challenge to team members. The combined expertise of the staff from different areas has delivered a quality service.
The CMD interface for academics[HREF17] has been designed to make it easy for them to request the Library to add new documents to the CMD:
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Comments from academic staff support this claim with even some self- confessed
technically challenged academic staff reporting that they find the CMD easy
to use. Academics can readily check which references have been loaded for their
units. Future enhancements will allow them to specify online which documents
they want removed.
A communication plan was developed to promote the system to academic staff, students and Library staff.
Awareness-raising sessions for academic staff prior to the launch of the CMD
were a useful way to facilitate the transition to the new service. The sessions
not only spread information to teaching staff but also provided the CMD project
team with useful insight into users' needs and expectations about the service.
Documentation to support the service includes the Guide to Using the CMD[HREF18],
a FAQ List[HREF19]and
the Copyright Compliance Guide[HREF20].
These web documents provide users and support staff with most of the information
they need to use the CMD as well as contact details for more advice if required.
They are available to staff from numerous access points from within the online
teaching pages, the CMD and the Library's web pages.
Course packs include portions of books, journal articles other extracts from copyright material selected by the teaching staff, and copied under the CAL licence into a course pack by the printing service. These are then sold to students via the University Bookshop at cost recovery prices. External Student Notes, as with course packs, are printed into a package by the printery and posted to external students at no charge.
The Project Steering Committee is investigating the benefits of loading the content of course packs and external student notes onto the CMD. There is no appreciable difference between them and documents already on the CMD. In fact, some lecturers have indicated that they make the same content available in course packs and on the CMD. The question arises whether the CMD should replace these printed note sets. If they were included, they would then be accessible 24 hours a day, and QUT could use the CMD database as the source to create course packs and note sets. Making the CMD the only source would ensure the currency and consistency of all resources, as there would then be only one version available.
Some lecturers have asked the Project Steering Committee to investigate whether the CMD could be used to manage copyright multimedia items. The Screenrights[HREF21] licence which covers the recording and making available of radio and television programs will have some application here. In addition, where the lecturer has obtained permission from the copyright owner it is possible that the CMD could be used to make the file available and manage the copyright. A working party on CMD and multimedia has been convened and will report by the end of the year.
At the time of writing, (April 2002) the CMD has approximately 9000 items available. New items are being added daily, and there is as yet no sign of a slowing of requests. Since its inception at the beginning of Semester 2, 2001 the database has received over one million hits.
Whilst the CMD began life as a copyright management system, the project has
resulted in bringing together a variety of heavily used information resources
at one location that is readily accessible by students. Although the majority
of these resources have always been available, they were previously in several
formats, dispersed across a number of collections and systems operated by the
library, individual academics, some faculties, Teaching and Learning Support
Services and Publications and Printing. The CAL/AVCC agreement on the digitising
of copyright material provided the initial impetus, but the project team realised
that the possibilities extended beyond the original brief of making a database
of digitised heavy-use copyright materials. It is quite possible that the creation
of the CMD will have accelerated the move by the teaching staff to online teaching
at QUT.
The database allows the university to not only ensure that its online offerings
are copyright compliant, but, in the event that licence fees change from the
current EFTSU-based calculation to a pay-per-item regime, the university will
have control over the number of items offered online, and hence will ensure
budgetary certainty.
Copyright compliance is, of course, extremely important. The Internet and the
World Wide web are very public places, where sins of transgression become apparent
to a vast number of people, and whilst the early Internet culture engendered
a belief that everything on the 'net was there for the taking, this is very
certainly no longer the case, as copyright owners become increasingly active
in the protection of their wares. No longer can the resources available on the
Web be taken for granted, nor can the Web's ability to deliver content be used
without due regard for the observance of intellectual property rules.
Minutes of the Meetings of the Project Management Team Course Materials Database,
QUT Information and Academic Services Division January 2001 - April 2002 (in
the possession of the author)
Email records - Copyright queries, CMD Management Team, (in the possession of
the author)
Young C, and Stokker, J. Course Materials Database: Integrating Information
Resources into Online Teaching for Students at QUT (Paper presented at AARL
Conference, August 2001.)
The Copyright Act 1968 (Cwth) - Office of Legislative Drafting, Attorney-General's
Department, Canberra 2001
Communications from the Australian Vice-Chancellor's Committee (email in the
possession of the author).