Copyright and educational resources

Most work that is created is covered by copyright or intellectual property rights

literary works - books, journal articles, newspaper columns, personal letters, emails, computer programmes, song lyrics, handouts and leaflets etc.
artistic works - paintings, photographs, illustrations, logos, maps etc.
musical works - compositions, recordings, performances, etc.

Copyright items must be original, ‘fixed’ and show skill or judgement by the creator or creators – but they don’t need to have been published, registered or marked with a copyright symbol ‘©’.

It is the variety of sources, and the terms under which they are supplied, that makes it difficult to know what is allowed, what is forbidden, and what can be done by negotiation, licence or exception.

Course packs

You can find Guidelines to show good practice in the use of course packs (PDF) and other helpful guidance, on the CLA’s website.

If you put a course pack together, each individual extract needs to comply with the same licence terms as for scanning or distribution of individual copies.

In brief, for any module you can copy up to:

One whole chapter from a book
One whole article from a journal issue
One short story, poem or play (not exceeding 10 pages in length) from an anthology
One whole scene from a play
One whole paper from a set of conference proceedings
One whole report of a single case from a volume of judicial proceedings
Or 10% of the total publication, whichever is the greater

The item you copy from must be owned by Newman University, not a personal copy, and it has to be covered by the Licence. You can check permissions on the CLA website.

You should only produce sufficient copies of a course pack to supply the students taking the relevant module and yourself.

Alternatively, you may prefer to include individual extracts and articles directly within your Moodle course. You can apply for these through our scanning service.